Wortley Clutterbuck
Featuring some of our favorite characters from Shakespeare.
Recalling Benedick, that swell,
romancing Beatrice, ‘tho hell;
‘tis evident his taste is meet
and courting her is quite the feat;
we all applaud his waggish flair,
acknowledging he’s debonair;
there’s ev’ry reason to surmise
he’ll win her heart as well her thighs,
but he’s a beardless boy ‘til he
can plight his troth to tragedy.
Petruchio, he knows his broads
and often will out-wit the odds;
but Katherina is no dunce
and it is she whom he confronts;
their quarrels and complaints are cute
while their inklings circumvolute;
and ‘tho his suit seems roseate
and we give praise to his vast wit,
he is jejune ‘til tragedy
accedes to him a wife to be.
Perpend then Falstaff’s comic pose
whose wicked quips proffered shadows
of checquer’d fate. But still we laugh
at ev’ry arbitrary gaffe;
now, I’m not saying, drinking sack
and playing noddy is thine tack;
but hubris, as a gen’ral trait,
was Sir John’s fate to impetrate;
so if ye marry surquedry,
thine almanac be tragedy.
’Tis possible Orlando might
salute the lines that you indite;
it wasn’t very subtle what
he rhymed upon those tree trunks cut;
who knows what cures quaint Ganymede
might offer you should he proofread
those stanzas that perhaps chagrined
someone as fair as Rosalind;
the best lines cut into a tree
are oft revised by tragedy.
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