So Ive Shared A Few G&S-style Parodies Of Shakespeare Here, But DID YOU KNOW That W.S. Gilbert Himself

So I’ve shared a few G&S-style parodies of Shakespeare here, but DID YOU KNOW that W.S. Gilbert himself actually wrote a parody of Hamlet? It’s called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and it really deserves to be better-known. Highlights include:

Everybody lives!

Ophelia describes Hamlet as “idiotically sane / With lucid intervals of lunacy”.

Claudius’s secret shame is not that he murdered Hamlet Sr., but that many years ago he wrote a spectacularly awful 5-act tragedy. Almost all copies have been destroyed and people are forbidden to even speak of it.

Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Ophelia steal the one surviving copy and trick Hamlet into putting on a production of this play to get him in trouble with Claudius.

There’s an amazing scene where Hamlet attempts to do his “To be or not to be” speech, only for R&G to keep interrupting him with unwanted commentary…

HAMLET To sleep, perchance to –

ROSENCRANTZ Dream. That’s very true. I never dream myself. But Guildenstern dreams all night long OUT LOUD.

GUILDENSTERN With blushes, sir, I do confess it true!

HAMLET This question, gentlemen, concerns me not.

 …until finally:

HAMLET [really angry] Gentlemen, It must be patent to the merest dunce Three persons CAN’T soliloquize at once!

“It would have been nice to have had unicorns.”

— Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

March 27 is International Theatre Day.

In 1961, March 27 was established as World Theatre Day by the International Theatre Institute. If you’re looking at a calendar, that means today. So let’s celebrate!

Please, wherever you are…

remember a favorite show tune

pop in a soundtrack or cast recording

watch a movie of a musical or play that you cherish

better yet, buy a ticket to a live musical or play (as pricy a proposition as that may sometimes be today).

If you never go to the theatre, you’ve never been to the theatre, or you don’t know what theatre is about, and you’re reading this, and you live somewhere close to a theatre, be it legit theatre, dinner theatre, university theatre, or any kind, you must go, and you must try and experience that. The theatre is like nothing else on this whole planet, and the reason for that is that it is alive.

Ros. Ophelia!

Oph. (delighted and surprised) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern! This meeting likes me much. We have not met since we were babies!

Ros. The Queen hath summoned us, and I have come in a half-hearted hope that I may claim once more my baby-love!

Oph. Alas, I am betrothed!

Ros. Betrothed? To whom?

Oph. To Hamlet!

Ros. Oh, incomprehensible! Thou lovest Hamlet?

Oph. (demurely). Nay, I said not so – I said we were betrothed.

— W.S. Gilbert, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern”, 1874

Hamlet wearing a black T-shirt with the text "I'm Danish. What's your superpower?"

“You are reborn with the roses, in every spring.”

— Juan Ramón Jiménez, from The Selected Writings; “Love,” wr. c. 1911