A little Shakespeare to go with the war

A memorial of an American military KIA from the war is show with a picture of the deceased.

Enter pall bearers caring American Flag draped casket, crying widow, crying parents, uncomprehending child, a bugler, color guard, honor guard, a minister, and General Patton.

The flag is run up the pole quickly and the summons to arms is played. As this happens the casket sinks into the ground slowly.

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of Iraq? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Desert Storm?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of tanks and aircraft, that you see them
Printing their proud tracks i' the receiving earth and blazing white trails through the filament of sky;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

Both ELY and Canterbury are wearing business suits with logos on the back. ELY logo says National Security Advisor to the President. Canterbury says Director of the Central Intelligence agency with a CIA Logo.

SCENE I. CIA headquarters Langley Virginia.

My lord, I'll tell you; that self bill is urged,
Which in the eleventh year of the last king's reign
Was like, and had indeed against us pass'd,
But that the scambling and unquiet time
Did push it out of farther question.

It must be thought on. If it pass against us,
We lose the better half of our possession:
For all the temporal lands which men devout
By testament have given to the church
Would they strip from us; being valued thus:
As much as would maintain, to the king's honour,
Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,
Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;
And, to relief of lazars and weak age,
Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil.
A hundred almshouses right well supplied;
And to the coffers of the king beside,
A thousand pounds by the year: thus runs the bill.

The courses of his youth promised it not.
The breath no sooner his father's presidency began,
But that his wildness, mortified in him,
Seem'd to die too; yea, at that very moment
Consideration, like an angel, came
And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him,
Leaving his body as a paradise,
To envelop and contain celestial spirits.
Never was such a sudden scholar made;
Never came reformation in a flood,
With such a heady currance, scouring faults
Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness
So soon did lose his seat and all at once
As in this king.

Hear him but reason in divinity,
And all-admiring with an inward wish
You would desire the king were made a prelate:
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
You would say it hath been all in all his study:
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle render'd you in music:
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences;
So that the art and practic part of life
Must be the mistress to this theoric:
Which is a wonder how his grace should glean it,
Since his addiction was to courses vain,
His companies unletter'd, rude and shallow,
His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports,
And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality:
And so the prince obscured his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.

It must be so; for miracles are ceased;
And therefore we must needs admit the means
How things are perfected.

But, my good lord,
How now for mitigation of this bill
Urged by the congress? Doth his majesty
Incline to it, or no?

He seems indifferent,
Or rather swaying more upon our part
Than cherishing the exhibiters against us;
For I have made an offer to his majesty,
Upon our spiritual convocation
And in regard of causes now in hand,
Which I have open'd to his grace at large,
As touching Iraq, to give a greater sum
Than ever at one time the clergy yet
Did to his predecessors part withal.

With good acceptance of his majesty;
Save that there was not time enough to hear,
As I perceived his grace would fain have done,
The severals and unhidden passages
Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms
And generally to the crown and seat of Iraq
Derived from Edward, his great-grandfather.

The Iraqi ambassador upon that instant
Craved audience; and the hour, I think, is come
To give him hearing: is it four o'clock?

Then go we in, to know his embassy;
Which I could with a ready guess declare,
Before the Iraqi speak a word of it.

Oh thus be it e'er when free men shall stand Between their lov'd homes and war's desolation! Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n rescued land Praise the Pow'r that has made and presrv'd us a nation And conquer we must when our cause is just And this be our motto: "In God is our trust." And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

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