Happy Birthday, Mr. Shakespeare!

Re: Happy Birthday, Mr. Shakespeare!

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf (uncle of Ryan - a Gopher recruit for next season)

The Tragikal History of King Richard III

ACT VI – Epilogue

RICHARD III, deceased, seated by a grave, holding a skull.

ENTER HAMLET Prince of Denmark, deceased, wearing Wayfarers.

HAMLET [singing]:

Brush up thy Marlowe
Start quoting him now
Brush up…

But soft!

RICHARD:

Ay me!

HAMLET:

Whom do I see beside this gaping grave?
Why good ol’ Dicken, Blighty’s erstwhile king
unkindly hacked to bits at Bosworth Field!
Let’s draw near to find his sighings out.

RICHARD:

Ay me.

HAMLET [sneaking]:

He speaks! O speak again chopp’d monarch!

RICHARD:

Now is the summer of our afterlife,
made somewhat gloomy by our funeral rites;
and all the clouds that rained upon our lot,
in the deep bosom of fair Leicester gather’d.

HAMLET:

What ho, good Richard, of that name the third
to wear fair England’s crown, too short a time.
Down seem’st thou to me, and desponding.
Thy so black mood resembleth close that garb
of inky sable I did sport as in
the halls of gloomy Elsinor I moped.
Art thou so dull and drear that thou woulds’t steal
to earthy pit, my shtick to plagiarize?
Thou must be truly vex’d to so converse
with bony chops, by grave and dirt and muck.
Tell me quickly: park you here a lot?

RICHARD:

Everyone’s a comic now, I see.
Dost thou permit thyself at my expense
a joke to craft of where my bones did lie?
Give, I pray, the rest of that silence
thou did’st prate on before thine own demise.
If not, begone, shove off, and hie the hence.

HAMLET:

Peace, good King. I do but jest.
In earthly life I was a pill, and now
in heav’n’s joys jocund choose I to be –
and not to be as earnest as before.
In life I would have liked to be a card,
perhaps a jack o’ hearts or e’en napes,
e’en as that Yorick was, whose skull you swip’d.
Come, explain. Tell me everything.
Why is royal Dicken in the dumps?

RICHARD:

Less didst thou annoy when in thy ebon
garb thou wert sunk in melancholy deep.
Inky Hamlet I could bear. But deign
I not to suffer Dane transform’d, in shirt
Hawaiian, cracking wise and gamboling.
But nay, stay a bit and tell me true.
Art thou not mooning still over that blond?
That swimming challeng’d girl? What was her name?
Oprah? Something on those lines?

HAMLET:

Okay okay. Enough. Thy point I take.
Cheap shot. Thou art not well dispos’d.
But tell me. What’s the deal? Get a grip.
Spill it all and list shall I sincere.

RICHARD:

Apology accepted, Prince of Danes.
If thou wilt not take thy face hence at once
I’ll unburden’d be. You asked for it.
Yes, my tomb and long lost place of rest,
beneath that car park less than august was
for monarch royal, e’en one cast down
in wars of rosy houses, white and red.
Now they’ve found my bones and dug me up.
Alchemy scientific they employ’ed
and rituals forensic they performed
upon my matter osseous, my framework
skeletal, my lineage to spy.

HAMLET [sitting down]:

O wizardry most modern! Tell me more!

RICHARD [holding the skull]:

Studied they my skull, my wounds and hacks,
my curvéd back did they interrogate
until, at last, my bones, renovate,
encloséd were in wooden casket fair.

HAMLET:

Much trumpeted was this in media massy.

RICHARD:

They bore me thence, a royal tomb to fill
in Martin’s Church at Leicester.

HAMLET:

And so?

RICHARD:

See’st thou not? Shall I thee explain?
When thou didst breathe in that vale lachrymose
wert thou not a pious Catholic prince?
Surely thou dost sense the sting that thy
bones in clay encloséd are till doom,
in Denmark, once a land of faithful flock.
The Danish realm, as did the Britians’ isle,
slith’ring slid down into mischief sin
of error and schismatical protest.
Their backs they turned on Holy Peter’s smile,
in separation now circumnutate.

HAMLET [aside]:

What a ranting polysyllabic.
Something bad is eating him for sure.

RICHARD:

Woe! More woe! And woe is me!
Thou, Hamlet, royal Dane, must also feel
this piercing sting, e’en in heaven’s bliss!

HAMLET:

Hang on there! Just a second wait!
Dicken, we’re in heaven, see….

RICHARD:

… yes I know.
Paradoxical I choose to be.
In heaven’s bliss are we and in God’s sight
replenish’ed by vision Beatific.
But this is yearly “Talk Like Shakespeare Day”.
The cleric scribe who put us side by side
must needs a post for blog readers to write.
We are therefore stuck here, players fretting.

HAMLET:

O horrible, O horrible, most horrible.

RICHARD:

Shall I say more? List, list, O list!
In course they put my corse in church bereft
of sacrament, of apostolic line,
of teachings clear which no one can suspect.
In angle of a temple Anglican
my bones now lie, far from the Presence Real
as dear to me in life as nothing else.
Entombed am I, unhousel’d evermore.

