Specie: Thoroughly Modern Willie
 

Bill Greenwell and Jan D Hodge worthily upheld our honour this week. Perhaps our other songs couldn't be sung. I could sing mine, given encouragement. Never mind. Here's something we will all excel in.


No. 2682
Thoroughly modern Willie
You are invited to submit an extract from the diary of a Shakespearean character (150 words/16 lines) who has woken up to find him or herself transported to the present day. Please email entries to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 19 January.

correction
 

No, belay that. I was stupidly correcting something that was already correct.

No you weren't, Bazza. You were drawing my attention to my error, now, as you say corrected. Thanks.

Kudos, Bill and Jan.

I'm giving up. I can't do better than I did for this one, so I think I'm wasting a lot of time entering every week.

Chin up, Roger These threads wouldn't be the same without you. I thought my Iago was a certain winner but Lucy handed it the frozen mitt. Bruce and the spider, you know. And time spent wrestling with rhymes and metres can never be time wasted.

Cripes, I sound like a headmaster. I must stop doing that.

Thanks, John. I don't mean to whine, but it's been a long time since my last win and I was pretty sure this would end the dry spell. When folks here say you've nailed it, they're generally right. But I suppose it will end up in a Light instead, where my odds have always been a great deal better than with Lucy, so it hasn't been a total waste. At least it's not one of those topics that don't travel well beyond the confines of the competition.

ah so
 

Phew, & I thought it was the White Widow. Ta muchly, John.

This blank verse stuff is easy. No wonder Bill wrote all those plays. Never mind the quality. Feel the width. Do you think Lucy will know the king referred to?


Thoroughly Modern Willy

I used to whine because I was a king
And wished myself a shepherd on a hill.
But here and now the shepherd option stinks.
I can be paid for doing bugger all,
And be a king unkinged on benefits
For housing, children, being unemployed.
To lie abed while others sweat to work,
To watch TV, to place a bet or two,
To smoke the weed and drink the lager beer,
To father bastards on complaisant slags,
To stir the pot with sundry petty thefts,
A bike, a mobile phone, a credit card.
(I know a man who’ll pay me cash in hand.)
Oh happy life, most happy, happy life,
A long farewell to suffering and strife!

the undeserving poor
 

That's more Daily Mail than Speccie, John.

Too right, sport. But then Henry VI was mad and therefore probably an avid Daily Mail reader.

Touchstone and Rosalind have arrived in East London:

Indeed, Princess, 'tis a strange country we are in, for though this be Forest Gate by all the signs, yet I see no forest, nor no gate neither. You bade me enquire for the swain who has despoiled all surfaces hereabouts with his markings and his remarkings, and therefore have I contacted his agent, for he is a graffiti artist much praised here, most expeditiously sought after, and paid more for these his efforts than was the knight who sold his honour thrice over to buy codfish. To this agent I remarked that I thought this art nothing, and that a fool could better it with a greater nothing, whereat he straightway placed me under contract. I too am an artist now, and to that end have taken this Audrey for my muse, or more truly my amusement. 'Tis a strange country indeed, princess, but one where fools thrive wonderfully.

Love it, George.

Susan

Thanks, Susan.

Falstaff in the Big Apple, Mid-July

These naked legs and arms so writ upon--
you'd say the painters were in want of canvas
and that these bitch wolves were a moving
easel, sporting dragons and their open-arse,
and such a scurvy, bosomy ebullience
for all to let their eyeballs feast on till the lust
swells like a bursting boil to steep the brain.
And steam and fire erupting from the street!
I sped poor Bardolf for a capon and
some sack-I fear a steamy hole has oped.
And Jack, poor Jack, lost like a swag-bellied malt
horse and me dodging all these steel-eared
vipers and nose-ringed nabobs of the night.
God's Blood! Give me a purse to get my fancy
back to good thievery away from these
witches of the oily calf and stapled tongue.

Lance, Respect, man. Pure class ! If there is any justice you should be home and dry with this one.

Agreed! Agreed in spades!

Thanks guys. I can use the cash.

the horror, the horror
 

A pox on it! My very fibres tremble To wake in Hell, yet like no Hell that was ever writ, can undo a man, be he ever so steeped in villainy. What lifetime's endeavour of roguery and vice could deserve this monstrous show – a fantastical new planet peopled by whores, madmen and sticky-fingered dissemblers, yet withal a giddy merry-go-round of mechanical marvels? The gods in its pantheon are mummers and minstrels, some scarce past childhood, whom a hireling pack of scribblers and acolytes attends upon like slavish, bowing courtiers and whose fornications light up the public prints, while amid the carnival death strides in ironclad battalions, a diabolical energy. Marry, such change might unhinge the brain and send the wits scattering.
And yet 'tis not so changed, after all. What my dazed eyes show me is lechery, lechery, still wars and lechery. Nothing else holds fashion.

Puck at a by-election:

What puffed-up poltroons have we posturing here,
Close by a somnolent electorate?
A by-election toward? Then Robin shall
His democratic duty nowise shirk.
I shall participate. I'll take the form
Of a faulty P.A. system, so they'll seem
To mouth like voiceless loons. Then shall I be
A baby who'll be hugged for show, whereat
I'll puke with vigour down those smart dark suits.
Or else a bigoted woman I shall be,
Who'll trick them into much-regretted rants.
I'll make their posters peel; all leaflets shall
Be rich with misprints comical and gross.
Then 'mongst the ballots I'll play hide-and seek,
Till recount after recount lasts all week!

List, list, O, list! I’m C-List now, at most,
and that’s no place for Hamlet’s father’s ghost—
condemned to work a “Haunted London” tour,
where though my voice and visage are still dour,
childish laughter always greets my line
about the fearsome, fretful porpentine.
Doomed to haunt my agent’s by the day,
who offers only prospects without pay,
like—O, and what a falling off was here—
that public health campaign for swimmer’s ear.
But now I’m not forbad to tell my tale
and hope to sell a series to The Mail,
then get a brow-lift and a facial peel,
switch to ICM, and ink a deal,
which may once more my fading shade illumine,
when I debut on next year’s Being Human.

That one reads like a winner to me, Frank.

Illumine and Being Human! Terrific, Frank.

Somebody’s trying to make an ass of me,
‘Tis sure. Methinks those rascals, Quince and Snout,
Gleek me for sport. I napped against a tree
And woke translated, with some thickskin lout

Calling me “Butthead,” saying I’d missed my cue.
“D’you want a chance at singing for the Queen
Or not?” says he. “Get up!” Next thing I knew
A groundling mob, well dressed but coarse & mean

(Unarmed with rotten eggs, for which I thanked
Dame Fortune), jeered my name & that sweet song
About my dream. “Sir Bottom’s gotten spanked,”
Cracks a rude wag in front. “Buzzed out! So long!”

‘Twas then (rare vision!) that She did appear—
A Lady all in gold, with ebon brows,
Singing the dream she dreamed. My dulcet dear,
May I not wake till we have ta’en our vows!

Ariel In London, 2011

Where the bee sucked there sucked I.
But here, they tell me, by and by
bees may well no longer suck
since parasites have run amok,
while climate change has also wrecked a
prospect of my finding nectar.

They've offered me a Nectar Card,
a shiny, tasteless, plastic shard.
This substitute has no attraction.
Plastic brings no satisfaction
for a hungry gourmet sprite.
I doubt that I shall last the night.

I'd fly home on my trusty bat,
but just one look has shown me that
the way a bat's built makes it hard
to insert an Oyster Card.