Back when we used to be able to enjoy things like bars and friends, I used to participate in a monthly event held in a bar called Drunken Shakespeare.

Sponsored by the Night Shift Theatre Company, the event invited anybody who wished to participate to come in and sign up for a slot to perform a Shakespeare piece to the crowd. I was a regular since my first attendance in June 2017.

When the pandemic hit, the event was renamed #SequesteredShakespeare and moved to Instagram. We also did a few socially distant meetings in person in Central Park when the weather was nicer.

The most recent Sequestered Shakespeare was held online this past Monday. Here is the video I put together to share with the group.

Enjoy!

Caption: Shakespeare’s Prince Hal envisions his reformation and his future as king.

It’s hard to meet people these days. You may have even seen some online lists of pick-up lines, quick conversation starters for approaching women in bars.

But what if the object of your affection is a Shakespeare fan? Below you will find a list of sure-fire Shakespeare-themed pick-up lines that are guaranteed to breed love’s settled passions in her heart.

Note: This is a parody. Always treat others with respect, and never actually use any of these rude pick-up lines on a real woman in a bar*.

• Excuse me, but are you Joan of Arc? Because you are smoking hot.
• Hi, you can call me King Lear. Because I’m mad about you.
• Do I remind you of Richard III? Because I have a good hunch about us.
• Are you the Dauphin? Because thou hast turned my balls to gunstones.
• Are you Nick Bottom? Because you are the finest piece of ass I’ve ever seen.
• Right now, I feel like young Arthur from King John. Because I just fell for you.
• If I told you I was Hamlet, would you let me Ophelia?
• Are you Shylock? Because I want to give you a pound of flesh.
• You and I are like Kate and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. Because at the end, I bet I can get you to come.

Good luck, and have fun!

—

*I have actually used all of these lines on a real woman in a bar.

Evidence of Donald Trump’s racism has not been particularly subtle to find for those willing to see it. One could point to moments throughout his pre-presidential life, such as renting discrimination, attacks on the Central Park Five, or his shameful participation in the birther movement. One could look to his policies that disregard the humanity of immigrants and people of color. Or, one could notice a pattern of references to minority populations that assume that they are less important and valuable than whites.

What is it, then, that distinguishes the latest set of tweets from Exhibits A through Y? Last week, the Republican president posted the following to Twitter (three consecutive tweets are concatenated here, but are otherwise unedited):

So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!

The difference is that up until now, the racism, though transparent enough, has all been in subtext. Republicans who didn’t subscribe to his hateful messages but still wanted to defend him out of loyalty to Team Red could at least hide behind a veneer of deniability. This is now a thing of the past. Setting aside the fact that the four Congresswomen in question are all United States citizens, and that three of them were born in the United States, telling people to go back where they came from is textbook racism. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission even cites “Go back where you came from” as an example of discriminatory language. There’s simply no debate here.

So of course, there’s a debate here, with many of the president’s apologists rushing to explain why his racist tweets aren’t racist. A handful of Republicans have denounced the comments, but not nearly enough. Others have remained conspicuously silent. And my advice for that last group is that they read themselves some Shakespeare. And while that’s usually my advice for everyone, I recommend that these quiet Republicans direct their attention to the Duke of Buckingham.

Buckingham is a character in Shakespeare’s King Richard III. He is based on a real person, but I am going to focus on the character that Shakespeare created. The play follows the journey of Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Richard starts the play fifth in line to the throne, but through a combination of a can-do attitude and a ruthless campaign of cold-blooded murder, he is able to become king. His partner in crime is the Duke of Buckingham, who is willing to support Richard’s heinous treachery in order to ingratiate himself to power.

At one point, Buckingham makes a suggestion that Richard likes, and the latter responds “My other self,” which is the highest praise a narcissist can offer. Richard continues to express appreciation for the support, and tells Buckingham “when I am king, claim thou of me/ The earldom of Hereford,” as a reward.

