Category Archives: political rhetoric

Saad Hariri as Hamlet

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Google just came across (on what looks to be some right-of-reasonable Jewish-themed blog) this satirical sketch comparing Saad Hariri to Hamlet (pursued by ghost of his father Rafik, even as evil stepfather Hassan Nasrallah seduces the weak mother/land, Lebanon-Gertrude).  Someone posted it back in January, when Saad’s government collapsed. 

Hamlet [to himself]: And this is why I have returned from Dubai? When I could have as well managed the business from there, enjoying myself like a pig in the mud? Or even from London… oh London, London… And here, what do I have here? Shia, Sunni, Christians, Druze all scheming and aiming to kill each other, the heat, the Syrians, the Hezbollah, the Israelis for crying out loud… who needs all this crap? Now this revenge schtick too… no, I definitely should get a ticket and scram!

The framing is better than the writing, but whatcha gonna do?  Unlike Hamlet, Saad Hariri has never been known for his eloquence.

Obama depicted as Hamlet on Libya

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It is predictable that, even as Qadhafi is typed as Richard III or any of a number of other Shakespearean villains, Barack Obama gets described as Hamlet.

From Hip Hop Republican, 3/22/11

A few highlights:

  • Newsweek in a piece called The Big Dither:  “The president has been more Hamlet than Macbeth since the beginning of the revolutionary crisis that has swept the desert lands of North Africa and the Middle East. To act or not to act? That has been the question. The results of his indecision have been unhappy.”
  • Victor Davis Hanson generalizes the lack-of-leadership thing to Obama’s presidency as a whole: “Hamlet couldn’t quite ever act in time — given all the ambiguities that such a sensitive prince first had to sort out. In the meantime, a lot of bodies piled up through his indecision and hesitancy.”
  • This caricature from Crystal Wright’s piece at Hip Hop Republican.
  • And of course the Right Side News has to weigh in: “We have a ‘Hamlet on the Potomac’ in our Oval Office.  If you listen closely you can hear Obama twisting himself into knots asking the wrenching question:  ‘To lead… or NOT to lead?’ (Our apologies to Bill Shakespeare!)”
  • Former CFR chairman Leslie Gelb begs to differ (and engages in some Shakespeare interpretation in the process).
  • And Saul Landau in Counterpunch goes even further, denouncing the whole Hamlet role as a trap into which Obama has fallen.

It’s interesting to see the Anglo-American view of Hamlet as hesitator, quite at odds with the typical Arab view of Hamlet as revolutionary martyr/hero, getting a tiny bit of play in the Arabic press through translations of articles by American pundits.  Here’s the one by Victor Davis Hanson (in Arabic, in the Gulf-based al-Bayan) and here’s the Leslie Gelb piece on hypocrisy.

Comparing Qadhafi to Richard III

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As foreign news coverage becomes unavoidable, Shakespeare becomes our contemporary once again.  Here are a couple of examples; I’m sure there will be others as events develop.

From The Independent on March 14:

I arrived at the theatre for a performance of Richard III last week with an image from that evening’s television news in my head. A line of men lay on a road in Libya. Their hands were pinned to their sides and their noses were flat against the tarmac. But the camera panned low. You could see the sheer terror in their eyes as a beefy Gaddafi loyalist droned a litany of places where his men had killed protesters and where they yet would kill more. The men on the road are probably dead now.
Richard III is a play about a man of violence who maintains himself in office through a regime of unremitting brutality. It was written around 1590 but it is a mark of Shakespeare’s evergreen genius that the dynamics it describes are still being played out in Libya, and elsewhere, today.

From something called Economicpopulist, back on Feb 15:

Like Richard III before the Battle of Bosworth Field, Gaddafi watches supporters vanish from top to the bottom of his army. His response has been no less brutal than Richard’s, with assaults on his own people by hired thugs that he bought in neighboring countries. It will not end well for him, but it will end soon.

Revolutionary Egypt: a "To Be Or Not To Be" moment

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A couple of samples from online articles that quote Hamlet to underscore the urgency of events in Egypt.

From an alarmist FoxNews (of course) interview with Egyptian tycoon Naguib Sawiris, who actually supported the Tahrir protesters and even bought them tents and blankets: 

When the protests began, Sawiris, a Christian billionaire who owns everything from hotels and construction companies to cell phone and investment interests, was out of the country. He chose to return, unlike other businessmen who have already fled.
“I came back because this was not a revolution of the Muslim Brotherhood.
This was the young people of Egypt doing what we failed to do … There is not a single other businessman who has supported it because it’s very dangerous for their interests; but the country is in a position to be or not to be,” he said.

Toward the end of a long, passionate article  by Mariam Saad in something called The Peninsula: 

Generations grew up within the armed forces and were trained to obey the government and surrender to its resolutions. However, if the situation deteriorates and becomes desperate, the challenge poses itself to the individual; to be or not to be? How will the situation resolve itself?

You can easily find many more of these in English and especially in Arabic.

To some ears, even the protesters’ chants had a Shakespearean ring to them! Al-Hayat column by Abdel Ghani Talis, in Arabic, here.

"To be or not to be" cartoon

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I found this political cartoon while looking for an example of sloganized use of a Hamlet quotation for a talk I’m giving at Tufts this week.  Many of my American hearers have trouble believing that “to be or not to be” can be a passionate call to arms.
 



It’s by the Palestinian artist Naji Salim Hussein al-Ali (1937-1987); you can see more of his work here: http://shaeirrahhal.jeeran.com/selections/archive/2010/6/1059177.html