Is this a dagger she sees before her? Voters certainly seem to think so.
A poll to mark the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death found that Hillary Clinton is the person they most identify with the murderous, power-mad Lady Macbeth.
23% of those polled by UK firm YouGov say Hillary is the modern-day equivalent of The Bard’s heartless creation, who famously scorns “the milk of human kindness”, swears she’d kill a baby to get her own way, and eventually goes mad.
See any resemblance? Here’s her asking demons to strip away her conscience:
…fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief!
Her advice on public image:
Look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under’t
And her approach to transparency:
What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?
Meanwhile the same survey found that Donald Trump was most like King Lear – a conceited old man whose inflated ego leads him and his kingdom to disaster.
In the play’s most famous scene Lear goes out virtually naked in a raging storm and shouts down the elements.
Thanks to a certain painting of The Donald it isn’t so hard to imagine him in a similar position.