What is Past is Prologue

What is Past is Prologue 

What is Past is Prologue

In a postscript to his film “JFK” Oliver Stone quoted a line from Shakespere - “What is past is prologue,” which is also inscribed on the base of the statue Future (1935, Robert Alken) at the side of the front steps to the National Archives building in downtown Washington D.C.

The quote is generally thought to mean that the past is a prologue of what's to come in the future, that history influences and sets the context for the present, much like those who are ignorant of the past are doomed to relive it. Or as Peter Pan put it, “This has all happened before and it will happen again.”

It was in the news when Joe Biden said it in the 2008 vice presidential debate to justify his referring to the failures of the Bush administration.

But as the phrase was originally used by Shakespere in The Tempest, Act 2, Scene I, it means that all that has happened before that time, the "past," has led Antonio and Sebastian to commit murder.

From The Tempest, Act II Scene I:
Sources: http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/tempest/3/

ANTONIO : 

“…..We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again,
And by that destiny to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.”

Antonio is rationalizing that he is fated to act by all that has led up to that moment, so the past has set the stage for their next act.

Thus it means that everything that has happened before that time has led Antonio and Sebastian to commit murder, so everything that has happened in the past has led up to the moment of the murder – and gives it reason and meaning.

In this context, the government’s records give reason and meaning to the murder of President Kennedy, especially if he was killed in a covert operation by his enemies in Washington rather than in a senseless, meaningless act by a deranged madman.

If President Kennedy was indeed killed by a deranged lone nut then there would be no reason, fifty years later, to keep so many records secret for reasons of national security, so many that they can’t count even them all.