Science fiction short story identification help

This is probably not the right forum to ask this, so I’m hoping someone will direct me to a good site where I might get an answer.

Some years ago I read a short story in a science fiction anthology. A high school English teacher needed (based on the demand of a parent) to teach one of Shakespeare’s play – I think Hamlet, but it may have been Macbeth. Before doing so she had to go through the play and delete any lines or sections to which any special interest group had lodged a complaint. In the end of course the play was just a few lines long. The story was told in a very light, humorous way.

Can anyone ID this story (or as I said, direct me to a site where someone may ID it for me)? My sister teaches at Cody High School, and currently ultra-conservative members of the community are going through their texts line by line and listing their objections, so I thought she’d get a kick out of this story.

This should go to Cafe Society . I’ll try to alert the mods .

Much Ado About [Censored] by Connie Willis?

Moderator Action

Moving thread from General Questions to Cafe Society.

Thanks, IvoryTowerDenizen – that’s it. Now I can figure out which of my bazillion books its in and send it along to my sister.

Close, ITD! I believe the story is just called Ado.

ETA: It’s in her 1993 anthology Impossible Things, Anny.

Ah! I saw it referred to the other way, but I see that you’re right. Glad I could help, tho

Once you know the title and/or author of a science fiction/fantasy/horror story, the best place to look it up is in the Internet Speculative Database:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?40679

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1632265

They claim that Ado is only the title of the French-language version of the story.

Not exactly. If you click on the book titles on your first link, you’ll see that it is listed as Ado in (AFAIK) all publications except the anthology 2041: Twelve Short Stories About the Future by Top Science Fiction Writers’ I have no idea why the editor of that book changed the title, but it seems to be the case.

“Ado” sounds too much like “Adieu,” French for “goodbye,” implying that the story might be a suicide note and thereby angering family members of suicide victims, so they had to change it.

Plus, in the Southern U.S., “Ado” would imply that the story was about a wedding.