To grovel, or not to grovel, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind of state to suffer
The lawful slings and arrows of statutory duty,
Or to struggle against Falstaffian trumpeters,
And by opposing, send them to oblivion.

To apologize? Why? Where is the insult? To follow the law is an insult!?

In the theater of state, as upon a Shakespearean stage, the question of loyalty looms large. Is it to be devotion to a principle — the law — or to a king — a man? Our governor (a lawyer), faced with the tempestuous declarations of a president (a vendor) who bellows “I am the law,” finds herself trapped in a drama of tragic proportions. Should she, like Hamlet, weigh the heavy burden of conscience and oath to her office? Or should the governor bend a servile knee to Caesar, as others slavishly might to avoid the petty retribution she and her state might suffer? Principle vs. Punishment.

Yet the governor, unlike many merry fools such as Sir Toby Belch and Nick Bottom, bears the laurel of representative leadership and liability. She is not a presidential parasite nor an uninformed dreamer. She is a steward, the custodian not of a man but of a state and its laws. To obey any president when he declares himself “the law” is itself illegitimate and is an attempt to replace the rule of legislative law for the unitarian decree of one. And where one man is the law, justice wears a shroud, and tyranny waits in the wings of State.

So, the governor must answer, not with the bended knee of subservience and compliance, but with courage of conviction. The rules of the state and of the nation are not mere suggestions or whims to be repudiated by a pompous untutored voice. Laws are the bones, the scaffolding of a republic; and with this president, we hear the ghost of liberty crying behind the curtained stage. If she grovels, she becomes complicit in the death of the very documents she swore to protect (as does every legislator, including a president). To mix the metaphors: “Give me liberty … !”

Thus, let the fools cavort and the tyrants thunder. Let the governor stand, not for man, but for law — for right. For in that defiance, she finds for herself and the state dignity and honor, and in that posture, the nation its hope.

Exeunt omnes. The curtain falls.

Hubbard C. Goodrich is a Harpswell resident.