WS et al: the UK and the EU!

             With compliments to 'Israel Today' newspaper.

In my last blog I wrote that this one would be all about Beatrice and Benedick. I was wrong. Since then, during the past 24 hours, the Great British public have decided in their wisdom to cut the ties with the EU and go it alone. And if you think that our William and his literary friends didn't have anything to say about this, You are wrong! Very wrong in fact. 
So let's go.

I am absolutely convinced that the man who wrote:
O noble English, that could entertain
With half their forces the full pride of France... (Henry V, I.ii)
and
England is safe if true within itself.   (3Henry VI, IV.ii) 
and 
This England never did, nor ever shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror.  (King John, V.vii)

would, had be been alive today, would have kissed his wife goodbye last Thursaday, patted his three little kids on the head and taken himself off to the local polling booth at the junction of Henley St. and Rother Market. There he would have voted 'Brexit,' that England sever its connections with the "vasty fields of France" and the rest of those continental foreigners, now and forever!

And as he would have strolled past the half-timbered Tudor houses of Henley Street no doubt he would have thought "upon one pair of English legs Did march three Frenchmen. Yet forgive me, God, That I do brag thus" ((Henry V, III.vi) or " O England! model to thy inward greatness, Like little body with a great heart...' (Henry V. Prologue II).

Shakespeare's Birthplace, Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon

And as he was thinking about his England, his "precious stone set in the silver sea" (Richard II, II,i) perhaps he would have hoped that his thoughts would echo through the future and inspire others such as William Blake who was to write some 350 years later, "And did those feet in ancient time/ Walk upon England's mountains green?" while over one hundred years after that, Rudyard Kipling would write that "Our England is a garden."

Robert Browning, Blake's (almost ) contemporary would also probably have voted for 'Brexit.' After all, hadn't he written,
Oh, to be in England/ Now that April's there [?] (OK, he got the date wrong but his heart was in the right place.)  Fifty years later, Shakespeare and Browning's thoughts were repeated by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch who in his 'Ode upon Ecklington Bridge' wrote, 

O pastoral heart of England! like a psalm
Of green days telling with a quiet beat.

But to be honest, not everyone in the world of words was pro-English. In 1633, George Herbert in 'The Church Porch' had castigated his country:

O England full of sin, but most of sloth;
Spit out thy phlegm, and fill thy breast with glory...

                                        George Herbert (1593-1633)

but then Herbert of course was a pessimistic clergyman on the verge of death as well as a poet and looked upon the reign and times of King Charles I with a somewhat jaundiced eye.

Naturally the two Frenchmen mentioned here (actually, one of them was born in Corsica) were anti-England and no doubt would have been very happy to see the back of Shakespeare's 'scepter'd isle.'  In 1816, Jacques-Benigne Bossuet somewhat not benignly described England as 'la perfide Angleterre' while his contemporary Napoleon described his enemy as une nation de boutiquiers (shopkeepers).

Napoleon pondering about WS and the EU

Bossuet (right) condemning 'peridious Albion'

And later on, during our lifetime, the novelist, Margaret Drabble in A Natural Curiosity, 1989, seemed to echo Bossuet and Napoleon's thoughts when she described England thus:

England's not a bad country...it's just a mean, cold, ugly divided, tired, clapped-out, post-imperial, post-industrial slag-heap covered in polystyrene hamburger cartons.

                                        Margaret Drabble

But maybe (I hope) she was just criticising 'this green and pleasant land' in a way to show how England could be improved. However, none of the anti-England sentiments recorded above were as threatening as the German theologian and journalist, Alfred Funke who, at the beginning of the First World War in 1914 called upon the Lord (and his country) "Gott strafe England! - God punish England!" This however did not happen, as to paraphrase the words of the English admiral, Horatio Nelson, every man in England did his duty.

The question now is, did all the millions who voted to sunder England's relations with the EU fulfill their duty correctly? Time will tell. Already there are reports of over 200,000 people who are regretting Brexit and are demanding yet another referendum. Will this happen and if so, what will be the results? I am sure that if there is a repeat performance, it will be noisier and be even more appealing to the emotions than the one that has just taken place.  And then, is England more of an idea, an abstract, rather than a real geographic entity?

But let us allow the Swan of Avon to have the last say. Because,  

if there is another referendum the RemaIN pro-EU side will have to recall the Bard's own words from Richard II. (above)

And as for me, despite our William being one of my best friends, I think that England should have remained IN the EU. However, as I have just said, time will tell.

For comments, write to me on Facebook or: wsdavidyoung@gmail.com or to my website: 
dly-books.weebly.com 

Nest time I plan to continue with Beatrice and Benedick