Tag Archives: william shakespeare

Jan 24 2015
1 Comment
Shakespeare

Deflategate Shakespearized

I like to Shakespearize things – movies, TV shows, songs.  I love Shakespeare.  Maybe it’s trite, but I do feel that the English language’s greatest author walked the earth around 500 years or so ago (give or take a few years here or there).

I hope to turn this into a new feature, and if you have something you’d like to see Shakespearized, let me know.

Without further ado…

DEFLATEGATE SHAKESPEARIZED

By:  Bookshelf Q.  Battler

A Tale Told in the Tradition of the Bard

PRESS MAN #1 – In fair New England where we begin our tale, a legend of great treachery and sanctimonious chicanery, of gladiators of the gridiron and air dispersion most foul.

RANDOM COLTS PLAYER (staring at and holding up a football as if it were a skull) – Is this a ball I see before me?  It’s lack of weight disturbeth me with the passion of the Gods who once clapped in thunderous combat above the skies of Ancient Rome. Fi on thee, Knaves of New England, Mercenaries of the Villainous Cheese Baron!  Something is rotten in the State of the NFL.

ENTER KING BELICHIK –  Friends, Romans, Countrymen!  Lend me your ears!  Good sirs, rest thine ears upon my voice, and hear me as I say that in my four score years of leading mine knights into carefully manicured grassy fields of battle all across our land, this is the first and only time that anyone hath raised the issue of mine balls!  Merry, it surpriseth me greatly to hear men complain of a trivial happenstance, as surely as it would surpriseth me were I to waken on the morrow to find that the sun’s exuberant colors had transferred from yellow to green.

PRESS MAN #2 – Foul!  Foul!  Scandal most foul!  A plague on your house, King Belichik!  For thou failest to taketh the fall in this fake story that we hath manufactured out of whole cloth!  Thou hast thrown Sir Thomas of Brady under the bus!

TYPICAL COLTS FAN –  To inflate or not to inflate?  That is the question.  Whether tis nobler in the mind to inflate your balls to 12.5 pounds per square inch, or to take air out of your balls until they are 11.5 pounds per square inch, and in doing so, ruin them?  To inflate, to deflate, to inflate perchance to dream?  Ay, there’s the rub…on our balls!

SIR THOMAS OF BRADY – Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow…inflated balls are a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and signifying slow news days…

COLTS FAN #2 – O, I see Queen Mab!  Come she does, the Queen of the Fairies!  And she telleth me true, she fills my ears with the melodious truth, that had our balls been comprised of more air, we surely would not have had our asses handed to us in a massacre in which we lost by 40 points!  Fi!  By the beard of God I say had the game ball had one but one more pound of pressure inside of it, we would have fought boldly like the mighty warriors of the coliseum of old!

ENTER FOX AND COMPANIONS – Forsooth and hark, for we are Fox and Companions!  Bringeth yon noble viewers news of the death of the Saudi Arabian King?  Nay!  Bringeth ye news of the resignation of the Yemen Government?  Nay!  Gather round and hear a tale of balls deflated with vigorous gusto!

PRESS MAN #3 – But soft!  What lies through yonder window breaks?!  It tis the east, and the underinflated balls are the sun!  Arise fair balls, and kill the envious moon, whose maid art sick and pale with grief, that her maid’s balls are far more inflated than yours!

PATRIOTS FAN -(also holding a football like it was a skull) –  Alas, poor football, I knew him, Horatio.  Twas a football of great jest and most excellent fancy!  Once inflated to 12.5 pounds per square inch and then alas, deflated to a paltry 11.5 square pounds per inch by rapscallions of ignominious cunning and unscrupulous alacrity. Our knights, once a great bastion of the game, now reduced to wicked pissah jokes about deflated balls.

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Nov 16 2014
7 Comments
Writing

National Novel Writing Month – or #NanoWriMo

Are you participating in National Novel Writing Month?

If you’ve never heard of it, the two-cent summary is that it is a challenge to write a novel of at least 50,000 words by the end of November.  It doesn’t have to be a good one.  The end result does not even have to make sense.  Don’t bother editing.  Participants will be quick to remind you to write first, edit later.

Write first, edit later?  Seriously?  “That novel will be a bunch of garbledeegook!” you might say.  And you would not be wrong for saying that.  The thing to remember about NanoWriMo is – every novel starts out as a pile of garbledeegook.

Take any classic novel, film, TV episode, whatever.  They all started out in the brain of a writer and said writer had to mix the thoughts around in his brain for awhile before he got things right.  Consider these recently discovered entries from Shakespeare’s personal notebook:

DAY 1 – The title of my next play?  Romeo and Hildegard!  Two lovers who meet, fall in love, enjoy a delightful wedding ceremony, and take part in many years of bliss all the while their respective familes go out of their way to display their acceptance of the situation.

