The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 25.025 Tuesday, 14 January 2014
From: Hardy M. Cook <
Date: Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Subject: Christie and Richard II
[Editor’s Note: This excerpt is from the LA Times. –Hardy]
latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-garson-christie-bridge-shakespeare-20140113,0,3483569.story
Op-Ed
Chris Christie, by Shakespeare
There's a bit of 'Richard II' in the New Jersey governor's bridge scandal.
By Barbara Garson
January 13, 2014
If Chris Christie’s insistence that he didn’t order his aides to snarl traffic on the George Washington Bridge sounds familiar, it should. Think Shakespeare. More specifically, think “Richard II.”
Reading the emails sent by Christie’s aides and appointees, I couldn’t help but think about the scene in which Sir Pierce of Exton has a conversation with an unnamed servant. They’ve both heard King Henry IV express what sounds like a wish to have the imprisoned former king, Richard, executed.
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We don’t yet know who exactly ordered what in the New Jersey bridge scandal, of course. But just imagine that exchange between Exton and his servant as having been spoken in a New Jersey accent, with Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s deputy chief of staff, as Exton, and Port Authority official David Wildstein as the servant. For the king at Pomfret (the former King Richard), substitute Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich and the passage starts seeming positively contemporary.
Shakespeare makes it clear that the plotters are acting to fulfill what they believe to be the king’s wish as they murder his last remaining enemy. Shakespeare also makes it clear that King Henry never explicitly commanded the deed.
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