This morning an article in the Guardian about Martin Baum’s new modern-Shakespeare parody To Be or Not to Be, Innit, which looks absolutely dreadful (but then, I don’t speak chav), reminded me of The Skinhead Hamlet, so I looked it up on-line and found the full-text, as you can do, and was reminded of how brilliant it is:
ACT II SCENE I
A corridor in the castle.
Enter HAMLET reading. Enter POLONIUS.
POLONIUS: Oi! You!
HAMLET: Fuck off, grandad!
(Exit POLONIUS. Enter ROSENCRANZ and GUILDENSTERN.)
ROS & GUILD: Oi! Oi! Mucca!
HAMLET: Fuck off, the pair of you!
…and so on.
And it occurs to me that I had no idea who wrote the thing. It was in the Faber Book of Parodies, which I had picked up at a library, when I was competing in huminterp in high school and looking for material, but for some reason, my coach didn’t think it was a good choice. I haven’t seen a copy of the Faber Book of Parodies for years; I looked for it recently, wondering if I would appreciate a larger percentage of the book, now that I am more widely read.
Anyway, the places I found the full text on-line didn’t have the author, but Wikipedia lets me know that it was none other than Richard Curtis, of Blackadder, Vicar of Dibley and Four Weddings and a Funeral fame. That’s the problem with the internet, you learn something new every day.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.