Bombast Circumstance

John Drinkwater says that we should have a better type of statesmen if they were compelled to read Shakespeare's works every week. "It would steady their minds, and they need steadying."

This is not altogether a bad idea, for we find in some of the plays the mirror help up to the modern statesman's nature, sometimes terribly close to the truth, sometimes grotesquely like one's reflection in a hall of mirrors. Indeed, we should not be surprised to learn that some of our Western statesmen had already made an industrious study of Shakespeare and borrowed, deliberately or unconsciously, some of the remarkable economic notions so eloquently preached by Jack Cade, as reported in the second part of King Henry the Sixth, Vowing that there should be reform in the land, he made rash promises of what he would do when he came into power--"There shall be in England seven half-penny leaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it a felony to drink small beer." Perhaps some of our elder statesmen would infer, in their haste, that Jack was a prohibitionist, either by politics or conviction, but other possible constructions can be put upon the passage. That he was a through-going Democrat, however--an out-and-out son of the wild jackass--is clearly suggested by his boast, which we slightly paraphrase to fit the modern scene, "All the country shall be in common and on the White House grounds shall my palfrey go to grass." Senator Johnson of California must, in his low moments, we are sure, turn to King Lear for comfort, quoting with feeling the old king's bitter cry, "Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude."

But, really, the proposal is rather academic so far as our national Legislature is concerned. Our statesman have little time to familiarize themselves with Shakespeare; they are kept too busy reading their own immortal outpourings printed in the Congressional Record. --Boston Transcipt