literature

The Strangers Case

Anyone who has not experienced the genius of Shakespeare knows not what they are missing. Here, in a speech from the unfinished play Sir Thomas More, Shakespeare again demonstrates his brilliance.

On May 1, 1517 — now referred to as Evil May Day — riots broke out in London as a response to an influx of immigrant workers. This play, written some eighty years later and attributed to Shakespeare, was never performed, likely due to censorship, yet could not be more appropriate for the age in which we find ourselves.

My point is to underscore the fact that the overwhelming majority of those who’ve entered the country unlawfully are human beings that have done nothing more than seek a better life for themselves and their families. Yes they’ve committed a crime but, given the same challenges they face in their native countries—desperation, violence, starvation, torture, death—who wouldn’t break a minor law if it saved your life or the lives of those you love?

We are using them as pawns in the game of politics and overlooking their humanity in the pursuit of justice that bears little resemblance to the ideals of American exceptionalism.

We are better than this. We can find a way to protect our borders, enforce our laws, and preserve our humanity. They are not mutually exclusive. But we need to remind ourselves what is the most important part of that. And if you don’t believe it is preserving our humanity, we are in grave trouble.

And if you want to experience the full power of this speech, search Ian McClellan’s off the cuff performance on Stephen Colbert’s show.

However you experience it you have to be touched by its powerful message.


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 agèd 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.
[…]
Say now the king,
As he is clement if th’offender mourn,
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, anywhere 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 elements
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.

“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?”
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1

Once again, we face the changing of the numbers, assigning an artificial appellation to the passage of time.

2026. Two thousand and twenty-six years marking the passage of time, for the US-European centric world at least, since an event that may or may not have occurred in an obscure town, in a distant area of the Roman Empire, in a time before mass communication or widespread literacy.

Yet here we are adjusting all our calendars to show the change to this new 365-day cycle.

Depending on the number you use, some 80-90 generations have been born since the start of the Common Era (C.E., formerly known as Anno Domini, Year of our Lord, when the church ruled the world), with most, but the last 4 or 5, long since deceased.

Now my generation, born in the 1950s, passes into another stage of life. Since our arrival, three more generations have arrived, and we are hurtling towards what will likely be the last arrival of a generation in our lifetime.

And that is the way of the universe.

We are made of the atoms forged in the nuclear fires of the first stars and will, in our time, return to that form. We, all of us and the things we are made of, have existed for billions of years and will continue to exist long after this current form disintegrates.

This is nothing to fear, nothing to dread. Not that one should look forward to it. There are so many things to experience in this life before it returns us to our original form. But it is an inevitability we all share.

These numbers are meaningless when seen against the timelessness of the universe. Most of us live to about 80 to 100 years, and that should be enough if one remembers to “always look on the bright side of life,” as Monty Python put it.

Shakespeare, of course, found a way to define the human lifespan. A bitter-sweet telling of the seven stages of man.

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything
— William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII

Since much of my time is (joyfully) occupied by entertaining two energetic members of the latest generation, I’ve morphed into the childishness of the last stage but still hold fast to my teeth, my eyes, my taste, and everything else this life offers.

I came into this world amazed at the wonder of it all and will leave, in my time (decades from now, I hope), with the same sense of wonder. If you think about it, getting to journey among the stars and galaxies of this universe has an attraction to it. To return to be among everything that came before us and all that will follow seems fitting.

A reward for a life well lived.

Happy New Year, and however many years you get to number, may they all be filled with a sense of wonder.

See you in the stars.

Joe Broadmeadow
July 25, 1956-TBD