Day 16: Shakespearean English

(The Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Montgomery, Alabama.)

Well, considering I didn't want to do an obvious take on Shakespeare...like how there is the Shakespeare Festival Theatre here in Montgomery, Alabama...and how it is the largest theatre outside of England which does his plays year-round (or maybe the seond largest - I know it's one of the two, I think)...or how I could really use a good half-hour of "pre-Shakespeare" talk before I watch any Shakespeare film...because it takes a while for my mind to start thinking in that form of talk...but I won't.

Instead I bring you:  "Classic Hollywood Movie Lines...as Shakespeare Might Have Penned Them".  Please bear in mind my knowledge of Shakespeare is quite minimal...but my knowledge of old Hollywood films...is not.

Lauren Bacall to Humphrey Bogart in "To Have and Have Not": "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."

Shakespeare: "O, then, let lips do what hands do...they pray...and pray thee, dear Steven, you with a wisp of air upon thine lisping lips...do beckon me to come again."

Clark Gable to Vivien Leigh in "Gone With the Wind""  "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

Shakespeare: "I once suffered gladly your fools my dear...but be damned --I suffer with fools like you no longer!"  (Yes, the original is much better than anything I could come up with...and, believe me, I tried.)

Humphrey Bogart to Sam in "Casablanca":  "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine."

Shakespeare:  "Where minstrels quench their parched throats...where wine does flow from all the coasts...where beggars languished on the Rhine...her body doest walk into mine." (You have to pronounce "parched" as "par-ched" otherwise it doesn't rhyme that great.)

Marlon Brando...to someone (I never saw the whole film as I don't like Brando) in "A Streetcar Named Desire":  "You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am."

Shakespeare:  "With much envy thou woulds't have shown me once...but in mine own haste to perchance sup with those whose houses I'd caught but a glimpse in passing...whose despicable nature I am bound to in this mortal life...I await -- as always, but a carriage footman - and thine own boot...the door between our worlds."  (You know...I have no clue what I just said...but I like it.  I think it's a sillyoquy.  Ha!  I made yet another word up...which is both "silly" and "Shakespeare-y".)

Humphrey Bogart to somebody (again, I never watched the whole film as I don't really like Bogart, either)  in "The Maltese Falcon":  "The stuff that dreams are made of."

Shakespeare:  "To sleep...perchance to dream...to dream of stuff...that dreams are made of."

Okay, that last did kind of sucketh, as old Will would probably say if he wrere alive today, but it struck me as odd that all the quotes I did...and I didn't do this on purpose...were from films I just don't like.  I think Shakespeare would have a fancy was of saying it...but I find that pretty ironic.

Now go on over to "We Work for Cheese" and check out all the other writers' takes on "Shakespearean English."