# Game : Rewrite the World's Greatest Literature
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [October 8, 2002, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290 "2002-10-08T00:40:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Eutychus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eutychus)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/1 "2002-10-08T00:40:34Z")
This could really have gone in MPSIMS, but since it’s more “literary” I decided to try it here. I was at the market today and they had a rach of illustrated classic literature for kids. I just flipped open one and was pretty alarmed at how they had rewritten it. It was _Moby Dick_ which, is memory serves, begins like this :
> [@](#):
>
> CALL me Ishmael. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
This was rewritten for kids as :
> [@](#):
>
> Hi! My name is Ishmael. And whenever I start to feel badly about myself I head out to sea!
Talk about dumbing down. No wonder our kids relate better to video games.
So, here’s the drill. Take a well-known beginning of a novel and dumb it down as ludicrously as possible for us. If you can, provide a snippet of the original text for us uncultured boobs.
---
### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/2 "2002-10-08T00:46:17Z")
A Tale Of Two Cities:
Things weren’t all that bad, but they weren’t anything to write home about, either.
---
### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/3 "2002-10-08T01:00:30Z")
I’d just like to point out, Uncle Beer, that I’m the only guy who so far sucked up and posted yo your…
You’re Eutychus?
_Dammit_.
---
### Author:  [@Lamar\_Mundane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamar_Mundane)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/4 "2002-10-08T02:47:03Z")
**Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas**
> [@](#):
>
> _We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like ‘I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…’ And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas._
“Would you mind terribly driving the rest of the way to Las Vegas? I’m a tad tipsy.”
---
### Author:  [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/5 "2002-10-08T03:04:24Z")
Yo, I’m Richard III. My back’s fucked up, so I can’t get no poontang, and I’m gonna make the world pay!
---
### Author:  [@SolGrundy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SolGrundy)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/6 "2002-10-08T03:12:28Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
See Lolita. See Humbert. Humbert likes Lolita.
---
### Author:  [@ResIpsaLoquitor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ResIpsaLoquitor)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/7 "2002-10-08T03:24:26Z")
I always liked the reinterpretation of “Hamlet” on _Animaniacs_.
> [@](#):
>
> Voice: And now, the Warner Brothers in a scene from Shakespeare’s `Hamlet’, translated for those viewers who, like Yakko, have no idea what he’s talking about.
>
> (Yakko gives a stern look, and Dot, the translator, giggles. In the b.g., Wakko has dug up Skullhead. Yakko sees this, rushes back and snatches him from Wakko, then returns to his previous position.)
>
> Yakko: Alas, poor Yorrick!
>
> Dot : “Whoa, check out Skullhead!”
>
> (Wakko digs up an odd lump of dirt which looks like it has antennae, and tosses it aside, o.s., away from the pile of dirt which has accumulated behind him.)
>
> Yakko: I knew him, Horatio – a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.
>
> Dot : “He was funny.”
>
> (Wakko digs up a mummy, which runs away.)
>
> Yakko: He hath bore me on his back a thousand times.
>
> Dot : “He gave me piggy-back rides.”
>
> Yakko: And now, how abhorred in my imagination it is. My gorge rises at it.
>
> Dot : “I’m going to blow chunks.”
>
> (Wakko pulls a squid out of the grave and tosses it o.s.)
>
> (Yakko kisses Skullhead. Dot looks away, a bit embarrassed.)
>
> (Wakko tosses a kitchen sink out of the grave.)
>
> Yakko: Here hung those lips I have kissed I know not how oft.
>
> (Wakko pulls a pink 1959 Cadillac DeVille convertible out of the grave, then pushes it o.s.)
>
> Dot : “We kissed a lot – not!”
>
> Yakko: Where be your jibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?
>
> Dot : “How come you’re not funny now?”
>
> (Wakko begins pulling a large rocket from the grave, but must stop to rest before he’s through.)
>
> Yakko: Not one now to mock your own grinning…
>
> (Skullhead’s jaw falls to the ground. In the b.g., the rocket launches.)
>
> Yakko: …quite chop-fallen?
>
> Dot : “No one’s laughing now, and, by the way, your lower jaw’s missing.”
>
> (Dot picks up the jaw from her interpreter’s circle and hands it to Yakko.)
>
> (Wakko uses his shovel once more and lifts Cher out of the grave. She screams, bonks him on the head, and runs o.s. left. Yakko watches Cher run toward the hills.)
>
> Yakko: Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her. Let her paint an inch thick. To this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that.
>
> (Yakko tosses Skullhead toward the hills. Skullhead runs after Cher.)
