Saturday, November 4, 2017

Shakespeare Reference in Monty Python Calendar

Yup, there are Shakespeare references everywhere. I’ve been going through boxes of magazines and other things of dubious worth that I’d been saving. I found a Monty Python 2002 calendar (“Now For Something Completely Different”), and it contains a Shakespeare reference. On the June page, there is a joke about “Famous First Drafts,” including a bit of one of Portia’s speeches from The Merchant Of Venice, with “Eeni-meeni-miney-mo” becoming “The quality of mercy is not strain’d.” Certainly an improvement.


By the way, unrelated to Shakespeare, there is also an early draft of Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier,” which reads, “Mary had a little lamb/And it was always gruntin/She tied it to a five bar gate/And kicked its little cunt in.” Coming from Sterling, Massachusetts (the land of Mary and her bloody lamb), I have fondness for this bit.

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