Richard ultimately becomes king, but it’s not enough. His late brother’s sons are still alive and could one day make a claim to the throne. He brings the issue up to Buckingham, expecting Buckingham to be the one to suggest killing them.

RICHARD
Ah, Buckingham, now do I play the touch,
To try if thou be current gold indeed:
Young Edward lives; think now what I would speak.

BUCKINGHAM
Say on, my loving lord.

RICHARD
Why, Buckingham, I say I would be king.

BUCKINGHAM
Why so you are, my thrice-renownèd lord.

RICHARD
Ha! Am I king? ’Tis so—but Edward lives.

BUCKINGHAM
True, noble prince.

Richard becomes angry that Buckingham seems to no longer be his other self. He expresses his desire to kill the princes. This is a step too far for Buckingham, but he still lacks the courage to stand up to Richard.

RICHARD
O bitter consequence
That Edward still should live “true noble prince”!
Cousin, thou wast not wont to be so dull.
Shall I be plain? I wish the bastards dead,
And I would have it suddenly performed.
What sayst thou now? Speak suddenly. Be brief.

BUCKINGHAM
Your Grace may do your pleasure.

RICHARD
Tut, tut, thou art all ice; thy kindness freezes.
Say, have I thy consent that they shall die?

BUCKINGHAM
Give me some little breath, some pause, dear lord,
Before I positively speak in this.
I will resolve you herein presently.

At this point, an observer notes “The King is angry. See, he gnaws his lip.” Richard wastes no time before finding another lackey to do his dirty work. As for Buckingham, Richard is finished with him.

RICHARD [Aside]
The deep-revolving witty Buckingham
No more shall be the neighbor to my counsels.
Hath he so long held out with me, untired,
And stops he now for breath? Well, be it so.

And that’s all it took, a moment’s hesitation. At this point, all that Buckingham did to put Richard on the throne is forgotten. Only the most recent test of loyalty counts. Richard denies Buckingham the promised and well-earned earldom of Hereford. Buckingham flees. Richard has him captured and executed. So much for him.

And there is a lesson here for those who would defend Trump over the objections of the better angels of their nature. These tweets are not going to be the end of it. It will get worse. So the question you really have to ask yourself is: how far are you willing to go? Because once you hesitate, stop for breath even once, Trump will forget everything you’ve done for him up until that point. The rest of us won’t.

Consider all of the people who are forever tainted with this dark chapter of American history. I’m not talking about people like Stephen Miller, who uses the administration to promote his own white nationalist agenda. I’m talking about people who otherwise might have had distinguished careers, enjoying some kind of public perception of integrity. I’m looking at you, Sean Spicer. I’m looking at you, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. How’s it going, Kellyanne Conway? Everything okay, Lindsey Graham? What’s the first thing you think of when I say “Kirstjen Nielsen”? How will history remember Bill Barr? Who else wants to join the list?

And, literally while I was writing this, our Republican president attacked Representative Elijah Cummings and the city of Baltimore. Are you prepared to take this train all the way to the end? If not, this might be your stop.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve been hearing increasingly disturbing reports about conditions in the detention centers along the border. On Monday, a group from Congress went to visit these camps, and they found the claims to be true. According to Mother Jones, the House representatives report the situation is dire:

The testimony from members of Congress who had the rare chance to visit three Border Patrol facilities in Texas this week has been damning: detained women instructed to drink from toilets, pervasive verbal harassment by guards, and conditions that, for many, confirmed their worst fears of the Trump administration’s cruelty at the border.

The president for his part insists that he inherited the family separation policy that led to this situation from the Obama administration. This is, for lack of a better term, a complete bald-faced lie. The Trump administration would have you believe that this is a continuation of the Obama policy and that they were overwhelmed by a sudden increase in people trying to enter illegally. But they volunteered for this job. This situation was created by a policy of his own administration called “zero tolerance.” This meant, in theory, the arrest of anyone attempting to cross the border, but in practice, it included people legally seeking asylum as well.