>
> Dot : “Follow that woman and tell her, no matter how much makeup she wears, she’s still going to croak and end up looking just like you, and see if she laughs.”
>
> (In the b.g., Skullhead grabs Cher from behind.)
---
### Author:  [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/8 "2002-10-08T04:16:33Z")
_The Great Gatsby_
> [@](#):
>
> In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
> “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
> He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. . . .
could easily be
> [@](#):
>
> My dad always used to say, “Not everbody’s lucky as you, Nick.” And sometimes I think he was right.
I do remember reading a comic-book style version of _The House of the Seven Gables_ on all of an afternoon when I was nine years old. Having never read any other version, I can only say that it must be a brief, terribly exciting and dramatic book.
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### Author:  [@capacitor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capacitor)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/9 "2002-10-08T04:33:46Z")
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
to:
75 years ago our forefathers made America. Now we fight over it in a civil war, and the best fight was right here. We turned it into a burial ground, but the buried already made this ground hallow. So let us toast us the living instead, who will try to make America live forever."
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### Author:  [@JonScribe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JonScribe)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/10 "2002-10-08T04:57:09Z")
"Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
"Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s
done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
"Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
“The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead.”
Reader’s Digest version for children:
“Marley died.”
---
### Author:  [@Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/11 "2002-10-08T09:11:17Z")
Hi! My name’s Philip Pirrup, but everyone just calls me Pip. Hi again!
From _Great Expectations_;
“My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.”
---
### Author:  [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/12 "2002-10-08T09:28:04Z")
John 14 (King James Version)
**ORIGINAL**
Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.
**NEW**
Don’t worry, I got your back.
---
### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 9:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/13 "2002-10-08T09:32:28Z")
> [@](#):
>
> What a piece of work is a man!
> How noble in reason!
> How infinite in faculty!
> in form, in moving, how express and admirable!
> in action how like an angel!
> in apprehension how like a god!
> the beauty of the world!
> the paragon of animals!
> And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
> man delights not me; no, nor woman neither,
> though, by your smiling, you seem to say so.
“Dude, I’m, like, bummed.”
---
### Author:  [@bifar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bifar)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/14 "2002-10-08T09:59:34Z")
‘THERE was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question. I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.’
To…
‘It was too cold to walk, which is good because I hate walking in the cold, and besides, my cousins are always picking on me.’
---
### Author:  [@auRa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/auRa)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/15 "2002-10-08T11:02:23Z")
I can’t remember who it was, but one of my friends once summed up the whole of Genesis with “Oops.”
[http://rinkworks.com/bookaminute](http://rinkworks.com/bookaminute) has condensations of classic books, sci-fi and fantasy novels, and children’s books. My favorite so far has been _Hamlet_:
**Hamlet**
Whine whine whine…To be or not to be…I’m dead.
**THE END**
---
### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/16 "2002-10-08T12:30:11Z")
There was a line of “rewritten” Shakespeare plays I saw once – ral text on the left page, “dumbed down” version on the right. I briefly considered buying it, until I got to the famous line is Hamlet:
“Angels and Ministers of Grace Defend Us!”
This was “translated” as:
“Help”
I put the book down and walked away.
---
### Author:  [@TPWombat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TPWombat)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/17 "2002-10-08T12:43:00Z")
Read this in a White Dwarf magazine many years ago :
“Perhaps you are right, Frodo” said Gandalf. “These matters are too weighty for the small folk of the Shire. Give me the ring.”
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### Author:  [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/18 "2002-10-08T12:57:04Z")
**Waiting for Godot:**
Wasssssaaaappp!!!
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### Author:  [@gex\_gex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gex_gex)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/19 "2002-10-08T14:50:53Z")
Now I have this immense desire to see _Waiting for Godot_, as performed by Beavis and Butthead. Thanks a lot, **Shalmanese**.
Uhh… how about from _Pride and Prejudice_:
\*It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.\*
Everyone knows that if a guy has the money and the power he wants the women.
---
### Author:  [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2002, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-rewrite-the-worlds-greatest-literature/131290/20 "2002-10-08T15:22:33Z")
John 1
1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2. The same was in the beginning with God.
3. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
5. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
6. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
7. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
8. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
9. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
10. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
11. He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
12. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
13. Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
14. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
15. John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.
16. And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
17. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
18. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
To…
God had something to say. Creating the Universe didn’t say it all; nor did sending Moses so after sending John to give the intro, God said it all in Jesus.
Btw- Capacitor- the summary of the Gettysburg Address is actually pretty good in itself.
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