Archive for 1984

‘Alternative Stanzas’: Shakespeare on Trump

Posted in creative writing, criticism, stupidity, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on January 25, 2017 by drayfish

shakespeare-trump

This past weekend something amazing happened!

I was hunting through my garage and I stumbled across some original William Shakespeare manuscripts.  They were just sitting there, tucked underneath a box of old Robotech toys and a punctured inflatable pool.  Original, signed documents by William Shakespeare, the English language’s most extraordinary poet and dramatist.

I know, right?!

Obviously, had I made a statement like this in the past, I would have been attacked by the liberal media and the intelligentsia for having nothing to prove my claims.  “But don’t you live in Australia, nowhere near Stratford Upon Avon?” they would have asked.  “And wasn’t your garage only built in the 1970s, centuries after Shakespeare died?” they would tediously continue.  “And wasn’t this poem clearly typed out in a Microsoft Word program, when Shakespeare was probably more of an Apple guy?”  On and on.  Asking questions.  Demanding evidence.  Getting all up in my grill just because no such material has ever been discovered in four centuries of painstaking research and because of my track record of being a ridiculous, inveterate liar.

Well, shut it, eggheads!

We live in a bold, post-truth, fake news, “alternative facts” world now!

Truth is relative!  Objective, demonstrably provable facts are suspect!  War is peace!  Freedom is slavery!  Ignorance is strength!

I found a Shakespeare poem!

I said it.  Loudly.  And Angrily.  So it must be true.  Period.

Enjoy.

‘Alternative Facts’

When Don Trump swears that he is made of truths,

They do believe him, though they know he lies,

That he might think them some untutored youths,

Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.

Thus they excuse the tax returns he fled,

The “proof” of Birtherism, his grand “wall”,

(That Mexico shall pay for, so he said),

And “record crowds” flooding National Mall.

Divesting his stocks, Cuban embargos,

His “charity”, vote fraud, and Russian hacks,

Bankruptcies, draft dodge, failed casinos,

Dozens of women and “unfair” attacks.

They welcome these falsehoods and plate them gold

To buy the lie that “greatness” can be sold.

So anyway, this is clearly an astonishing find.  Not only do these precious artefacts blow open our entire understanding of modern literary history, but I can finally, definitively end the centuries old debate over the real identity of the great bard.  Shakespeare was not secretly Christopher Marlowe or the Earl of Oxford.

He was (as I think many of us always suspected) a witch.

With his powers of prophesy, familiarity with the concept of cyber theft, and lazy, poorly-scanning rhyme structures, he was, undoubtedly, a practitioner of the dark arts.

Also, he appears to have had a Kenyan birth certificate.

And as if all that wasn’t amazing enough: there are notes and drafts for extra stanzas!

See, sonnets, by tradition, are 14 lines long, but it appears that Shakespeare had so much material to draw from in his foreknowledge of Donald Trump’s outrageous, galling, hysterical lies (oops – I mean, “post-true alterna-facts”) that he had to cut several extra lines of verse. Here are just some of the additional stanzas that didn’t make it into the final edit:

Election was “rigged”, but his win’s no fluke,

Clinton need not be stopped with a weapon.

He knew nothing about a David Duke,

But saw Muslims cheering 9/11.

That disabled reporter was not mocked,

And nothing was crooked about Trump U,

He didn’t say Megan Kelly bled on Fox,

And always opposed the Iraq war too.

And “Check out sex tape” was not what he said;

It’s a Chinese hoax, not a warming crisis.

Do “Blacks” shoot 80 percent of “Whites” dead?

No wonder Obama started ISIS.

Ted Cruz’s father probably killed JFK;

He saw footage of cash coming off that plane;

We cannot trust proof from the CIA;

But don’t worry, the swamp will soon be drained.

This is yuuuuuuuuuuge.