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WPCNR NEWS & COMMENT. By William Shakespeare. March 13, 2021:

(Editor’s Note:

The character of our State Senators, Assemblypersons, congress members and Senators is revealing what they really are like in ways they are unaware.

 The positions our leaders or would-be leaders of the state are taking in the wake of the unsubstantiated, not formally charged allegations against Governor Andrew Cuomo are so painfully familiar to those familiar with the greatest playwright of all time. William Shakespeare. His voice of the past describes exactly what we are seeing going on  today in two plays about power plays.

 Our guest columnist is the bard:

William Shakespeare wrote two plays Julius Caesar and Othello, portraying the demise of two powerful men, leaders, who were destroyed by persons they once ruled and were revered by– the jealousy of their once colleagues too timid to rule but jealous of their leader’s ability to rule because they wanted his power.

Just to set the scene for you, Julius Caesar was a military leader who conquered much of the Roman Empire territory. Romans revered him and he became emperor.

This angered the Roman Senate and resulted in a power backlash ending in Caesar’s assassination by his friend, Brutus on the floor of the Roman Senate on March 15, 45 B.C., 2065 years ago this coming Monday. Shakespeare wrote his play about the event before 1599 A.D. It is timely to read it.

Brutus was used by the conspiring Roman Senate, as Brutus was Caesar’s friend, and he was persuaded to kill Caesar because Caesar was accused of being ambitious by members of the Senate and Brutus became convinced assassinating Caesar was for the good of Rome. How familiar? The headline of this article is most appropriate:

“Beware the ides of March,” is a prophecy a soothsayer said to Caesar just about now before the day Caesar was stabbed and killed. Ides for those unfamiliar with latin stands for 15.

“Et tu, Brute?” was Shakespeare’s quote of Julius Caesar, after Brutus stabbed him. Let’s go to the power-play play of all time: Julius Caesar and the words of  our guest and commentator creator of this very-difficult-to-see play from the past where words describe the ambitions and arguments we hear today. The play is very difficult to read or see, as is Othello; It is obvious our “lawmakers” are unfamiliar with either play, or perhaps read the lessons all too well.)

Mark Antony: At Caesar’s funeral:

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;

The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is oft interred with their bones,

(For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all;

Honourable men)

Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral…

He was my friend, faithful and just to me:

But Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honourable man…

He hath brought many captives home to Rome,

Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:

Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honourable man.

You all did see that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And, sure, he is an honourable man.

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,

But here I am to speak what I do know.

You all did love him once, not without cause:

What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?

O judgement! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason…Bear with me;

My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,

And I must pause till it come back to me.”

Random truisms in Julius Caesar:

“In the end, it is impossible to become what others believe you are.”

“ The greatest enemy will hide in the last place you would ever look.”

“As a rule, what is out of sight disturbs men’s minds more seriously than what they see.”

“Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.”

“All bad precedents begin as justifiable measures.”

“I love the name of honor, more than I fear death.”

“What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think so.”