Wednesday 27th of November 2024
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shakespeare’s republic............

A scene from Charles II with a small dose of Robert Urbanoski

 

CHARLES II

For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings:

How some have been depos’d, some slain in war, 

Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, 

Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping kill’d, 

All murthered—for within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king 

Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits, 

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, 

Allowing him a breath, a little scene,

To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks;

Infusing him with self and vain conceit 

As if this flesh which walls about our life 

Were brass impregnable; and, humour’d thus

Comes at the last, and with a little pin 

Bores thorough his castle wall, and farewell king!

 

Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood 

With solemn reverence; throw away respect,

Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty; 

For you have but mistook me all this while. 

I live with bread like you, feel want, 

Taste grief, need friends—subjected thus,

 

How can you say to me, I am a king?

 

LIZ II

Yes, how can you say to me, I am a queen?

Now in a platinum jubilee for which I did nothing,

But read the same letter to Santa every Christmas

For peace and prosperity in the message

As if my subjects expected without my thing,

A war, pestilence and dead flies in their potage.

I weep for joy, needs must I like it in my castles:

To stand upon this kingdom for which I fare.

Unlike that red-headed queen who fought battles

I did nothing, nothing, nothing but being there….

To breed a family of half-loonies and sex maniacs

A daughter, three sons, one of whom is a greenie.

And with royal red cloth, we kept our tailor busy

To look the part with medals galore like lady Mac

That have no meaning but moments of shady glory.

 

BISHOP OF CANTERBURY

Fear not, my lady: that Power that made you queen

Hath power to keep you here in spite of all.

The means that heaven yields must be embraced,

And not neglected; else, if heaven would,

And we will not, heaven's offer we refuse,

The proffer'd means of a new Republic be.

 

LIZ II

No matter what —of comfort no woman speak:

Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;

Make dust our wager, and with rainy eyes

Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth;

Let’s choose executors and talk of wills.

And yet not so—for what can we bequeath

But our family of weirdoes and our wealth,

invested in the Bahamas, the Caiman Islands

And some in the City of London tax haven

And our enormous collection of past hats

Save our deposed bodies to the ground

While our soul via the Styx go to Heaven.

The end of the kingdom is near its last bats

As subjects want to be people of a Republic.

 

Our lands, our lives, and all are in the family quest,

And nothing can we call our own but death;

And that small model of the barren earth

Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.

 

We had our disasters when our castle being restored

Burned down, fiercely destroying its priceless lore

And Princess Diana nearly brought our crown ashore

Making me look like a bitch for not doing her eulogy.

 

DUKE OF AMERICA

We mean, my lady, that we are too remiss;

Whilst Southern FreeSpirit, despite our security,

Grows strong and great in republican array

that won’t kill you but hope you’ll fade away.

 

KING RICHARD II

Discomfortable cousin! know'st thou not

That when the searching eye of heaven is hid,

Behind the globe, that lights the lower world,

Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen

In murders and in outrage, boldly here;

But when from under this terrestrial ball

He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines

And darts his light through every guilty hole,

Then murders, treasons and detested sins,

The cloak of night being pluck'd from off their backs,

Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves?

So when Cromwell, this traitor, Republic,

Who all this while hath revell'd in the night

Whilst we were wandering with the antipodes,

Shall see us rising in our throne, the east,

His treasons will sit blushing in his face,

Not able to endure the sight of day,

But self-affrighted tremble at his sin.

Not all the water in the rough rude sea

Can wash the balm off from this anointed queen;

The Republic of worldly men cannot depose

The deputy elected by the Lord….

 

WE, THE PEOPLE:

Oh yes, with our republican spirit, we can…

Dear earth, We do salute thee with our hands,

Though nature is wounded by royal hoofs:

As a long-parted mother with her child

Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting,

So, weeping, smiling, greet we thee, our earth,

And do thee favours to our republican hands.

 

 

 

—————————————-

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republican spleen.....

 

BY Binoy Kampmark

 

The platinum jubilee will bore and cause some to yawn. It might certainly agitate the republican spleen in the fourteen countries where Queen Elizabeth II remains a constitutional head of state. But the question remains: How does the institution this figure represents endure, if it should at all?

A rash of countries have expressed an interest in severing ties with the monarchy. In November last year, Barbados did so with some pomp, swearing in its first president, Sandra Mason, a former governor general. “Today,” Mason proclaimed, “debate and discourse have become action.”

Through 2022, the royals made visits to the Caribbean that showed waning enthusiasm for the Windsors. In Belize and Jamaica, local protesters gathered to call for a formal apology for their family’s role in encouraging that other institution, slavery. A government committee in the Bahamas did not mince its words in calling upon the royals to issue “a full and formal apology for their crimes against humanity”.

