Erik Didriksen's brilliant new book, Pop Sonnets: Shakespearean Spins on Your Favourite Songs (published by 4th Estate), takes some of our finest pop music, and reimagines the lyrics as Shakespeare would have written them. Which just goes to show, you've never fully understood the impact of a Tay Tay lyric, until you've heard it read aloud in iambic pentameter.
Can you identify the following songs thanks to Didriksen’s Shakespearean versions of them? Answers below. No cheating, thou cream-faced loon.
1.
From western Philadelphia I hail,
where in my youth I’d play upon the green,
‘til - rue the day - I found myself assail’d
by ruffians contemptible and mean.
2
A terror strikes thee at the witching hour
when moonlight’s glow reveals some horrid shape.
Such dread doth strike with petrifying pow’r:
thy screams are mute, thy mouth’s been left agape.
3.
O Mother sweet, I bring thee news of dread -
my life’s at end, for I’ve another slain.
I press’d my crossbow up against his head
And loosed its bolt away into his brain.
4.
‘A barrister! Still, what might we detect
if we let slip the dogs of law, my liege?’
Four score and nineteen problems I possess;
his bitch, however, brings me no distress.
5.
O never shall I vacate from thy side,
nor ever shall I disappoint thee hence,
nor will the day approach that wounded pride,
shall rise from some unfaithful dalliance.
My actions leave thy face unstained by tears
and ledgers of my lies shall remain clear.
Answers
1. DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air
2. Michael Jackson, Thriller
3. Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody
4. Jay Z, 99 Problems
5. Rick Astley, Never Gonna Give You Up