Under the Obama administration, illegal border crossings were treated as a misdemeanor. Arrests were reserved for those suspected of serious crimes, like trafficking, and those rare instances did involve family separations. However, these were temporary. Under Trump’s policy, the family separations range in the thousands, and because of inadequate record-keeping, the families may not be reunited. Ever.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the cruelty being inflicted on the detainees is not due to a lack of resources, but rather, a deliberate policy choice. A Trump administration lawyer actually argued in court that they weren’t legally obligated to provide soap and toothpaste to detainees. What’s important to remember is that these are children. Their parents did not commit a felony in bringing them here. And even if they had, it would still be our obligation to treat them humanely. Desperately trying to defend the president’s policy, Brian Kilmeade accidentally said the quiet part out loud when he made the case to his viewers that everything’s okay, because these are not our kids.

Notice how he also frames the current crisis as being a result of increased immigration, rather than a deliberate policy decision, while at the same time affirming that the president is trying to send a message. When Kirstjen Nielsen, then Secretary of Homeland Security, was asked last year if the family separation policy was meant as a deliberate deterrent, she was shocked and insulted, and walked away as reporters continued to ask her the question. However, according to then-Chief of Staff John Kelly, it was intended as a deterrent. Cruelty, it would seem, is the whole point.

This intentional performative cruelty has not only created a culture of viciousness among his supporters, but it has also permeated among those tasked with taking care of the detainees. Last week, ProPublica published an exposé of a secret Facebook page for current and former Border Patrol agents that revealed a mocking disdain for the detainees. The stench is noxious, but the fish rots from the head.

We can argue about whether or not our nation’s immigration policy has been strong enough, but no matter where you stand on that issue, the answer isn’t this. You can’t just say “Well, they broke the law” or “Blame the Dems” while families are being ripped apart and children languish in squalor. One hundred years from now, our children’s grandchildren will study this moment alongside the Japanese internment camps as a cautionary tale. We’re already there. Because it’s truly breathtaking that we’re committing such flagrant human rights violations so brazenly out in the open with so little public backlash.

This president likes to strut like a prizefighter, but he has a glass jaw. He will cave to public pressure, as he has done so many times before. We can’t lose our stomachs for this fight. Democrats have one chamber of Congress and the public microphone that goes along with a primary election. We are not without a voice here.

From Henry VI, Part Three:

And there it doth remain,
The saddest spectacle that e’er I view’d.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Let’s eradicate the set dirt-ridden hate camp.

We have to end this.

Happy 455th Birthday to Shakespeare!

In honor of the occasion, I present… Shakespeare Memes!

From Richard II:

O! but they say the tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony:
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

They try to disrespect a hero yet.

McCain wants an honorable funeral, with Presidents Bush and Obama there to keynote.

Yet, gee, he did not invite ferret Trump, whether or not he has any grief.

So President Trump directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire Andrew McCabe, the acting director of the FBI.

McCabe was set to retire anyway, but the administration chose to fire him so he wouldn’t get his full pension.

The president then crowed about the firing in a tweet.

Ranting and raving about new lows for this administration can get tiring after a while. Maybe that’s the point. Fortunately, I am constitutionally empowered to anagram passages from Shakespeare to express my disapproval, so that’s what I’m going to do.

I chose the speech from Richard III where Hastings laments his capricious treatment by Richard. Richard has sentenced him to death for a transparently minor offense, when the real reason is that Hastings doesn’t support Richard to become king. Hastings notes the dangers faced by others in the circle who may be enjoying his misfortunes thinking they’re safe.

From Richard III:

I prophesy the fearfull’st time to thee
That ever wretched age hath look’d upon.
Come, lead me to the block; bear him my head:
They smile at me who shortly shall be dead.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Trump, he hotly tweets: McCabe, he led the FBI. He’ll be fired home.

He’s married to a Democrat, so Trump kept heatedly asking how he voted as a loyalty oath theme.

Oh, hell.

That’s actually true.

Oh, hell.

