Eloy
Gold Member
- Thread starter
- #21
A 10 year-old boy (Grade 5 in USA) was arrested by a squad of police for reciting Hamlet in a street in Moscau. Video shot on a mobile phone has gone viral showing the distressed by screaming "Help me Help me!".
This is what comes from operating a police state. It is a reminder why the European Union is wary of Putin's designs on wrecking the liberal democracies.
Wow! Just wow. I don't know what to say about that. For all that might be amiss with Russian society, government, its leaders, politics, etc., I am quite surprised, incredulous even, that the "powers that be" there take exception with a child's recitation of any of The Bard's works, let alone Hamlet.
Was the boy truly arrested because Hamlet was the content he was reciting or was it for some other reason, perhaps, for example, because he was speaking in a place where nobody is permitted to stand and speak?
I suspect in D.C. were one to deliver Shakespeare from the plaza of the Forrestal building one would be ushered off the site, though I doubt one would be arrested unless one refused to leave and did so with some notable degree of force/resistance. Similarly, one isn't permitted to just "hang out" on the sidewalk in front of embassies; thus reciting Shakespeare in such places could conceivably get one arrested, though probably not if one is a minor of the age the boy in the video is. [1]
Note:
OT:
- There are a handful of embassies and foreign representatives' residences in my neighborhood (many are in the neighborhood north of me), but I've not fully tested my thoughts about what it'd take to get arrested by for too long standing in front of one of them. I'm not going to either. LOL Some score-plus years ago, the small group of four that I was in attracted the Secret Service's attention as we paused in front of an ambassadorial residence to read a map for house tour. The agent left his booth to ask if we needed help, we told him what we were doing, and he pointed us in the direction he'd seen other groups head. We moved along and that was that, and it was enough to get the point across.
Interesting. I had no idea the iambic pentameter would be apparent when Hamlet is recited in Russian. Indeed, it's actually a little bit easier to discern in Russian than I recall it being in English when I first read Hamlet.
The video makes clear that others next to the boy were busking, dancing, and such and they were not bothered by the police.