When I was twelve years old, I wrote a one-act play based on Shakespeare’s, called A Child View of Shakespeare. In it, Juliet does not love Romeo and a Pharaoh – Cleopatra – is disinterested by her suitors. Viola is writing a tell-all book about her boss, and there is the obligatory identical twin quiproquo.
To my young ears, Shakespeare’s iambic pentametre sounded just as rhythmic and as rhyme-y as Dr. Seuss, so that’s what the play sounds like. Basically, A Child View of Shakespeare is iconic characters stirred up in Macbeth’s witches’ pot to deliciously silly results.
Fast forward two decades (ahem) later, when CBC Writes launched its Shakespeare Selfie Challenge to celebrate the playwright’s 450th birthday, asking Canadians to take a Shakespearean character, situate him or her in a present-day scenario, and write a new soliloquy or monologue (an old-timey selfie) for that character.
So, I dug through A Child’s View of Shakespeare and pulled out a passage to submit to the challenge. I recycled my twelve-year-old self’s banquet-themed monologue and breathed new life into it through Queen of the Fairies Titania’s voice. What if she were the host of a modern-day cooking show?
Click here to read Titania’s Shakespeare Selfie – do you see the Shakespearian and Seussian influence?
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