DRAMATIS PERSONAE
The Iraqi Theater
What would the Bard think about the war?
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Wednesday, March 5, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110003147
George W. Bush to Saddam Hussein:
Check thy contempt; obey our will, which
Travails in thy good; believe not thy disdain,
But presently do thine own fortunes that
Obedient right which both thy duty owes
And our power claims, or I will throw thee
From my care forever into the staggers and
The careless lapse of youth and ignorance,
Both my revenge and hate loosing upon thee
In the name of justice without all terms of
Pity.
Dick Cheney:
We have strict statutes and most biting laws,
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong
Steeds, which for this fourteen years we
Have let slip, even like an overgrown lion in
A cave that goes not out to prey.
Now, as fond fathers, having bound up the
Threatening twigs of birch only to
Stick it in their children's sight for terror,
Not to use, in time the rod becomes more
Mocked than feared, so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead,
And liberty plucks justice by the nose;
The baby beats the nurse,
And quite athwart goes all decorum.
Donald Rumsfeld:
Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.
To kill, I grant, is sin's extremest gust,
But in defense, by mercy, 'tis most just.
A speedier course than lingering
Languishment must we pursue, and I have
Found the path.
Colin Powell:
Leave those remnants of fool and feather
That they got in France, with all their
Honorable points of ignorance abusing
Better men than they can be out of a foreign
Wisdom, renouncing clean the faith they
Have in tennis and tall stockings, short
Blistered breeches.
Saddam Hussein:
This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues.
Osama bin Laden:
Ungracious wretch, fit for the mountains
And the barbarous caves, where manners
Never were preached.
Kofi Annan:
Speaks an infinite deal of nothing,
More than any man in all Venice. His
Reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in
Two bushels of chaff; you shall seek all day
Ere you find them, and when you have them
They are not worth the search.
Hans Blix:
And in his brain, which is as dry as
The remainder biscuit after a voyage,
He hath strange places crammed with
Observation, the which he vents in mangled
Forms.
Tony Blair:
I will keep where there is wit stirring and
Leave the faction of fools.
Jacques Chirac:
What cracker is this same that deafs our ears
With this abundance of superfluous breath?
France:
France, thou shalt rue this hour within this hour.
Gerhard Schroeder:
This is a slight unmeritable man,
Meet to be sent on errands.
Vladimir Putin:
Is 't possible the spells of France should
Juggle men into such strange mysteries?
Bill Clinton:
This butcher's cur is venom mouthed,
And I have not the power to muzzle him.
He's a most notable coward, and infinite
And endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker,
The owner of no one good quality worthy
Your lordship's entertainment.
Hillary Clinton:
A callet of boundless tongue, who late hath
Beat her husband and now baits me.
John Kerry:
There can be no kernel in this light nut.
The soul of this man is his clothes.
Edward Kennedy:
Nettled and stung with pismires, when I hear
Of this politician.
Sean Penn:
I will show myself highly fed and lowly taught.
Martin Sheen:
For what thou professest, a baboon,
Could he speak, would own a name too dear.
Susan Sarandon:
O gull! O dolt! As ignorant as dirt!
Come, you are a tedious fool.
Mike Farrell:
The portrait of a blinking idiot.
A lunatic lean-witted fool.
Sheryl Crow:
Sir, there she stands. If aught within that
Little seeming substance . . .
New York Times:
Tedious it were to tell, and harsh to hear.
Antiwar protesters:
There are a crew of wretched souls.
Go hang yourselves all! You are idle
Shallow things.
Mothers of antiwar protesters:
As they were sons of mine, I'd have them
Whipped, or I would send them to the Turk,
To make eunuchs of.
Iraqis on Saddam:
All the commons hate him perniciously and,
O' my conscience, wish him ten fathom
Deep.
Middle America to Hollywood:
You blocks, you stones, you worse than
Senseless things!
American soldiers to Saddam Hussein:
You shall have your deliverance with an
Unpitied whipping, for you have been a
Notorious bawd.
Mr. Shakespeare was a British playwright. Thanks to reader Ken Liu for sending us this compilation of quotes. |
