"I think that school of thought comes from after my time, and my researches have not yet uncovered it," says Laertes.¹ "There is something of the republican in my thoughts--I have learned of a republicanism in France and in America that builds upon the Roman model--but the efficiencies of a republic seem best suited to a much larger scale than ours. There is something, too, to be said for Athenian democracy, but again, I know not that it would suit our purposes to be ruled utterly by majority. I know only this: I have witnessed a court ruined by a bad king. I have no desire to live under one again."

¹ Laertes desperately needs to read some Hannah Arendt.