Readers may recall that My Beautiful and Talented Wife (The BTW) is a professional actor who tends to think of the world in theater terms. As I continued to describe the events of the past few weeks to her, she kept saying that it reminded her of the plot of something by William Shakespeare (or Game of Thrones on HBO, but that’s a different post).
The question was which of Shakespeare’s plays was most appropriate.
As this article by renowned University of Texas Professor Jamie Galbraith indicates, Much Ado About Nothing might be right. Given the fact that most of the action took place in July and August and a week or so later and is still hard to imagine, A Midsummer Night’s Dream might be correct. The Tempest is an obvious choice. And The Comedy of Errors is just too good to pass up without further consideration.
But the more I think about it, the more The Taming of The Boehner might be the best of all. In Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio, husband of Kathrine, takes the challenge of taming his wife. That’s what happened to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). In spite of his continual protestations to the contrary, it was tea party caucus who tamed Boehner and got him to go along with what it wanted rather than the other way around.
There are obviously other Shakespearean possibilities here and all comments much appreciated and graciously accepted. What we don’t really know yet is whether this will end up being a tragedy, a comedy, or just a history.
(For those not familiar with The Taming of the Shrew, check out this episode of Moonlighting titled “Atomic Shakespeare.” Not only is it incredibly fun to wtch—Bruce Willis as Petruchio, Cybill Shepherd as Katherine—at time it aired it supposedly was one of the most expensive one-hours produced in television history.)
[Cross-posted at Capital Gains & Games]