In honor of Shakespeare’s birthday, I am pleased to share with you an out-take from one of his most popular histories, King Richard III. Historians remember that Richard had a press secretary named Sean Spicer. This is no coincidence – he was a distant ancestor of the current White House Press Secretary! And all of this is well-recorded in the history books.

But what you probably don’t know is that an early Quarto version of Shakespeare’s play includes a scene with the famous spokesman.

Enjoy!

SPICER: And this is how we know that King Richard had the most attended coronation in English history. Period. Now, I’ll take a few questions before we go.

PRESS: Sean, how does the King respond to allegations that he had his brother Clarence murdered in the Tower?

SPICER: Well, I would remind you that this was something that happened under the previous administration. It was King Edward who ordered Clarence’s execution, and these were the orders that were carried out. Nobody was more upset to hear the news than King Richard. Nobody.

PRESS: The Earl of Richmond is reportedly claiming today that the entire York line is illegitimate and the throne was usurped from the House of Lancaster. Any comment?

SPICER: You have to remember that these were horrible, horrible people. I mean, if you look at what happened with Rutland, with the Duke of York… they killed their own people. You didn’t even see that in the Spanish Inquisition.

PRESS: They didn’t kill their own people in the Spanish Inquisition?

SPICER: No, only the Jews. I, of course, do realize that many Jews were… were invited in for conversion interviews, and all the stuff that was going on. But it’s nothing like the behavior we saw with the Lannisters.

PRESS: The Lancasters?

SPICER: Yes.

PRESS: But if the York line is legitimate, wouldn’t King Edward’s son, young Prince Edward, be next in line, and not Richard?

SPICER: You say that Edward is King Edward’s son:
So say we too, but not by Edward’s wife;
For first was he contract to Lady Lucy,
The Duchess lives a witness to his vow,
And afterward by substitute betroth’d
To Bona, sister to the King of France.
These both put by, a poor petitioner,
A care-craz’d mother to a many sons,
A beauty-waning and distressed widow,
Even in the afternoon of her best days,
Made prize and purchase of his wanton eye,
Seduc’d the pitch and height of his degree
To base declension and loath’d bigamy:
By her, in his unlawful bed, he got
This Edward, whom our manners call the prince.
All these are facts and you can look them up.

PRESS: What?

SPICER: No more questions.

The scene ultimately had to be cut from the play, not because of historical accuracy, but because the Master of the Revels had objected to the character of Sean Spicer being played by a woman.

However, we still have the scene as it exists in the Quarto, and it’s amazing how it still feels relevant to our world today!

Inspired by recent discoveries…

From Love’s Labour’s Lost:

The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Somerset Y-chromosome not even King Richard Three’s.

Cue the funk.

Bow-chicka-wow-wow…

In which I defend the honor of the Queen…

The DNA reports are in, and the skeleton they found in that Leicester parking lot is now confirmed to be that of King Richard III. Analysis also shows he had blonde hair and blue eyes.

Somewhat overshadowing the exciting news is a discovery that came from the research team’s comparing the old king’s DNA to that of his present-day relatives. It turns out that there is a break somewhere in the male-line continuity of the Y-chromosome, the collection of genes that are only passed from father to son, suggesting a false paternity event somewhere in the timeline.

The news media, with its trademark restraint, has jumped all over this, trumpeting that the already much-maligned Richard has infidelity in his family tree, with some even suggesting that this means that the Queen may not even be the legitimate heir to the throne anymore.

Okay, let’s all take a breath now. Her Majesty’s reign is in no danger here.

I spent a lot of time this past summer with my nose buried in the Plantagenet family tree, and may be able to add a modicum of perspective.

You can read the science team’s original report here, but a brief summary should suffice. Richard III and his distant cousin Henry Somerset, Duke of Beaufort are both direct male-line descendants of King Edward III. The Duke has five male-line descendants alive today who agreed to participate in the study, and four of them share the same Y-chromosome, presumably inherited from Beaufort. The one who doesn’t suggests a false paternity event (or “cuckolding” in the parlance) at some point along the way, but that’s not the infidelity that made the headlines. Richard III’s Y-chromosome also doesn’t match the Duke’s, which means that at least one of them is not actually a male-line descendant of Edward III.

