A Bit About Me

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Along with my daily duties as founder and head writer of HumorMeOnline.com, in 2003, I took the Grand Prize in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (also known as the "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night" competition). I've also been a contributor to "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" and the web's "The Late Show with David Letterman". I also occupy my time writing three blogs, "Blogged Down at the Moment", "Brit Word of the Day" and "Production Numbers"...and my off-time is spent contemplating in an "on again/off again" fashion...my feable attempts at writing any one of a dozen books. I would love to write professionally one day...and by that I mean "actually get a paycheck".

16 February 2014

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."



10 comments:

  1. Very clever. That first one had me laughing.

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  2. How would Am Shakespeare have said, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning"?

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  3. Nice job! I won't be able to think of whistling the same way ever again.

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  4. Anon - I kept to the OLD Classics. A couple I wanted to do - but I deemed them too young. Plus I figured you didn't want to read 10 or something - so I refrained. :)

    Thanks Dufus and ReformingGeek. :)

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  5. Dammit - "anon" would have been great because Shakespeare liked to use that one a lot I think. "I will be there anon." "Oh, nurse, come here anon." Everyone was anoning back then I think.

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  6. Very clever and you did an excellent job translating those old lines into even older English.

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  7. Frank Lee MeiDere16 February, 2014 14:54

    I was going to give praise in some kind of Shakespearian English, but I just couldn't match anything here. Truly wonderful.

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  8. Wow this is actually pretty damn amazing! SO CLEVER AND WELL DONE... you nailed it!

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  9. To sleep... perchance to dream... of stuff! My nightmare! Too much stuff in my house!

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  10. That was cute, and far from suckething.

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