How to Modernize Shakespeare

Elect Iago president. Put any Bloody

Fool on center stage. Have Gagas and Dodos

Play ladies and lords. Let Prince Hamlet

Starve. (Exit Bear! Devour them all!

Take selfies with cubs on ice floes; snap

Phantom grizzlies stalking failing schools.)

Have plays directed by pseudo-originals:

Make Lear queer! Make Caliban Afghan,

A much-abused, rude, sun-bronzed god.

Let Paroles oppress Prospero for laughs.

Have the Duke of Vienna ban great books.

Fill libraries with Ecstasy and Me by

Peter Quince. Make poor toms a-cold.

Have Goneril or Regan incarnate Ronald

Reagan--Finis! What about Jacques' Seven

Ages of Man? Let's mewl and puke on

At stage one. Stream cartoons; do not

Read poetry. Drink cola, think cable.

Thomas Dorsett

first appeared in POEM, Number 124, February 2020