No, not a learned disquisition into the romantic and sexual themes in Shakespeare's plays: I've done a lot of that recently and in any case, you lot don't pay me.
Instead, a clip from - against my better judgement - a musical (Kiss Me Kate, an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew), in which two gangsters persuade the leading man that a firm grasp of Shakespeare will make a chap irresistible to the ladies. Male students, take note:
The girls today in society
Go for classical poetry,
So to win their hearts one must quote with ease
Aeschylus and Euripides.
But the poet of them all
Who will start 'em simply ravin'
Is the poet people call
The bard of Stratford-on-Avon.
Brush up your Shakespeare,
Start quoting him now.
Brush up your Shakespeare
And the women you will wow.
Just declaim a few lines from "Othella"
And they think you're a heckuva fella.
If your blonde won't respond when you flatter 'er
Tell her what Tony told Cleopaterer,
And if still, to be shocked, she pretends well,
Just remind her that "All's Well That Ends Well."
Brush up your Shakespeare
And they'll all kowtow.
And if your dramatic tastes are more classically-inclined, here's Christopher Reeve in Hamlet:
1 comment:
Amazing that Cole Porter, in 1948, envisioned the creation of the council district of Stratford-on-Avon. A district that wasn't formed until 1974.
Unless he just butchered Stratford-upon-Avon to make a line scan. Which, rather tragically, it still fails to do.
Oh, and why are you telling us all this? Have you really got nothing better to do than cut-and-paste lyrics from musicals?
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