William Shakespeare (1564-1616) (Playwright of The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet; inspiration for The Grace of Grace) acted, posthumously, as the meeting ground around which many of the creators of U.S. Constitution gathered for intellectual, compassionate debate. While Locke and Bacon and recent revolutions provided partial blueprints for an experimental democratic Republic here, it was Shakespeare’s Henry V, Henry VIII, Othello, Hamlet, and King Lear, and even his comedies, that offered common language, a multiplicity of perspectives, a poetic inclination that projected to a life beyond today, and a reasoned hope if only by a stark omission of narrative. That omission in the plays, other than in the cosmic Lear, was a healthy national government. It was perhaps this omission that John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and John Adams et al grasped as a requirement of our country’s governing framework — one of transparency, accountability, and checks and balances so that no one person or group could wield power alone. When Alexis de Tocqueville toured the U.S. in the early 19th Century, he observed barely a pilgrim’s hut absented a copy of William Shakespeare’s plays. Indeed, President Lincoln, whose adoration for Macbeth is well-publicized, paraphrased Portia from The Merchant of Venice in his written summation of his public 1862 proclamation that anticipated a national abolition of slavery: “The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it?” The plays of William Shakespeare are our country’s gathering place. Lest we forget.