HAMLET:

Ay, there’s the rub! For in that church
there is no Mass, no priest, no bishop true.

[aside]

Now for effect dramatic shall I droop.
Though steep’d in bliss, I’ll put on visage sad.
A pair lugubriously blissful now are we.

RICHARD:

But shall I now reveal my heart’s true wound?
Near so-called cathedra of Leicester were
my bones with some formality interr’d.
But elsewhere Catholic Mass was lifted up
before my exsequies in that lost church.

HAMLET [glancing at his watch and rising]:

Soooo, there you have it, Dick, my buried friend!
All’s well that ends well!

RICHARD:

But wait, there’s more!

HAMLET [aside]:

Who knew…

RICHARD:

Long in the past we shuffled off the coil.
Some centuries of years did pass before
a pope of name Iohanine, large of build,
did bishops call into a solemn meet,
second in the place where Peter’s bones
do faithful Christians come to venerate
upon the hill called Vatican at Rome.
There the Council Father’s would mandate
some several changes to the rites of Mass.
But woe again, and woe! For those few points
were seized upon by certain buggy clerks
who then hijackéd all commands reforming.
Though “nihil innovatur” bishops said,
the buggy clerks changed all the black and red.
An innovated ordo did they scribe
and foisted it on Catholics far and wide.
Confusion and decorum’s loss did reign
and no one did the liturgists restrain
from ravages, in power goggle-eyed.
Art did they in, and the noble shrines
builded in love from forebear’s gold and sweat.
They tore them ‘till they bled. Everything
upon which they could work their heinous spells
they did amend, annihilating despots.
But, heark ye, friend. I do digress. I see
that you do stare and wonder at my rant.
Behind thine eyes can I descry the same
indignation and loss of which I speak.
But soft. I shall be circumspect.
To make the story short, which could be long
in telling as the tale of Trojan grief,
as wending as the paths of him who yearn’d
to see belovéd Ithaca again,
the wily polytrop and trickster sly,
as lengthy as the yarn which Virgil…

[HAMLET consults his watch and looks toward the nearby pub]

To make the story short, an Ordo new,
wholly Novus did they cobble up.
This is the rite by which they prayed when near
the river Soar they offered holy Mass
my once lost bones to reinter with care,
remembrances and prayers. This is the rite.
They did not use the book for Mass which you,
which I, knew, when we with our mortal step
trod under sun and stars and breathed in air.
They could have used our own belovéd prayer.
For behold, there came another Pope, of frame
more delicate by far, in name twice blessed,
in lore of God and ritual reknown’d.
This pope freed up again the ancient use.
This pope did liberate our hallowed rites.
Rites Roman he unchained, and op’ed the way
for enrichments organic, mutual.
Reason enough, I say, for Summorum.
But no. The sense that’s common to us all
did stare directly in their faces wan.
I, who lived in century fifteenth,
got Ordo Novus, not tradition’s Mass!
So sit now I upon this ground to tell
the too sad tales of requia of kings.

[ENTER LEAR]

LEAR:

What ho! Hail, fellows, and well met.
This Day is called the Feast of Shakespeare,
or something on that line. We should find a pub.
What’s this I see? Of somber mien? Depressed?
What’s up? What problem could there be in heav’n?
O Richard, of thy name the third, this white head,
which heavy wore a crown, shall hear thee out.

HAMLET [aside]

He had to say it….

RICHARD:

Thanks, Lear. But come, let us go. Our Danish pal
impatient grows the brews at yon fair pub
completely to explore. Let us go hence,
and there this “Talk Like Shakespeare Day”
observe with beverage apt. It’s happy hour.
And as we go I’ll tell you, celtic lord, what gives.
You see, and stop me if I’ve told you this before,
they’ve found my bones and dug me up!

HAMLET: [aside]

I should have stuck to Marlow.

RICHARD:

Alchemy scientific they employ’ed
and rituals forensic they performed
upon my matter osseous, my framework
skeletal, my lineage to spy….

LEAR:

Tech spiffy! Tell, pray, everything.

HAMLET:

Richard? Hey! Initial rounds on thee.

[EXEUNT OMNES]

Although no one really "knows" on what day the world's greatest playwright was born, April 26, 1564 is often celebrated as his birthday because that's the date that is reported as the day he was baptized, and since infant mortality was so high back then, many babies were baptized on the day they were born to make sure that they were baptized at all. Some people like to say he was born on April 23 because he died on April 23, 1616 and they like the symmetry that would bring.

There's an apocryphal story about an anti-intellectual who sniffed, "I don't understand why there is so much fuss about Shakespeare: all he did was take a bunch of famous quotes and string them together."

So many of his plays have been performed so well by so many of the world's best actors; the stories have been recast into many different settings and have produced hit after hit after hit through the centuries that followed.

Some people are surprised at how many great movies and shows have derived from his plays.

and then on top of all those great dramas and great comedies, we have all those sonnets as well?

Happy Birthday!

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