If you were William Shakespeare and were writing a play about the rise, intrigues, and fall of Donald Trump, would you consider it a tragedy, a comedy, or a drama? (it's no sonnet!)
Histories will be written about this year (in the future). Where does Trump fall?
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If he wins, it’s a tragedy; if he loses, it’s a drama. I can’t make it a comedy because so many people support him (although I imagine Jonathan Swift could have a satirical field day with him.)
In a related vein, I was thinking this morning how developing a detach air of amusement at the current election would be very helpful in maintaining psychological health.
A Comedy of Errors
Much Ado About Nothing
The Taming of the Shrew (D)
All’s Well that End’s Well
Trump for Prez…woot, yay, way to go!!
I’m with @ZEPHYRA here.
It’s so bizarre I have a hard time taking the whole thing seriously, but it is a tragedy for the American people, no matter how you cut it.
So far Trump’s alienated who? Women. Hispanics. Muslims. Veterans. Republicans. Democrats.
And Clinton is such a poor candidate that they’re still nearly even in the polls?
Science fiction and horror.
If I’m William Shakespeare..why would I waste my time on something like Donald Trump?
It should be satire except for one major problem. What would you have the Trump character say? How about having him say that he could get away with shooting someone in the middle of New York? Can’t use that because Trump has already said it, and nobody seems to care very much. Satire depends on exaggeration, but the things that Trump says are beyond exaggeration. I heard someone on the radio say that with regard to Trump we may be suffering from “outrage fatigue”.
It would suck – a play about a bully, thrashing though the system, cheating people along the way.
If you guys want a English Lit lesson that is quite fitting and interesting:
Marlowe was Shakespeare’s contemporary. They were both writing plays for the competing playhouses in London at the same time. Marlowe wrote a play called ‘Doctor Faustus’. Shakespeare didn’t need to write a play about an evil wanna-be dictator because Marlowe already had. Check it out. It freaked people of the time out completely, convincing people demons appeared on the stage during one of the performances.
It is a story about hubris and feigned intellect and playing with powers beyond control which ultimately corrupt you and take your soul.
@cazzie – thanks for the referral, will download it and read it tonight
side note, I might be playing Lady Capulet this fall. My first step back to performing in about 20 years, (if you don’t count the reinacting for Olavs Fest)
I know it ain’t Shakespeare, but “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” comes to mind.
@cazzie: “A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword? ”…Why do I hear sounds of Monty Python in that? Oh god. Please take it to Social!
I’d want to see how it turns out before I tackled it. But in the end I think this season will be nothing but a perverse historical blip (albeit one that we ought to take warning from).
I think Donald Trump is essentially uninteresting and would make a boring subject for a play. The real focus, in my mind, would be what he has stirred up in the populace at large and how we can expose and heal our own cultural hypocrisy. We don’t know the answer to that yet, but maybe we are now at least lancing the boil.
In “The Emperor’s New Clothes” it’s the emperor who’s fooled by flattery. Everyone can see that, but they’re afraid to say so. It’s a naive little boy who calls out the truth.
@Jeruba Well, I still think it holds because the media and so many have not, until now, called him out on his lies and racism.
None of the above, comedic and tragic as it may be. It’s a history, such as Richard II, etc.
“Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump.”
Othello Act III
Definitely a Tragi-Comedy. C’mon, Penguin, the guy is hilarious—maybe you are too close and tired of him to see it now. Orange hair and skin, bombastic, rich and ignorant—a fucking classic literary clown. He has the comedic megalomania of Chaplin’s Great Dictator. It’s all satire. His public are so morally bankrupt that it is justifiably open season on them. Rednecks and their Yankee equivalents are hilarious. The tragedy, of course, would be if he won, but even then he would become the king with no clothes. Very Shakespearean, a playwright who never missed a chance to cast a speare into the undeservingly powerful.
One guess, my literary friend: Which play was this?
I think that as a character he’s a tiresome two-dimensional self-parody of a buffoon, flat, unchanging, unaffected by events except in a twitching nerve-reflexive way. As one commentator wrote, “There is no Trump 2.0.” As a secondary character or even as comic relief he might do, in brief scenes, but not as the principal. In fact, he’s less than half as engaging as Hamlet’s gravedigger.
He doesn’t even make a decent villain; there’s not enough meat on him. I say fire him.
@Jeruba is correct. Trump is not a well written character. It’s impossible to empathize with him in the least. We have to be able to believe that the villain was redeemable at some point either during the narrative or in the past.
Trump is not even conventionally flawed. He appears to have done nothing worthwhile to make us think he’s the least bit deserving. He is a complete ass.
As a character, he is boring. Shakespeare would have never used him.
@Espiritus_Corvus You almost got it right. Here’s your sentence with my edit: “Very Shakespearean, a playwright who never missed a chance to shake a speare at the undeservingly powerful.”
In my opinion, a good pun—even a hoary one—deserves the respect of not being italicized. Emphasis detracts from the humor and implies that the audience needs to be alerted to the joke.
@Jeruba Of course, you are correct. I debated italicizing “shake” and decided to do it since @Espiritus_Corvus had italicized “speare” in his sentence. I know I sound defensive. Perhaps I am. In any event, the italics detract from the fun.
Not picking on you, though, of course, @Hawaii_Jake. I’ve just been wanting to say that to someone somewhere for years, and now that I have, maybe I can forget about it.
Anyway, I loved your comment from a theatrical perspective. Trump is the proverbial cardboard character in this misshapen drama.
He fits more easily in the pre-Shakespearean dramas, stuff I have no time for.
Commedia Del’Arte maybe? Or Moliere – Tartuffe?
I haven’t read that. I will now go hang my head in a corner.
He’s a very broadly drawn hypocrite and braggart.
Are Trump’s hands large enough to draw broadly?
@Hawaii_Jake Right. If you make a good pun, it ought to stand on its own. It doesn’t need crutches.
And while I’m at it, one more thing: what irks me even more is when someone says coyly, “Pun intended,” when they didn’t actually make a pun at all, just used the word in one of its senses or used it metaphorically.
And even worse than that is when someone makes and delivers a perfectly good, well-formed, unitalicized pun, and then somebody else explains it as if she were the only one who even caught the double meaning—as if the speaker had not made an intentional joke at all. I used to work with someone who did that all the time. She ruined half of my jests with her literal-mindedness.
There. I think that’ll hold me for now.
Sorry, oops, this question is in General. Well, I’ll let the mods swat this comment away.
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