DAY 2 – What was I thinking who would pay 2 shillings to watch such tripe!  I must think of a way to liven things up!

DAY 3 – Romeo and Hildegard?  Hildegard?  Really?  I have to think of a new name for the female lead.  Jessica? Janet?

DAY 4 – Romeo and Juliet!  They meet!  They fall in love!  Their families despise one another and they send Romeo and Juliet a sternly worded letter that they disapprove of their union!  The End!

DAY 5 – Rubbish, Shakespeare.  Rubbish.  Quit writing and get a job at your father’s used horse dealership while you still can.

DAY 6 – Romeo and Juliet!  Their families are the Montagues and the Capulets and they have a longstanding feud!  Perhaps representatives of the respective families engage in quarrelsome activities that doom the lovers’ union!

DAY 7 – Mercutio gets run over by a horse.  No, he gets brained with a frying pan.  No!  Stabbed by Tybalt!  And his dying words are, “I am very offended to have been stabbed!”

DAY 8 – No, he says, “A Plague on both your houses!”  Yes, thus illustrating how petty feuds often pull unsuspecting bystanders into the fray.

DAY 9 – Romeo and Juliet run away from Verona.  They live till a ripe old age and have many babies.

DAY 10 – No, we must have a sad ending.  Romeo and Juliet attempt to sneak out of Verona.  However, the city is protected by a mighty dragon who eats Romeo.  Distressed, Juliet’s rage gives her magical powers that she uses to burn Verona to the ground.

DAY 11 – Preposterous!  Wait, I’ve got it!  Juliet attempts to get away from her family by taking a drug that makes her look dead but actually only causes her to go into a deep sleep for 2 days.  She sends a message to Romeo to meet her at the tomb.  Romeo fails to receive the message due to the incompetence of the Verona Postal Service.

DAY 12 – Romeo meets her at the tomb.  The drug has turned Juliet into a zombie.  She feasts on Romeo’s brains.

DAY 13 – Juliet wakes up.  Romeo is overjoyed.  They run away, live a long, happy life and have many babies.

DAY 14 – Not sad enough.  At the end of their long happy life together, an underlying residual effect of the drug turns Juliet into a zombie.  Now Romeo has his brains eaten.

DAY 15 – That’s too outlandish.  Romeo gets to the tomb.  Paris is there.  He thinks Juliet is dead and mourns her.  Romeo makes a move to stab Paris.  Paris, positioned just in front of Juliet, dodges to one side to avoid the oncoming sword.  At that moment, Juliet sits up, stretches and yawns and says, “Oh wow, I can’t believe I slept that long!  Oh hey Romeo!  ACK!  Why did you stab me?”

DAY 16 – Romeo then stabs himself because he is distraught over stabbing Juliet by accident.

DAY 17 – OK I like the idea that the lovers kill themselves at the end, but this part where Romeo stabs Juliet by accident is ridiculous.

DAY 18 – Alright, check this out.  Juliet is sleeping in her tomb.  Romeo goes to see her, unaware that she is sleeping, he thinks she is actually dead.  He confronts Paris, kills him, then distraught over Juliet’s apparent death, drinks poison.  Juliet wakes up, sees Romeo dead, gets so upset that she stabs herself with a dagger.  Cut.  Print.

DAY 19 – It still needs a little flourish at the end.  Howsabout this?  The Prince and represenatives of the families come to the tomb, see all the bodies, and says, “You know guys, this is some ridiculous bullshit.  Y’all f’d up royally with this one.”  The End.

DAY 20 – I’ve got it!  The Prince says, “For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”  Done!  Time for chili cheese fries!”

Yes, readers.  Those are the exact, unaltered entries in Shakespeare’s personal notebook.  I am surprised as you are that they had chili cheese fries in his day.

OK, so maybe I made this whole thing up.  The point is that sometimes writers get so bogged down in criticizing themselves that they never write anything.  Meanwhile, those who actually begin the writing with lesser ideas in place eventually find a way to rework those ideas and build them into something better.

So to all you NanoWriMo Participants out there, good luck!  And as a shameless plug for this writer’s work:  check out bookshelfbattle.com and follow @bookshelfbattle on twitter!

(C) Bookshelfbattle.com  – All rights reserved

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Oct 31 2014
2 Comments
Classics, Horror

Double Double Toil and Trouble – The Witches of MacBeth

Happy Halloween!

Have you ever wondered how witches obtained their witchy personality traits?

