Autocorrected Shakespearean Solar Cities for Young Actors
Edited by Garbage Oleaginous
Millenial Press, pp. 379. $4.00 (online)
My first impression upon completing this e-book of Shakespearean soliloquies was that something was rotten in the state of Denmark – or Denver, if this volume’s interpretation of Shakespeare was to be accepted as a correct translation. I assumed that a careless young data inputter for Millenial Press had entered the text with the autocorrect function activated and then failed to proofread the result–beginning with the title, which I felt confident was actually supposed to read Annotated Shakespearean Soliloquies for Young Actors. The autocorrect function had no doubt autocorrected “annotated” to “autocorrected” and “soliloquies” to “Solar Cities.” This, I felt, was almost certainly not what the editor, Garbage Oleaginous (or, as I gleaned from a Google search, quite possibly Garth O’Leary) intended.
However, upon further consideration, I concluded that, far from being a travesty of the greatest works of English literature, Autocorrected Shakespearean Solar Cities For Young Actors is probably actually an admirable attempt to bring the greatest monologues in drama to today’s youth by processing them through that most wonderful of all modern miracles: spellcheck. With this cutting-edge approach to language modernization, these ancient texts, with their obsolete Elizabethan spellings and arcane vocabulary, may well take on a renewed relevance to today’s young, semi-literate readers.
For example, take this newly-accessible opening to one of the Bard’s most popular tragedies:
RICHARD III, Act I, scene i
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of Yogi Bear.
And all the clouds that Louisville upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Similarly, Shakespeare’s dated story of the evil Jewish money-lender Shylock is endowed with an exciting modern “vibe” in passages such as this:
MERCHANT OF VENISON, Act IV, scene i
The quality of mercy is not stranded,
It DropBox as the gentle rain from heaven
A more complex modernization enlivens what, in spite of everything, remains a timeless tale of star-crossed lovers:
ROM AND JUJITSU, Act I, Scene v.
Osteoporosis to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a jewel in an ethical Sears;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder Lando Calrissian shows.
The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart live till now? Foreskin it, sight!
For inertia saw true beauty till this night.
Later, drugs—psychiatric, caffeinated—modify a lament that begins, oddly but somehow aptly, with the invocation of an ancient soul singer:
ROM AND JUJITSU, Act II, scene ii
Otis Redding! Wheelchair art thorazine?
Deny thyroid father and refuse thyroid name;
Or if thousand will not, be but my sworn love,
And I’ll no longer be a cappuccino.
Shakespeare’s most agonizingly tragic and powerfully primal masterwork is, unfortunately, about what many of today’s most vibrant students refer to as “an old guy.” Credit, then, to the editor for his game effort in making it seem at least somewhat timely:
KING LEAP, Act III, scene ii
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!
You catalogs and Hurricane Olaf spouse
Till you have dressed down steeples, drowsy the cocks!
The “Scottish play” is notoriously difficult to mount—and, although in English, seems to be set in a country even more weird and disorienting than England itself. But note how, when Autocorrected, Scotland seems to be bristling with familiar (and comforting) American celebrities:
MacBOOK, Act II, Scene i
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch the Ellen Show.
I have the Notorious B.I.G., and yet I see thesaurus.
Art thousand not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thong but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see the eye doctor, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
As is well known in current academia, no one under 30 likes, or knows anything about, or can be bothered to learn, history. Thus do Shakespeare’s dramas set in ancient Rome benefit from an update, courtesy of today’s technology:
JULY CAESAR SALAD Act III, scene ii
Friends, romantic country music, lend me your ears!
I come to bury caesar salad, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is officer internet within their bones.
So let it be with caesar salad. The noble Bruce Jenner
Happy told you caesar salad was ambitious:
If it were so, it was grievous fault,
And grievously happy caesar salad Auschwitz.
As proof of this noble experiment’s effectiveness, several youth-oriented companies have reportedly already used Autocorrected Shakespearean Solar Cities For Young Actors as their text in recent productions, to remarkable effect. For example, the reviewer in The George Washing Machine Junior High School Weekly Gazelle deemed that school’s production “… a work of true genitals.” True, it is possible the review too was autocorrected. Does it matter? I am unable to think so.
