Use Shakespeare’s words but quote him accurately

The departure of the retired Major-General Joseph Nkaissery reminds me of one of William Shakespeare’s most quotable observations on the human social landscape. The only thing is that, whenever you feel urged to quote the celebrated English poet-playwright, please do him justice by quoting him accurately.

On page 16 of its July l4 number, The Standard wrote as follows in a headline: “The people’s general is gone, from where cometh another?” Quite clearly, the last four words are a subeditor’s attempt to quote a line from Julius Caesar, one of the most engrossing tragedies of William Shakespeare, the inimitable English poet-playwright.

Yet, as far as I am aware, the words “from where cometh another” do not belong to the man from England’s Stratford-upon- Avon. What Shakespeare put in the mouth of a politician to cause the politician to lament the murder of his friend Julius Caesar in the Roman Senate was: “Whence cometh such another?”

LAMENT'S ESSENCE

According to Shakespeare, the word “such” is the essence of the lament. It meant that no individual might be able to bung the hole left by the departed leader. I know it because Shakespeare’s theatre piece Julius Caesar was one of my most important set-books for the Cambridge School Certificate examination at the end of high school in 1958.

To be quite sure, in the context of Julius Caesar (the man), the phrase “Whence cometh?” (attributed to a sycophant) meant exactly the same thing as the phrase “from where will come…?” The only question is: Why mix two tongues? I ask in order to remind my readers that, here, we are faced with two different languages.

For the fact is that, in many ways, 16th-century English was remarkably different from English in the 21st-century. Thus, in a vital sense, Shakespeare makes the greatest impact on society only by means of 16th-century English. The quotable question that the inimitable poet and playwright asked was: “Whence cometh such another?” In other words, from where could anybody quite like Caesar emerge again?

NEVER HAD

By that question, clearly, the questioner meant that, for him, Rome had never had (and would never again have) a leader quite as formidable as Julius Caesar. By that question, then, Shakespeare meant, as Kenyans are wont to claim concerning politicians who have just died, that Caesar was “irreplaceable”.

Does anybody in his or her right senses really believe, however great Mr Nkaissery was, that he cannot be replaced? All I know is that, in Rome long ago, individuals neatly bunged the holes that every Caesar left and the earth continued to with its diurnal journey around the seething sun without any let or hindrance.

Even in Rome so long ago, a statement such as sycophants made about Caesar was as cynical as the words that Kenyans habitually pour on leaders who have just gone to that destination from which, according to both Ecclesiastes and Mark Twain, “no traveller ever returns”.

Philip Ochieng is a retired journalist.

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