Thoughts on Canada Prompted by the Titles of the Plays of William Shakespeare

John Robert Colombo
unpublished

The titles of plays written by William Shakespeare shed an interesting light on the subject of Canada.
    Measure for Measure, the United Nations considers Canada to be the best country in which to live.
    "Just how cold is the country?" people ask, recalling The Winter's Tale.
    The land is vast—fields and plains, woods and wilderness, taiga and tundra—so Canadians have summer cottages where they can enjoy A Midsummer Night's Dream.
    Political correctness is so powerful in society that no theatre group will perform The Merchant of Venice or The Rape of Lucrece.
    Canadians are a hard-working people from many lands. They are not great beauties. You will look long and hard for a Venus and Adonis among them.
    In Alberta, they say, with respect to proven reserves of oil, All's Well that Ends Well.
    Provincial politics in this country is really Much Ado about Nothing.
    Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard has a list of grievances longer than his left arm and a list of humiliations longer than his right arm. He stalks the National Assembly in Quebec City like another King Lear.
    Federal politics is more often than not The Comedy of Errors.
    Canadians prefer living in Canada to living in the United States because almost everything here is As You Like It.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

John Robert Colombo's works copyright © to the author.