In these times of crisis, the classics provide us with comfort and context:



Edited and conjecturally restored by Harold Bloom

(A play in three acts)



Preface

There can be little doubt of the historical existence of the King-Emperor Dubya the Great, who is thought to have reigned from 2001 to 2009, and to have presided over the transition from the American Plutocracy to the Oceanic Empire, which appears to have taken place in November 2004, 20 years after the date set by the prophet Orwellius.



Unfortunately, only a few fragments of the manuscript of Dubya the Great (also known as Macbush) have been recovered. They were found during the Times of Troubles, which followed the fall of the Oceanic Empire. The Great Bank Crisis preceded the Rebellion of the Serfs, and the Second Civil War resulted in extensive carnage and looting. After the sacking of the Wyoming states of the descendants of Richard Duke of Helliburton (protagonist and hero-villain of Dubya the Great), various bits of the text were discovered as wrappings on spare brandy snifters, some two dozen in numbers.



In editing these foul papers, rent by broken glass, I have been compelled to undertake the dubious labor of conjectural emendation, which rarely evokes universal scholarly assessment. However, I have been aided by my shrewd surmise that the dramatist who composed Dubya the Great was Richard Wharfinger, author of “The Courier’s Tragedy,” preserved for us in a full plot summary, with extracts, by T. Pynchon in “The Crying of Lot 49,” pp. 64-75.



Much of the fragmentary Dubya the Great seems to be plagiarized from Shakespeare, particularly from the high tragedy of Macbeth. Wharfinger, as was his wont, also pilfered from Shakespeare’s forerunner Christopher Marlowe. The character of Richard Duke of Helliburton is indebted to Barabas, hero-villain of Marlowe’s “The Jew of Malta,” while Dubya the Great is quarried mostly from Macbeth and from Tamburlaine in Marlow’s “Tamburlaine the Great.”

Thought little aesthetic merit can be ascribed to Dubya the Great, it may survive as a historical curiosity, quaint indeed in our present age of the orderly reign of King Jeb the Fifth, who presided over the full Restoration of the House of Bush.



Wharfinger was a rather bloody-minded dramatist, who preferred the gory Titus Andronicus, Troilus and Cressida, and Macbeth to Shakespeare’s more refined dramas. This Wharfinger taste was reinforced by the brutalities of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, as reflected in Dubya the Great’s war leadership, and by the Machiavellian bloodlust of Barabas, a strong strain in Richard Duke of Helliburton and in Rummy Baron Bechtoll and his henchman Wolfie.



Dramatis Personae

(Wharfinger’s listing, but only some of these manifest in the three fragments that have been preserved.)

Dubya the Great

The King Father

Richard Duke of Helliburton

Rummy Baron Bechtoll

Lord Colin of Powell

Baron Ashplant

Baron Rover

Grand Duke of Bakerhut

Prince Jeb of Veneria

Sir Will Slick the Usurper



Sodom Hussy, Emperor of Babylon



The Cabal, or the Seven Deadly Virtues:

Wolfie the Leader

Pearl-of-Great-Price

Will Crystal

Faith

Kaghan

Elyot

Gingy Newt



The Queen-Empress

The Queen Mother

Lady Slick

Lady Leezza of Stanford



(The three surviving scenes are Act.I, Scene I; Act II, Scene 3; Act III, Scene 5. All are set in Washington, D.C.)



Act I, Scene 1



(A secret hideaway of Richard Duke of Helliburton. Enter unto him Rummy Baron Bechtoll and Wolfie.



Helliburton: And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice,

Is it profane that an empire can rise without His aid?



Bechtoll: Jesus and big battalions rise together

As even Wolfie avers.



Wolfie: American Jesus is a Republican.

That is the Gospel according to Saint Leo.



Helliburton: To business then. Babylon’s oil must be ours.

The Persian Gulf is ours to get and keep.

What says your Office of Special Plans?



Bechtoll: Let Wolfie speak for the Cabal.



Wolfie: Many will talk of title to a crown:

What right had Caesar to the empery?

Might first made kings, and laws are most sure

When at full moon they are writ in blood.

And let us smile to see how full our bags are crammed.



Helliburton: And thus methinks should Helliburton frame

My means of traffic from warlike trade

And as my wealth increaseth, so inclose

Infinite riches in this little room.



Bechtoll: Here commeth our fullmooners now.



Enter pell-mell, to stand alongside Wolfie, the six other Deadly Virtues. With Wolfie giving them the beat, they chant in unison:



Cabal: We weird brothers, hand in hand,

Mooners of the Sea and Land,

Thus do plot, around, about,

Seven to thine, and thine to seven,

Seven again, for G.O.P. heaven,

Oil and power neath every Bush

Our charm’s wound up, and we rush,

Old Sodom Hussy to crush, to crush—



Helliburton: But stay, weird fullmooner-neos,

Loyal Straussians of Saint Leo’s.

