‘You’d Think Somebody Would Have Read Macbeth’: Cruz Educates NBC News, WaPo Reporters Who Mock Him Over Shakespeare Quote

On Wednesday evening, veteran NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell ripped Texas GOP senator Ted Cruz after he stated that the Senate impeachment trial of former President Trump was “like Shakespeare: full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”

Mitchell, thinking Cruz had cribbed the quote from William Faulkner’s novel 1929 novel “The Sound and the Fury,” tweeted, “@SenTedCruz says #ImpeachmentTrial is like Shakespeare full of sound and fury signifying nothing. No, that’s Faulkner.”

.@SenTedCruz says #ImpeachmentTrial is like Shakespeare full of sound and fury signifying nothing. No, that’s Faulkner

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) February 10, 2021

Mitchell was echoed by The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin six minutes later, as she snapped, “And it says volumes about his lack of soul. That’s Any Thinking Person.”

and it says volumes about his lack of soul. That’s Any Thinking Person.

— Jennifer ‘America is Back’ Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) February 10, 2021

Cruz, having already quoted from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” quoted from the play yet again: “Methinks she doth protest too much. One would think NBC would know the Bard. Andrea, take a look at Macbeth act 5, scene 5: ‘[Life] struts & frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound & fury, Signifying nothing.’”

Methinks she doth protest too much.

One would think NBC would know the Bard. Andrea, take a look at Macbeth act 5, scene 5:

“[Life] struts & frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound & fury,
Signifying nothing.”

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 11, 2021

Cruz added, “Between NBC & the Washington Post, you’d think somebody would have read Macbeth.”

Between NBC & the Washington Post, you’d think somebody would have read Macbeth. pic.twitter.com/RvTgHyTVIg

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 11, 2021

Mitchell admitted her mistake, acknowledging, “I clearly studied too much American literature and not enough Macbeth. My apologies to Sen. Cruz,” adding, “Touché.”

I clearly studied too much American literature and not enough Macbeth. My apologies to Sen. Cruz.

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) February 11, 2021

Touché

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) February 11, 2021

The quote comes from Act 5 of Macbeth, in which Macbeth mourns the death of his wife, Lady Macbeth. Not only has Macbeth heard of his wife’s death, he knows armies are marching against him. The passage reads:

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life is 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.

The great Shakespearean scholar A.C. Bradley, in his immortal book, “Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth,” wrote:

There is no proof of Macbeth’s alienation or utter carelessness in the words, “She should have died hereafter; there would have been a time for such a word.” Spoken as they are by a man already in some measure prepared for such news, and now transported by the frenzy of his last fight for life. He has no time now to feel. Only, as he thinks of the morrow when time to feel will come — if anything comes, the vanity of all hopes and forward-lookings sinks deep into his soul with an infinite weariness, and he murmurs, “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.”

In the very depths a gleam of his native love of goodness and with it a touch of tragic grandeur, rests upon him. The evil he has desperately embraced continues to madden or to wither his inmost heart. No experience in the world could bring him to glory in it or make his peace with it, or to forget what he once was and Iago and Goneril never were.

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