***Crickets chirp***

Ahem.  This is your cue.

“Hey!  Bookshelf Battle Guy!  How did witches obtain their witchy personality traits?”

Oh thank you, Reader.  I thought you’d never ask.

Well, the common conception of a witch is a nasty old hag throwing all kinds of weird ingredients (usually animals or parts of animals) into a boiling cauldron.

We could discuss all day witch-tastic imagery from all sorts of literature but to me, Act 4, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth stands out.

So park your broomstick and grab your eye of newt, because here are some excerpts and quotes:

SCENE 1 – A cavern – in the middle is a boiling cauldron.

Thunder.  Enter the three witches.

FIRST WITCH

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d

SECOND WITCH

Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined

BOOKSHELFBATTLE – So, four then?  The pig in your hedges whined four times?  Why are you hags making this so difficult?

THIRD WITCH

Harpier cries, ‘Tis time, ’tis time.

FIRST WITCH

Round about the cauldron go;

In the poison’d entrails throw.

Toad, that under cold stone

Days and nights has thirty-one

Swelter’d venom, sleeping got,

Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot

BOOKSHELF BATTLE GUY: Pot of poisoned entrails?  That doesn’t sound charming at all.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble!

SECOND WITCH

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog

Wool of bat and tongue of dog

Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,

Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

BOOKSHELFBATTLE GUY – My condolences, amputated animals.  Apparently witches used to think your parts were magical.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble

THIRD WITCH

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,

Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf

Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,

Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,

Liver of blaspheming Jew,

Gall of goat, and slips of yew

Silver’d in the moon’s eclips,

Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips

Finger of birth-strangled babe

Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,

Make the gruel thick and slab:

Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron

For the ingredients of our cauldron.

BOOKSHELF BATTLE GUY – OK, now they’re getting ridiculous.  I don’t even know where to begin.  First of all, allow me to apologize for the racial insensitivity.  What can I say?  This is an excerpt taking from a 1500’s era writer who was writing about ancient witches so it is not like you can really expect a lot of political correctness.  Also, how many babies were getting strangled in those days that their fingers were just apparently readily available to be tossed into witches’ brews?  Those were dark times, my friends, dark times indeed.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

SECOND WITCH

Cool it with a baboon’s blood,

Then the charm is firm and good.

BOOKSHELFBATTLE GUY: – This took place in Scotland, didn’t it?   Where would they have even found a baboon?

ENTER HECTATE to the other three Witches.

HECTATE

O well done!  I commend your pains;

And every one shall share i’ the gains;

And now about the cauldron sing,

Live elves and fairies in a ring,

Enchanting all that you put in.

MUSIC AND A SONG: Black spirits…

HECTATE retires

SECOND WITCH

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

Open, locks,

Whoever knocks!

ENTER MACBETH

MACBETH

How now, you secret, black and midnight hags!

What is’t you do?

BOOKSHELF BATTLE GUY:  I have no comment, other than I think it is funny that MacBeth openly refers to them as hags.  “Hello, hags!”

Well folks, that concludes my discussion of MacBeth’s witches.  Grab your wolf teeth and dragon scales and toss them into the comment section.

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Jul 17 2014
5 Comments
Plays, Quote of the Week, Shakespeare

Bookshelf Battle Quote of the Week – “Life is a Tale Told By an Idiot”

She would have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

– William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Is life really a tale told by an idiot? That’s quite an indictment of the concept of life. Think about it. The Bard isn’t just saying that life is pointless. He’s saying that it is a tale told by an idiot. Imagine the most gaseous windbag at the end of the bar, three sheets to the wind, spewing out nonsense all night. His stories are about as coherent as life if you follow this point of view.

Sometimes it can feel that way. Days come, days go. There are good days and bad days. As Ferris Bueller would say, “Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you might miss it.” Today you’re having a blast. Tomorrow, you’re an old man in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank. Sometimes it feels like moves faster than a finger snap.

Obviously, the character of Macbeth engaged in some nasty business, so it is not surprising he felt low enough to become dissatisfied by life. But is it really full of sound and fury? Does it signify nothing?

Life can have its great moments, and those moments can vary from person to person. For some, it’s marriage or birth of a child. For others it may be the accomplishment of a long held dream. It’s better to concentrate on the good times, and forget the fact that, like a “brief candle,” life can be snuffed out at any time. That’s the sad irony of life – an alive person spends his life collecting one achievement after another and in the end, everyone, from the lowliest bus station bathroom janitor to the highest CEO ends up worm food.

Like a “player” with his “hour on the stage,” we all have those great moments. Life is meant to be lived. Enjoy your time on the stage, because a life spent worrying about the final curtain is a life wasted.

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