Okay, so that’s pretty saucy news in itself. But it’s an overreach to drag Queen Elizabeth II into this story for several reasons.

First of all, what is the probability that the break in paternity is even in Elizabeth’s line? Here is the family tree for the relevant players (scroll down to the “Geneology of the Y chromosome lineage” graphic). It shows fifteen paternal links between Edward III and Beaufort, and only four between Edward III and Richard III. Assuming only one false paternity (which is all that’s been established here) and that all paternity events are equally likely to be false, the odds are 15:4 in favor of Beaufort being the non-heir rather than Richard. Also, if Richard III’s own parentage is the false one, it doesn’t affect Elizabeth, as she is descended from Richard’s older brother King Edward IV. So the odds of the break even being in Elizabeth’s lineage is 16:3 against or just under 16%.

Still, a 16% chance the Queen is illegitimate would indeed be headline-worthy, but let’s examine this claim more closely. Here it may be helpful to refer to the family tree I put together for Shakespeare’s King Richard III. In the column all the way to the right, close to the center of the column, you can find Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. This is the future King Henry VII. Five slots down, you can find Elizabeth of York.

Henry and Elizabeth will wed, and their offspring will include King Henry VIII and his sister Margaret Tudor. If you look one column to the left, all the way at the bottom, you will see Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester. This is the future King Richard III. From here on, I will use “Richard Plantagenet” to refer to his father, the Duke of York, who is also on the chart.

Queen Elizabeth II is descended from Margaret Tudor, which means that she is a descendant of Richard III’s brother Edward IV. Edward became king as a result of the Wars of the Roses, which were fought between the houses of York and Lancaster. His claim comes from his father, Richard Plantagenet.

Richard Plantagenet does indeed inherit his surname from his paternal lineage through the York line, being the grandson of Edmund of Langley, the First Duke of York. However, Richard Plantagenet stakes his claim to the throne from his mother’s side, as Anne Mortimer is descended from Edmund of Langley’s older brother, Lionel, Duke of Clarence. What’s more, Richard Plantagenet’s wife, Cecily Neville, who is mother to Edward IV and Richard III, is the granddaughter of John of Gaunt, who is also an older brother to Edmund of Langley (though younger than Lionel, Duke of Clarence). Henry VII is also descended from John of Gaunt.

What all of this means is that even if the Y-chromosomal break is in the 16% that would make Richard Plantagenet illegitimate, it would not affect Edward IV’s claim to the throne. It would therefore not affect Margaret Tudor’s legitimacy, nor would it affect the current monarch.

More to the point, it’s been almost one thousand years since William the Conqueror defeated the Anglo-Saxons in the Battle of Hastings, beginning the dynasty of which Queen Elizabeth II is the current representative. What else don’t we know? It seems very unlikely that, were a complete set of the genetic data magically available to us, Elizabeth would emerge as the clear genealogical winner. Not only do we have a millennium of regal shenanigans to wrangle with, but there is also the human element to consider. A lot of the lineage disputes from the past have been settled by people’s decisions and actions: who had political power, who was a bastard, who won a war, who was the right or wrong religion, etc. The question of whether women could inherit the crown changed the equation at several crucial junctures, so applying a single standard throughout English history would certainly change the outcome.

The bottom line is that we basically don’t know anything about anything, and we certainly don’t know much more today than we did yesterday. Queen Elizabeth shouldn’t start packing her bags based on this new revelation.

UPDATE: In the post, I claim the odds of the false paternity event being in the Queen’s lineage is 16:3 against. However, she is also descended from two other candidates: John of Gaunt and his son John Beaufort, the Earl of Somerset. So the odds of the break being in her ancestry would actually be 14:5 against. But she doesn’t derive her claim to the throne through this line either, so the rest of the argument still stands. See the comments for a clearer explanation.