The Skellingcorner

Six Shakespeare adaptations

listing-to-port

1. Titus and Ronicus. Somewhat like Titus Andronicus, but with the addition of Titus’s wisecracking brother, Ronicus Andronicus. Known for that one wild slapstick scene with the pie at the end.

2. The Complete The’s of Shakespeare. Consists of every ‘the’ that Shakespeare wrote, delivered in an appropriate manner for each instance. Has the advantage of being much easier for a million monkeys to type. Is therefore much kinder to monkeys than the alternative. Please consider the monkeys.

3. Henry V in space. We begin the play awaiting the arrival of the French Ambassadors. They are coming from France, which is seven light-years away and several hundred metres under the newly-risen Atlantic. It may be a long wait.

4. A Twelfth Night’s Hamlet. In which Hamlet is shipwrecked on the way to England and has to dress up as a woman dressing up as a man to in order to evade detection whilst avenging his father’s murder, but comedy strikes when he vacillates a little too long in an oddly-mislocated enchanted forest. Everyone ends up both completely heterosexually married and also dead.

5. The Scottish Play, a theatre-safe version of Macbeth which avoids bad luck by never mentioning the title character’s name or indeed anyone else’s name either. Explores issues of identity and confusion. Usually there is at least one murder, but nobody is quite sure of who by who. In fact, because nobody is sure who is king, or indeed what the succession actually is, it naturally follows that the only way to ensure kingship is to kill everyone.

6. Juliet and Cressida. It may have been that Cressida found some way to take advantage of Shakespeare’s not-always-consistent time periods to perform an audacious act of time travel. We are still not entirely sure. In any case we tracked down Juliet and Cressida to ask them what the plot had been, since they were both notably still alive in the present day. But Juliet made a rude gesture at us and slammed the door. It may be that only the protagonists know the plot.

kasper-the-unfriendly-ghost:
“ araku-validrava:
“ riskpig:
“ eg515:
“ theboywhocan11:
“ theleakypen:
“ lourdesdeath:
“ cobaltmoony:
“ silentwalrus1:
“ justgot1:
“ cricketcat9:
“ artykyn:
“ prideling:
“ gunvolt:
“im going to have a stroke
”
Instead...

gunvolt

im going to have a stroke

prideling

Instead try…

Person A: You know… the thing
Person B: The “thing”?
Person A: Yeah, the thing with the little-! *mutters under their breath* Como es que se llama esa mierda… THE FISHING ROD

artykyn

As someone with multiple bilingual friends where English is not the first language, may I present to you a list of actual incidents I have witnessed:

Forgot a word in Spanish, while speaking Spanish to me, but remembered it in English. Became weirdly quiet as they seemed to lose their entire sense of identity.

Used a literal translation of a Russian idiomatic expression while speaking English. He actually does this quite regularly, because he somehow genuinely forgets which idioms belong to which language. It usually takes a minute of everyone staring at him in confused silence before he says “….Ah….. that must be a Russian one then….”

Had to count backwards for something. Could not count backwards in English. Counted backwards in French under her breath until she got to the number she needed, and then translated it into English.

Meant to inform her (French) parents that bread in America is baked with a lot of preservatives. Her brain was still halfway in English Mode so she used the word “préservatifes.” Ended up shocking her parents with the knowledge that apparently, bread in America is full of condoms.

Defined a slang term for me……. with another slang term. In the same language. Which I do not speak.

Was talking to both me and his mother in English when his mother had to revert to Russian to ask him a question about a word. He said “I don’t know” and turned to me and asked “Is there an English equivalent for Нумизматический?” and it took him a solid minute to realize there was no way I would be able to answer that. Meanwhile his mom quietly chuckled behind his back.

Said an expression in English but with Spanish grammar, which turned “How stressful!” into “What stressing!”

Bilingual characters are great but if you’re going to use a linguistic blunder, you have to really understand what they actually blunder over. And it’s usually 10x funnier than “Ooops it’s hard to switch back.”

cricketcat9

I use Spanish and English daily, none is my native language. When I’m tired or did not have enough sleep I loose track of who to address in which language; I caught myself explaining something in Spanish to my English-speaking friends more than once. When I’m REALLY tired I’ll throw some Polish words in the mix.

justgot1

There is nothing more painful than bad fake Spanglish by an American writer. Bilingual people don’t just randomly drop words in nonsensical places in their sentences ffs. “I’m muy tired! I think I’ll go to my cama and go to sleep!“ Nobody does that.

From my bilingual parents:

- Only being able to do math in their original language. “Ok so that would beeeeee … *muttering* ocho por cuatro menos tres…”

- Losing words and getting mad at you about it. “Gimme the - the - UGH, ESA COSA AHI’ CARAJO. The thing, the oven mitt. Christ.”

- Making asides to you in Spanish even though you’ve told them to not do this as lots of people here speak Spanish. “Oye, mira esa, que cara fea.” “MOM FFS WE’RE IN A MEXICAN NEIGHBORHOOD.”

- Swears in English don’t count.

- Swears in Spanish mean you’d better fucking run, kid.

- Introducing you to English-only Americans using your Spanish name so that they mispronounce your name for all eternity because that’s what your mom said your name was. “Hi Dee-yanna!” “sigh, Just call me Diana.” “Yeah but your mom said your name was Dee-yanna.”

- Your parents give you a name that only makes sense in Spanish. “Your name is Floor?” “No, my name is Flor.” “FLOOR?” “Sigh.”

silentwalrus1

- conjugating English words with Russian grammar and vice versa. Sometimes both at once, which is extra fun. самолет -> самолетас -> самолетасы

- when vice versa, dropping English articles entirely. The, a, an: all gone. e.g. “I go to store and buy thing, I fix car and go to place.” This also happens when i am very tired

- speaking English with heavy accent you don’t actually have - when my family and I are switching over fast, we say the English words in a very heavy Russian accent that mostly doesn’t show up otherwise

bonus:

- keysmashing in the wrong language when your keyboard is still switched over

- using ))))) instead of :))) or other culture-specific emoji/typing quirks

cobaltmoony

all of the above

lourdesdeath

I don’t actually speak Tagalog, but my mom’s Filipino. One of my favorite things is when she forgets how to preposition, so something is ‘in the table’.

theleakypen

SOMEHOW I NEVER REBLOGGED THIS?!?!?!?!? this is one of my absolute favorite posts on all of tumblr

also, to add to the pile of fun things bilinguals do: cackling over bilingual puns that nobody else in the room will get and then being completely unable to explain why this is funny

theboywhocan11

Interesting. Reblogging this for future reference.

eg515

my favourite is that feeling when you have the perfect response to something but halfway through saying it you realised it’s in a language the other person doesn’t speak so you either just kind of… fade out, or try desperately to make it make sense in the other language

riskpig

I lose my place all the time when I’m counting in English, but never when I count in German.

araku-validrava

I’m swedish but at this point I’m so fluent in english that I can switch between languages on a dime.

kasper-the-unfriendly-ghost

i hate forgetting a word in english and having to describe but realizing that i cant describe it in english. so im just stuttering between russian and english and none of my english speaking friends can help

The Skellingcorner

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

10 Essential Tips For Eliminating Distractions From Your Writing

Six Shakespeare adaptations