"They failed because they did not start with a dream": Shakespeare?

Did Shakespeare write that line?  Well, yes and no.  According to The Telegraph, the French socialist candidate for the presidency, François Hollande, thinks so because he quoted it in a major speech a few days ago and attributed it to William Shakespeare.  Unfortunately, but perhaps typically of politicians everywhere, it was the wrong Shakespeare.  The words were actually coined by the Telegraph's book reviewer, Nicholas Shakespeare, in a novel he once wrote.  Sorry, François, only 'E' pour un effort!

However, buffoon though he might be, M. Hollande deserves to be watched.  The savants reckon he is a dead cert to be the next president and according to a BBC radio news item I heard last night, he is promising not just to make waves inside the EU but to blow up a full scale tsunami.  Yes, yes, of course these pols always blow hot and hard when they are electioneering but if he only tries to impose half of what he is promising there will be European tears before bedtime.  His prime target, naturally given that he is a socialist, is the financial industry and that means, in French terms, the City of London.  Where Sarkozy merely muttered, this man intends to push hard and ruthlessly to achieve his aim.  Internally, apparently, he means to go for full red-blooded socialism with the retirement age cut and increased government spending across the board on all the items to be found on a socialist 'wish-list'.

Personally, I wish him well and hope he romps home with a massive majority, so massive, in fact, that he feels absolutely confident of pushing through all his 'Mad Marx' ideas, because then, with a bit of luck and a following wind, 'Dim Dave' will wake up to the fact that the whole European edifice is rotten to the core and bad for Britain.  Then he might, although I wouldn't hold my breath, actually do something about it.

 

Comments

[dearieme]

"They failed because they did not start with a dream" is so obviously not by the bard that I must decline to vote for the twerp.

[David Duff]

Quite right, DM. It is a thought which WS would almost certainly have expressed in verse and the line does not scan. To be fair, I wouldn't do any better trying to quote Baudelaire!