The Pace of Petty Creeping - a Shakespeare parody thread

Cafe Society
1

Shakespeare wrote some amazingly awesome stuff. Unfortunately, due to his circumscribed worldview, much of it concerned kings, dukes, princes, Moors, merchants, tweeners, fairies and assorted riff-raff. It would be nice to take some of the truly great things he wrote and apply them to more immediate and pressing concerns.

Whether it be laudatory, mocking, tongue-in-cheek, tongue-in- you know - those cheeks, or just plain silly, I invite one and all to share their Shakespeare-based japes, gibes and folderol. I lead off with this, rather amusingly titled

  *circa* 2216 AD

Full fathom five thy former beachfront lies.
We now must dive to see those homes arrayed,
For other creatures to live in and prize -
More suited to these risen seas we made.
Back then did not they think it strange
To measure, yet not see a change?

2

I wrote this while living on a commune. Loved the landscape, and the work/life balance, and the freshly-picked veg…not so much the other people…

Let’s Withdraw, My Lady

To see, or not to see?
The question begs the question of nobility
Confines the mind beyond walled-off perception
Outrageous Fortune slings her arrows as she passes
You will not suffer while you wear
Rose-coloured glasses
Thus armoured you can see no trouble
Opposition ends for you
Lie sleeping in your tie-die bubble
No more thinking left to do
From sleep you speak to say all you were taught
By heart, that your heart’s ache has ceased
It makes the thousand shocks to nature nought
So long as hair and flesh are pleased
The consummation of this wish devout
(To lie asleep, to sleep and live the dream
While Chance shuffles her cards and deals you out)
Is but a passing in your mortal scream
Recoil from the calamaties of life in all respects
Slip past the bare thorn of the rose
For you could spurn delay, despite and insolence reject
With rose-hued glasses on your nose
So grin your sweet way through your cheery life
You’ll read about me, maybe, when I’m dead
The undiscovered poet born in strife
Unravelling the puzzles in his head
Will you not bear to see the ills we make
But rather fly to join the "I don’t know"s?
Thus cowardice doth conscience overtake
Sweetened up with spectacles of rose

3

The meter is a bit off. Try "*For other creatures to **occupy *and prize - ".

4

Thanks, but not iambic pentameter. Your line has 11 beats instead of 10.

Note that the final couplet is deliberately tetrameter, to draw attention.

5

Here’s a bunch of parodies I wrote some time ago. You may like some of them.

http://www.ianrowland.com/shakespeareconnections/

6

You, sir, are funny! For your parody of the Apple EULA, I felt it incumbent on myself to verify that there is no “Korall” in the entirety of Shakespeare’s plays. I additionally felt that I needed to find out what it actually might be and learned that it is “a Russian cream cheese with a shrimp flavoring.” Diabolical! (It also apparently means ‘coral’ in Norwegian and Swedish, but I think you’ll agree that is rather pedestrian when compared to the Russian.)

Loved the Puzzle Poem - it reminded me (in an upside-down sort of way) of a poem by a countryman of yours that begins “A boat beneath a sunny sky”. Chap by the name of Dodgson.

Well, unfortunately it appears that the popularity of parodying poetry from the Elizabethan era was rather grotesquely over-estimated by yours truly. I certainly felt that this had the potential to be the most-posted-to thread of mine yet out of the 5 or 6 I’ve started. Need I say it- alack and alas! In honor of Jack of Words’ fine take, in conclusion I present a silly thing, leaping rapidly away from Hamnet’s famous soliloquy.

To pee or not to pee.
Trust me, that is not the question.
'Tis four long hours inside this car I’ve spent.
My bladder now has stretched to such extent -
The Upper Nile has drained into the Lower
And driver’s side shall have a swampy floor.

I can no longer all these fardels bear.
Back teeth have swum, climbed in a boat to row
And cross’t the ocean’s vasty deep to where
A roadside stop is how at last I go.

7

From Lear (and from Walt Kelly): How sharper than a child’s tooth to have a fangless serpent.

8

“Why did you laugh, then, when I said, ‘Man delights not me’?”

– Tom Cruise

9

And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That ate with us on Crispy Wings day.

10

(I will regret this)

taps his staff on a stone wall

Here is there a door
You can see by the runes
Speak Friend and Enter
Such simple times they were

This stone Dwarves crafted
Yet the spell is by Elves
What word could they wish for?
In those happier times
Reside here and watch
Drink and bathe in this lake
Forsooth we will enter
By mine wizardly ways

11

Ian Doescher has written Verily, a New Hope, The Empire Striketh Back, and The Jedi Doth Return, and just came out with The Phantom of Menace. I heard him interviewed about it on the radio yesterday, talking about how he uses soliloquies to give Jar-Jar Binks a more complex motivation.