Simanaitis Says
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AS SHAKESPEARE WOULD SAY….
IN A MUCH-NEEDED ATTEMPT to raise discourse out of the low-IQ/LARGE CAPS level of Truth Social, here are tidbits gleaned from Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, MBEBooks, and Goodreads. (See also “Bereft of Insults?,” SimanaitisSays.)
Shakespeare Insults; my T-Shirt from the Orange County School of the Arts.
About the President Himself. “Thou sodden-witted lord! thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows.”—Troilus and Cressida, Act II, Scene 1.
(Extra points for recognizing a Toyota model.)
Another for the Queens Felon: “Infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker.”—All’s Well That Ends Well, Act III, Scene 6.
Only “hourly”? How modest a pace.
Yet Another: “Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces.”—Love’s Labour Lost, Act III, Scene 1.
An Elizabethan placket, by the way, was a slit or opening beneath corset laces. A codpiece? Uh, ask a parent or see Glen Newey’s London Review of Books description of Henry VIII as “Donald Trump in a Codpiece.” See also “Short-fingered Vulgarian”—Graydon Carter, Spy, April 1988.
RFK Jr. “Not so much brain as earwax.”—Troilus and Cressida again, Act V, Scene 1.
Or was that “brainworm”?
More on RFK Jr. “Diseased Nature oftentimes breaks forth in strange eruptions.”—Henry IV, Act III, Scene 1.
Alas, measles, diphtheria, and worse sans vaccines.
Steve Bannon. “Thou crusty botch of nature.—Troilus and Cressida (yet again), Act V, Scene 1.
Which reminds me of Frank Bruni’s description of Bannon: “a guy who looks like a flea market made flesh….”
On Retribution. “Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot/ That it do singe yourself.”—Henry VIII, Act 1, Scene 1.
On Truth Social, Generally. “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below./ Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”—Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3.
The line is Claudius’s, musing his pouring vitriolic into Hamlet’s father’s ear.
On White House Decoration. “All that glitters is not gold.”—The Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene 7.
See “A New Year’s Letter to the President,” SimanaitisSays, January 1, 2026.
And More. “Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,/ But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy,/ For the apparel oft proclaims the man.”—Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3.
’Nuff said.
On Presidential Power. “O, it is excellent/ To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous/ To use it like a giant.”—Measure for Measure, Act II, Scene 2.
A copy, please, to SCOTUS.
Macbeth’s Quandary. “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’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.”—Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5.
Bless Mr. Wilson. This was among the literary passages he required us to memorize. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026
Simanaitis Says 
Is Frank Burni meant to be Frank Bruni (NYT)?
Agg! Of course! Thanks, Sabre, once more. Now corrected.—ds
Glad I’m still able to catch things, because my ability to remember names is dismal. Faces no problem, but trying to remember the name attached to it ….
Me too. Plus my typing skills have never been particularly nimble. I use all ten fingers, though not necessarily in the correct order.—ds
I struggle not just with names, but words in general. Often I know what I want to say, but struggle with the exact spelling, or even the exact word even though I have a mental image of what it is. I try to keep my mind active though, as just like muscle loss from lack of movement, mental loss can be attributed to lack of use of the brain.
One of my projects is working on family tree research and documentation. There are days that I get overwhelmed by some of the complexities, but I am trying harder to better document my findings so that months later I no longer have to wonder “where did I get that from”. I had a recent discovery of some third cousins via a DNA match and a common set of second great grandparents (our spellings are slightly different, but definitely the same two people), but I have no record of where I found the two of them in the first place although they have been in my tree since 2018. That is what has encouraged me to upgrade my documentation standards.
Continue the good fight.—ds