And ask you kindly bear the try with me
As I attempt to write in polish'd verse
What else'd be as free and plain prose written,
Though hard's the fight with iambs and stress and feet
And language jumps from old to new and back.
The cause, my dearest friends, you may have guess'd
From my pretentious caption -
I dare and try to do what I should not:
Try to improve the epic plays o' Shakespeare.
Dinosaurs!
Who knows if not the grief-filled tragedies
Once had another, diff'rent ending –
The Danish court not killed by blight or steel,
Not star-cross'd were the tragic lovers -
Who knows, in short, in essence, all in all,
And with Polonius-like brevity,
If dinosaurs were not to blame for this ?
A rabid raptor robbed Ophelia,
Tyrannosaurus rex killed Roman tyrant.
Zombies!
Will Shakespeare's tied to monologue as tight
As sun's to light and silver moon to night
But oftentimes you think it is too much
To let dead men talk for half of an hour,
To make the drownéd woman breathe her last
And then to talk, to chat, to sigh 'bout fate
With not a bit of breath left in her lungs.
Perchance they are not dead and gone at all,
Perhaps they're undead.
Enter MURDERER from nowhere, or more precisely, a battered copy of Macbeth.
MURDERER. Stop! I'll stop your talk!
I won't let you defile the Bard's great plays!
Stabs her.
KATE. Foul beast! What have you done to me, o slave,
Diabolus ex machina! Oh, woe!
Now it is time for ham-fill'd, brief last words!
-But I forgot, I am not stopp'd by such
Not silent is the grave. So I'll go on.
They're undead and most certainly one is.
The one I mean, although, is gagged by death
But still I say that undead is Macbeth.
Remember how both are – once more – kept dead?
The Scot and monster both must lose their head.
Vampires!
I will admit, I have no clue at all
On how to fit a vampire in a play.
Though twilit teen may think herself to be
Another Juliet –
MURDERER. Shut up! You're dead!
KATE. 'Tis but a scratch. Now let me talk again,
Though still I fear I've nought to speak about.
Aliens!
To all who know and love the Star Trek films
This fact, I'm sure, is plainly known,
That Klingon Wil'yam Shex'pir penned the play
And wrote these well-known words, "taH pagh taHbe'!"
Robots!
Let pictures speak in this, not broken verse -
I could describe this, but why make it worse?
 |
| Alas, poor droid! I knew him, R2-D2! |
Ninjas!
Although from plays is drawn their dark attire,
As it was worn by stagehands commonly,
Who then surprised the audience at times
By taking part and jumping in the scene,
The Bard has not included one, of course,
But still, perchance you'll spot one.
Finally, I've reached the end, no more pentameter for me, now that my inability to write like this has been proven.
So here, enjoy, I have some links for you:
But first, I have to thank and apologize to whoever wrote TVTropes's guide "So You Want To BeThe Next William Shakespeare". Thank them, for giving me the idea, and apologize, for turning it into something that horrible.
And now, without further ado (let alone much about nothing), the first link: Shakespeare (or Shex'pir, as the book jacket calls him, or Seq'SpIIr, as I'd try to transcribe the name with my limited knowledge of the language), in the original Klingon. It's even been performed.
And then there's this, if you're done with the double intellectual challenge of Shakespeare and Klingon, to ease the stress again: Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits.
While I only read the Macbeth part, it definitely delivers on the "not boring" part.
And if you're sufficiently angry at me now for defiling the Bard's work, here's two Shakespearean insult generators to supply you with epithets to hurl at me.
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