The Jamaican Advocates Network was deeply unimpressed by the visit of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge, publishing a scathing open letter signed by a hundred people from doctors to religious leaders. “We see no reason to celebrate 70 years of the ascension of your grandmother to the British throne because her leadership, and that of her predecessors, have perpetuated the greatest human rights tragedy in the history of humankind.”

The March tour by the royal couple also proved something of a public relations disaster, poor in terms of what political commentators call “the optics”. During a visit to Trench Town in Jamaica, Kate and William were photographed shaking hands with children through wire fences, the pale hands of saviours making contact with black skin.

The couple then rode the same Land Rover used by the Queen and Prince Philip during their 1953 trip to Jamaica. During a military parade, they stood in the open-top vehicle waving to spectators, spectacularly ignorant to the scene. “These unfortunate images are a relic of the past and could have been taken in the 1800s,” came the scornful suggestion from civil rights campaigner Rosalea Hamilton.

In countries such as Canada and Australia, the monarchy has been battered by occasional republican waves without enduring consequence. An Angus Reid survey published in December 2021 found that 52 percent of respondents thought that Canada should not remain a constitutional monarchy indefinitely, though a quarter did.

In Australia, the new Labor government has expressed interest in revisiting the question of becoming a republic, though it is by no means certain how far they will go. Memories still remain of 1999, when the issue was put to a referendum. The republican movement, self-sabotaging and outmanoeuvred, suffered a stunning defeat.

The party’s 2021 national platform did stump its support for the idea and promised to “work toward establishing an Australian republic with an Australian head of state”. Speaking on the occasion of the jubilee, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, while paying tribute to the Queen’s “remarkable seven decades on the throne” noted that the relationship between colonial power and former colony had altered. “No longer parent and young upstart, we stand as equals.”

One source of potential republican inspiration concerns the issue of succession. Durable, seemingly deathless Queen Liz is popular; the next in line, is not. According to the latest YouGov poll, Prince Charles is the sixth most popular, behind Princes Anne and the Duchess of Cambridge. Popularity measures are also generational, with millennials coming in at 40 percent; Gen X, at 57 percent; and Baby Boomers, at 62 percent. Even ardent royalists struggle to find appeal in the idea of Charles III.

Walter Bagehot, in his 1867 work The English Constitution, put much stock in two ruling concepts: the “efficiency” component comprising responsible government and statecraft and the “dignified” part to encourage homage. The latter was “one to excite and preserve the reverence of the population”, the former, “to employ that homage in the work of government”. With a popular monarch, such matters are easier to reconcile. With a real boob on the throne, things can sour.

Under the Queen’s rule, the institution has absorbed the punches and blows of scandal and threat. Anti-royalist sentiment in Britain has failed to become an indignant stampede of constitutional reform. With the death of Princess Diana in 1997, the Windsors seemed to have reached their lowest point. Scottish academic Tom Nairn, on looking at the throng of mourners in the Mall, saw the “auguries of a coming time” when the United Kingdom would be rid of those “mouldering waxworks” in Buckingham Palace. “England is due a future – one that can smartly exorcise the ghosts of Balmoral and Windsor.”

No exorcism came, and republicans have been left twiddling. This has not stopped the anti-monarchist group Republic from launching its “Not Another 70” campaign. “While a vocal minority will want to celebrate the queen’s seventy year reign,” stated the organisation’s chief executive officer Graham Smith, “we must all start looking to the future. The prospect of King Charles is not a happy one, and there is a good, democratic alternative on offer.”

As celebrations were underway, Smith was full of figures on how many people would be celebrating the occasion. “The polling is quite clear on this, only 14 percent said they were planning to do anything and 11 percent in another poll said they were very interested in it.” Less convincingly, he drew upon figures that showed a fall in the monarchy’s approval ratings from 75 percent to 60 percent, with one poll showing an approval for abolition “up to 27 percent.”

These views, when aired on BBC Breakfast, did not convince the anchor, Roger Johnson. “Why do you not think [the monarchy] is a good idea? The soft power the Monarchy projects, the tourism that [it] attracts in this country? You know the argument.”

The soft power concept, Smith shot back, was “a nebulous and meaningless argument.” The constitution, he argued, should be based “on principles like democracy, not on what people enjoy doing on their holidays.”

Unfortunately for Smith, pageantry and entertainment comes before ideology and political purpose, and when a festival on this scale is organised, entertainment takes precedence. Those keen to raise constitutional questions can come across as prigs. In that sense, the organising machine of Buckingham Palace has been very canny indeed.

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/platinum-jubilees-and-republican-questions/

 

SEE ALSO:

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/26787

 

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jubilee jubilations...

The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, Stateside 

For once it’s the Brits putting on a genuine heartfelt and spectacular show of solidarity. 

 

 

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Give the iPhone back to the kid......

 

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from giles....

 

I could not resist publishing this OLD (1988) cartoon from Giles... There's hope for all of us....

 

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