Shakespeare for open borders?

Dear T,

Shakespeare is the greatest poet in English history — but if you don’t know English history you can easily be made to think he’s the worst.

To prove this, Sir Ian McKellen says, in a recent monologue on The Late Show with Steven Colbert,

It’s all happening 400 years ago, and in London there’s a riot happening — there’s a mob out in the streets. And they’re complaining about the presence of strangers in London. By which they mean the recent immigrants who’ve arrived there. And they’re shouting […] and complaining and saying that the immigrants should be sent home wherever they came from. And the authorities sent out this young lawyer, Thomas More, to put down the riots, which he does in two ways — one by saying, you can’t riot like this: it’s against the law, so shut up and be quiet. And also, being by Shakespeare, with an appeal to their humanity. And in order to set it up, I’m going to have to ask somebody to shout “the strangers should be removed.”

Somebody shouts it, and then he launches on a beautiful monologue from Sir Thomas More — which you really should see for yourself.

It goes,

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise

Hath chid down all the majesty of England;

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,

Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,

Plodding tooth ports and costs for transportation,

And that you sit as kings in your desires,

Authority quite silent by your brawl,

And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;

What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught

How insolence and strong hand should prevail,

How order should be quelled; and by this pattern

Not one of you should live an aged man,

For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,

With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,

Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes

Would feed on one another.

He goes on later, with an appeal to The Golden Rule,

You’ll put down strangers,

Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,

And lead the majesty of law in line,

To slip him like a hound.

Say now the king (As he is clement, if th’ offender mourn)

Should so much come to short of your great trespass

As but to banish you, whether would you go?

What country, by the nature of your error,

Should give you harbor? go you to France or Flanders,

To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,

Nay, any where that not adheres to England,

— Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased

To find a nation of such barbarous temper,

That, breaking out in hideous violence,

Would not afford you an abode on earth,

Whet their detested knives against your throats,

Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God

Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants

Were not all appropriate to your comforts,

But chartered unto them, what would you think

To be thus used? this is the strangers case;

And this your mountanish inhumanity.

— the greatest case in the English language, I think, for helping refugees, and a reminder that In the majority of men, the love of justice is simply the fear of suffering injustice.

But there’s just one problem.

What Colbert and Sir Ian McKellen missed here — probably on purpose — is that Shakespeare was writing about Evil May Day. This was on May 1st, 1517, when English rioters, impelled by jealousy and greed, went around town, dragging lawful German and Flemish business owners out of bed, smashing up their shops, and beating them up. Some sources estimate that around a dozen victims died.

In Shakespeare’s time (almost a century after the riots) this monologue would have been relevant — so relevant, in fact, that the royal censor banned it. Over the past generation the Huguenots had fled France and settled in England. There was a religious war raging between the Catholics and Protestants across the continent, and one that was so sanguine that Catholics had gotten up in the middle of the night in France, formed into mobs, and proceeded to kill as many Protestant neighbors as possible. This was known as The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, and is something that happens today in places like Nigeria and Rwanda, but is completely inconceivable in Europe. We have a hard time even imagining our ancestors doing it.

During this period there weren’t just “hard times” in France. The likelihood that Protestants would be jailed or murdered (or worse) was extremely high. And they had no legal recourse, because the violence wasn't only supported by the government, but many times instigated by it.

What this means is that most of the refugees in Shakespeare’s day were families. They were of the same religion as the English — and almost guaranteed, due to persecution, to be sincerely religious. They shared a common enemy with the English. There was no modern welfare system in Shakespeare’s England, so they couldn’t be coming to leech off the system. Thus the English weren’t upset about an influx of criminals: they were worried about being outclassed by an influx of skilled and religious artisans. This would be almost comparable, in our day, to an influx of Ukrainian doctors, engineers, MBAs, and techies. In Shakespeare’s day there was grumbling, but the royal censor made sure nobody acted like his grandparents. He commanded Shakespeare to “leave out the insurrection wholly and the cause thereof.”

Thus, though Colbert's timing draws an obvious parallel between Shakespeare’s rioters and Republicans, the difference between Shakespeare’s day and ours couldn’t be more stark. First of all, a large chunk of our immigrants today came against the laws. We aren’t getting families, but hordes of single, military-aged men. Most of our immigrants are coming from the poorest and least-educated classes of the poorest and least-educated nations. We don’t share a border with the great majority of illegals. We don’t share a common race or heritage with the great majority of legal immigrants either. We don’t have a common enemy, and, in fact, according to our leftists, the common enemy of the new foreigners is white Americans and Republicans. Oh, and Venezuela emptied their prisons and sent all their rapists to us.

We are currently housing large chunks of illegal immigrants in our prisons — according to the Bureau of Prisons, foreign nationals make up around 16% — and the riots we see happening are mostly by Democrats to keep foreign criminals in-house. Due to our laws, legal immigrants get access to food stamps and social security, and many of our illegal immigrants get free medical care — adding time to wait lists, and driving up the prices drastically for natives. News about immigrants raping children, or drunk-driving over pedestrians, or butchering innocents, is routinely and notoriously buried. And finally, it can be proved that no mass violence — ever, during my whole forty-two years of life — has ever been staged by our natives against immigrants. To put it simply, we’re on the receiving end of a beating, not in the process of dishing one out.

Not only does this make Sir Ian McKellan’s parallel slanderous: it makes it stupid. It’s an abuse of Shakespeare one could expect from an American ignoramus, or maybe from one of Shakespeare’s villains — maybe Macbeth’s wife or Othello's Iago. But certainly not from a Shakespearean actor. And certainly not from the man who played Gandalf — a wise, noble old wizard, whose only claim to fame is driving invaders back to Mordor, and sending even more of them to meet Jesus.

Shakespeare’s play was banned by the law because it hit too close to home. If Shakespeare were to live here a few years and see McKellen’s monologue, I doubt he’d know which home Colbert’s show was trying to hit. But it’s apparent that with our home, Colbert doesn’t really know it; and if he does know it, it’s pretty clear he doesn’t love it. Two things nobody could say about Shakespeare in his day without getting hooted off a soap-box*.

Yours,

-J

April 19th, 2026

*I’ll let Shakespeare speak for himself — from the mouth of John of Gaunt, in Richard II, Act 2, Scene 1. (If you want to see the best performance of this, by none other than Patrick Stewart, I strongly recommend picking up The Hollow Crown).

This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessèd plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Feared by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renownèd for their deeds as far from home
For Christian service and true chivalry
As is the sepulcher in stubborn Jewry
Of the world’s ransom, blessèd Mary’s son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out—I die pronouncing it—
Like to a tenement or pelting farm.
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of wat’ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds.
That England that was wont to conquer others
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

Republicans, of course, lack the words for speech like this. But Democrats lack the heart.