The Long Locked Hamlet - a parody

Hello folks...

I think I have a tolerably good sense of humour…ha ha ha…(see…I told you!!!) …at some point of time in the past, I thought I should seriously pursue humour (huh?) …so, I thought, I’d write humour-laced stuff …my first attempt at writing, as it turned out, was combined with acting it out…I had joined CIEFL in 1992…and there was this Participants’ Day and I thought I’d participate in the entertainment programme…if you observe carefully, there was a lot of thinking going on at that time…mind it…if I have to go on stage, I had to either act or sing or tell(?) jokes…I thought I’d do some acting…and write my own script for that…at that time Prof. Balasubramanian used to teach Phonetics…it was a new subject for me and I liked it and Prof. Bala’s enthusiasm in teaching it…I liked the way he would speak in various English accents…and for some reason the way he pronounced the word ‘cut’ struck me…I had grown my hair long at that time, not very long though…and I liked Hamlet…somehow, all these came together and I wrote a parody of ‘To be or not to be’ and enacted it on stage…Prof Bala was sitting in the first row and in the next class he said, so, you parodied me too…or some such thing to that effect…then this parody was also published in the CIEFL participants’ newsletter… people liked it…I have a photo of that brief performance…but too many microphone stands have covered my princely stature and clouded my royal visage…so no photo…only the parody…my first attempt at comedy…if comedy is the stuff of laughter please read on…(I am trying to write Shakespearean!!)

The Long Locked Hamlet
[with profound apologies to the bal/rd]

To cut or not to cut
that is the question.
Whether it is manly in this world
to suffer the itchings and scratchings
of long hair or to take arms against and by
cutting…end them.
To cut, to shave – No more –
and by a tonsure to say we end
the tortures and a million natural
locks that head is heir to.
‘Tis a deliverance devoutly to be wished
To cut, to shave – to shave –
perchance to bleed; ayyo, there’s the nick.
There it is suspect, that makes
a nuisance of so long hair.
For who would bear the itchings and
scratchings of lice, mice and dandruff ?
The owner’s envy and the neighbour’s pride.
The locks of untended growth,
the love’s delay.
When I myself might pare it with a
bare pare of scissors.
Who would fardels bear,
To sweat and stink under such heavy
locks?
But the dread of identity after tonsure.
Thus locks make idiots of us all.
And thus the natural hue of hair is
covered over with a horrible
layer of dandruff.
– Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! – Nymph, in Thy
prayers be all my locks remembered.
Take me to a barber-y, Ophelia –
Lead thy ways to a barber-y,
Where’s your father, the Barber!

*****

Ok only or what?