Old Europe balks at our crusade,

Their outcries flow in full cascade.

What can we urge as truth,

What tales present as perfect sooth?



Bechtoll: Old Europe’s done, and must pall.

Our empire shall engross them all.



Wolfie: W.M.D.’s in Babylon abound,

Vats of Plague shall e’er be found,

Catapults of Greek Fire;

Assassins of the Base aspire

To bring our Towers of Hermes down,

And burn New York into Troy Town.



Helliburton: These suffice, and so I urge

Us forward in no shallow surge.

Summon King Dubya to hear our case

To crusade forth against the Base!



(“The Base” is Wharfinger’s translation of the Arabic al-Qaeda. The remainder of Act I is lost, beyond even conjectural restoration.)



Act II, Scene 3



Dubya: Now crouch, ye triple kingdoms of the world

For shock and awe shall rain upon your battlements

As my pathetical persuasion strikes at your pleasure.

Know ye not that I, Dubya, have come out of Crawford

To bring you hot blessings of New World order?

All of earth shall melt into my Oceania,

Making it safe for democracy and commerce.

And all shall know that I am Dubya,

Emperor of the globe, who shall fix my banners

Upon the high towers of Babylon, and cage the impostor assassin,

Who plotted murder of my dear Poppy,

For which I shall pen Sodom Hussy in a spider hole

Where he may bat his brains out against the earth

And grace my triumph.



Helliburton: We’ll dance our masque as if it were the truth,

Since we are sworn to perpetual vendetta

Against the Base and the Democrats, and on all else who doubt

Our zeal, we’ll bring down fell and soulless doom

Unutterable…



Bectholl: Their base lies we rewrite into truth,

Our Truth. Who is not with us,

Here or in Old Europe,

Is against us. Only Helliburton and Bechtoll

Shall rebuild Babylon.



Leezza: Who dare doubt us? Only those

That wish the smoking gun to be a Plague cloud.



Rover: The sage Mencken counseled:

Fool all the people all the time.



Wolfie: Boobus americanus, as the sage so dubbed him,

And we must save him from himself.



Helliburton: Our creed’s National Security, our state

Knows every grain of Pluto’s gold.



Ashplant: A watchful state keeps place with forethought,

And, like God, unveils all thoughts in their dumb cradles.

There is a mystery in the soul of state,

Which has an operation more divine

Than the foolish press can know and publish.

What’s theirs is first ours

And ever must remain so.



Rover: Well spoke, Baron! Oceania thrives

On Doublethink and Doublespeak.

We soak the poor, enrich the rich,

And say that all who murmur profess class warfare.



Wolfie: Our gallant regions fester here

At home in neighborhoods so bleak

But thrive abroad in Babylon.

Yes, they’re the ones of which we speak.



Bechtoll: Our brave Franks (well he deserves that name),

Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish’d steel,

Which smok’d with bloody execution,

(Like Valor’s minion) carved out his passage

Till we faced the slaves

And unseamed them from the nave to the chops,

And fixed their heads upon their battlements.



Helliburton: Rummy, you engorge your soul,

Even as the oil-rich Gulf enlarges our cofers.



Dubya: Let the Cabal chant!



The Seven Deadly Virtues, to Wolfie’s beat, conclude the scene with a dance, as they recite:



Cabal: All hail Dubya! All hail Macbush,

Thane of Crawford, Thief of Baghdad,

King-Emperor of Oceania!

Saw we weird brothers, hand in hand,

Boasters of the Sea and Land—

A billion Muslims, on their sands,

Shall rue the drives of Dubya’s bands.



(The rest has been lost.)



Act III, Scene 5



Dubya in conclave with Helliburton, Bechtoll, and Leezza. Wolfie enters.



Wolfie: O royal imp of fame,

Sodom Hussy is taken!



Dubya: Mission accomplished!



Helliburton: We must not heed all those who scoff

At the W.M.D.’s we have not found,

Or at his missing links to the Base.



Bechtoll: Look round the wicked streets of Babylon,

And when we find the murderers, we’ll stab ‘em,

For all who have served Sodom Hussy are murderers.



Wolfie: For a time they will stab back,

But our force is copious and can endure loss.

Pre-emption is imperial policy

And will mark Oceania as Dubya’s forever.



Leezza: We have stovepiped Dubya to his glory!



Dubya: Summon the Cabal to proclaim my empire!



The cabal enters, and chants in unison to Wolfie’s beat, as they dance:



Cabal: Eye of Newt, and toe of frog,

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,

Adder’s fork, and blindworm’s sting,

Lizzard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,

For Dubya’s charm of power and trouble,

A hellbroth of war and bubble.



Hellibruton: O, well done! I commend your pains!

And everyone shall share our gains!



All onstage proclaim Dubya the Great as Emperor of Oceania.



Dubya: Scourge of kingdoms with my conquering sword,

Yet I shall bring universal peace upon the globe,

Unipolar, as I confront the axis of evil.