Shakespeare think he so hot

Millions of words have been written about Shakespeare, though the words that survive from Shakey’s own quills come to 884,421.

These are not individual words, particular words, but the number of published words that shamelessly “woke” so-called “experts” believe Shakespeare wrote.

The word “love,” for example, plus its cognates loves and loved, occur 2,146 times. Add beloved (59) and loving (133), and we have 2,338 times that your famous nonbinary Shakey referred to love, directly or indirectly, in his Works.

That comes to 2/1,000th of 1%.

Yet a lot of people are saying that Shakey was the greatest love poet of all time.

Greatest love poet? When 0.002643537 of his words were love?

Balderdash. In my brief transit through this whirling world I have written many love poems to women of my acquaintance. Some of them I hardly knew. Oodles. Scads. Copious love poems to oodles and scads.

And what, to borrow lexicon of your supposed Greatest Love Poet, hath it yielded me?

Not a damn thing. In fact, many ungrateful wenches have concerted in vituperation against me.

Allow me to illustrate. Here is a so-called “poem” from one of Shakey’s many weak late plays:

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

Nor the furious winter’s rages;

Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:

Golden lads and girls all must,

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

• Cymbeline , IV, ii

This is a poem? No, my friends, this is a waste of words. Here is how I have rewritten it, in my forthcoming book, Shakespeare for the Rest of Us.

Hi. Hot today, what? ‘Course it was cold last week. I had the week off. Paid. Home, you know. I’m a chimney sweeper. Well-paid, you know … Where are you going?

All the sentiment of Shakey’s 37 words, reduced to 31. All the sentiment, with 16% fewer words. Nearly one in six words eliminated. Talk about efficiency. Talk about anticipatory obedience.

Here’s another one, first Shakey, then me. See if you can tell the difference.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus

Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.

Now me:

Listen up, Trumpfucks,

Turn off your goddam iPhones for a minute.

Take those goddam plugs outa your ears

and listen to me.

The age of public works is dead,

or haven’t you heard that on Fox News?

Well, you poor suckers gonna grievously suffer it.

Once again: Shakey’s 62 words reduced to 45, with nearly the same meaning: A savings to you, the reader, of 27%! Tariffs excluded.

Need I say more? Probably not. Yet

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going;

And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses,

Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,

And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,

Which was not so before.

• MacBeth, II, i

See how brave I am, subscribers to this column?

I am all but asking to be deported to El Salvador for reminding y’all that Macbeth killed the king.

Is that a deportable offense? To mention Macbeth  in a newspaper column? And that he killed a king. And several other guys? Through hired assassins.

But, hold, enough! Who are those uniformed gunmen knocking down my door? ICE? FBI? DoD?

Fox News?

Unhand me, you obedient morons. Do we have a king in this country? A tyrant?

I refuse to … mmphh … (here the transmission is muffled)  …

But why am I here in a giant prison in El Salvador?

(Editor’s note: In response to repeated requests for comment, only one U.S. Senate aide responded: “Will these hands ne’er be clean?” His body was found in a Dumpster on Pennsylvania Avenue, hands bound behind his back, mouth and throat stuffed full of Big Macs.)

The rest is silence.