Battleship is fun, if fluffy entertainment, and it’s hardly the works of Shakespeare. But what if a scene from Battleship was, in fact, penned by the Bard?
Yoni Brenner provided this Shakespearean parody, which actually functions as a pointed review of Battleship rather than straight satire. Instead of earnestly translating Battleship into iambic pentameter (which, would have been pretty funny in and of itself), Brenner uses the framework of a Shakespearean play to skewer the movie’s ludicrous premise and distractingly recognizable actors:
CAPTAIN
Space robots? Art thou sure sweet Rihanna?
For yea, I cannot recall any such
Robots in the original board game.
Only a grid of numbers and letters,
And cheap plastic pegs with which for keeping score.
THE GUY FROM TRUE BLOOD
Thou rememberest correctly O Captain
But the gods at Hasbro hath recognized
Long ago that the Battleship brand
Couldst not survive on grids and pegs alone.
Hence the space robots.
CAPTAIN
I see thy logic.
What say’st thou Riggins from Friday Night Lights?
RIGGINS
Pray let me defer to the True Blood Guy,
For alas, I have forgotten my lines.
I’m just waiting for someone to perform Shakespeare’s Battleship in the park.
Excerpts from William Shakespeare’s Battleship [McSweeney’s via Neatorama]
