ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book begins with Julius Caesar in a long red tie, his blond coif an unmistakable signal to the audience. If power transferred peacefully to Donald Trump in the 2016 American election, the New York summer production of Shakespeare's play only months later envisioned his violent assassination in the effort to protect republican ideals and change the course of history. Posthumus wakes up, alongside Shakespeare's audience, to pacifism. Given how Karl Rove looks to Shakespeare for political communication and the language to direct actual policy, he would also do well to find the values in the dreams and seeming frivolity of nothingness. The dagger is not always hanging in the air, no matter how much Coriolanus, MacBird, or Trump might want it to be.
