Bill Clinton |
On January 21, 1993, the day after his first inauguration, President Clinton attended a private luncheon at Folger Shakespeare Library, becoming the first sitting president to visit the library since Herbert Hoover.
Like most modern presidents, Clinton included relatively few Shakespeare references in his speeches. One exception came as he spoke of the death of Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin some months later. "We must not harden our hearts in the face of all that has been lost," he said. "Shakespeare said it best:
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice-blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
"Let us give it, and take it."
Clinton sometimes publicly recalled a passage from Macbeth he learned in high school. In 1998, he talked about it at a White House literary evening.
When I was a boy in high school I was once required to memorize a hundred lines from Macbeth—hardly designed to entice me to a public career. [Laughter] But then again, I learned about the dangers of blind ambition—[laughter]—the fleeting nature of fame—[laughter]—the ultimate emptiness of power disconnected from higher purpose. Mr. Shakespeare made me a better president.
In his autobiography, he took the story further. As governor of Arkansas, he visited a high-school class that was studying Macbeth, and was able to recite some of the lines he had learned. It was the same speech that Ronald Reagan had delivered—and firmly disagreed with—in 1983, ending,
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Clinton, like Reagan, disliked the message of futility in Macbeth’s words. But for him, the speech was also a warning. Even though he was now a governor, he wrote, the words were “still full of power for me, a dreadful message I was always determined would not be the measure of my life.”
Library of Congress