It’s hard to believe, four centuries after Shakespeare, that the fear of being unmanned is still so potent that it could wreck a country. But it is. And it has. Donald Trump’s warped view of masculinity has warped the US’s response to a deadly pandemic. And Trump doesn’t even have a diabolical Lady MacTrump whispering in his ear, goading him about being a man. He goads himself, fuelled by ghostly memories of his autocratic father.
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Even Trump’s allies are baffled about why he can’t fake a sense of compassion and competency. He has made enough cheesy movie cameos even one hawking cheese-stuffed Pizza Hut crust – that he should know how to pretend to be halfway human.
The plot of Macbeth was already re-enacted to perfection (even if unintentionally so) by Kennedy and Johnson, as highlighted by Barbara Garson's satire Macbird. The similarities have always been astonishing to me.