Shakespeare and Roswell

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Now what would Shakespeare have to do with the Roswell incident?

Shakespeare provides in his works, especially the tragedies, the little things that bring about disaster or mayhem.

For instance, in Romeo and Juliet, the sleeping potion Juliet takes to feign death is mistaken by Romeo, when he finds her on a funeral bier, as her death, and thus kills himself in grief.

In Othello, a handkerchief, which was a gift from Othello to his wife, Desdemona, dropped inadvertently by Othello, is picked up by Iago and used to instill jealousy in Othello by indicating that Desdemona gave the handkerchief to Cassio, Othello’s chief lieutenant, because Cassio was Desdmona’s secret lover. Othello strangles Desdemona in a jealous rage.

In Hamlet, found letters push the plot to this end:

“Hamlet explains to Horatio that he had discovered Claudius’s letter [about killing Hamlet] with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s belongings and replaced it with a forged copy indicating that his former friends should be killed instead. A foppish courtier, Osric, interrupts the conversation to deliver [a] fencing challenge to Hamlet. Hamlet, despite Horatio’s advice, accepts it. Hamlet does well to start, leading the match by two hits to zero, and Gertrude raises a toast to him using the poisoned glass of wine Claudius had set aside for Hamlet. Claudius tries to stop her, but is too late: she drinks, and Laertes realizes the plot will be revealed. Laertes slashes Hamlet with his poisoned blade. In the ensuing scuffle, they switch weapons and Hamlet wounds Laertes with his own poisoned sword. Gertrude collapses and, claiming she has been poisoned, dies. In his dying moments, Laertes reconciles with Hamlet and reveals Claudius’s plan. Hamlet rushes Claudius and kills him. As the poison takes effect, Hamlet, hearing that Fortinbras is marching through the area, names the Norwegian prince as his successor. Horatio, distraught at the thought of being the last survivor, says he will commit suicide by drinking the dregs of Gertrude’s poisoned wine, but Hamlet begs him to live on and tell his story. Hamlet dies, proclaiming ‘the rest is silence.’”

Now here’s the Roswell connection:

The Haut press release about the Army recovering a flying disc is the progenitor of the Roswell myth: a little thing – it was a corruption of “flying disc” for the era,which meant only a odd array of stuff connected to press accounts of items tied to flying saucer reports and had nothing to do with extraterrestrial craft flying around and crashing to Earth.

“Flying disc” inside an Army instigated document created and fostered a mythos that had gotten out of hand in the late 1970s by a foolish interpretation  of “flying disc” and the resultant desire of many mentally quirked Roswellians and UFO buffs to create an extraterrestrial patina to a prosaic event involving balloon debris or junk from a somewhat secret military operation.

It’s simple.

A relatively tiny misuse of a common term for the 1947 spate of so-called flying saucer accounts created an environment ripe for the preference of ufologists to tie a phenomenon to alien craft and alien intrusion of Earth, a sci-fi predilection that has grown beyond what makes for reality, and has become so embedded in the psyche of some that to shake it loose has become impossible.

RR