I'm home, I'm better (somewhat). I have pushed my body again through time and space and I'm here and I owe several blogs but I have homework to do first, for the screenwriting course I'm taking. Anon, anon.
I'll offer a treat, a gift from the friend who was unable to come with me on the theatre tour. But when he who shall not be named banned Musllim immigrants from the U.S., she sent me the enclosed speech by Shakespeare. I was not familiar with it. I think you will be moved by it as I was/am.
The link below is to a 5 minute video of Ian McKellen's remarkable performance of Shakespeare's lines (text also below) from the Elizabethan play The Booke of Sir Thomas More. Seems a good time to listen to this 400 year old poetry (and McKellan's commentary) in defense of immigrants and refugees in light of last week's executive orders cracking down on immigrants and refugees.
Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.
You’ll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in line
To slip him like a hound.
Alas, alas! Say now the king
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whether would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbour? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? this is the strangers case;
And this your mountainish inhumanity.