Loving The Alien

icarian task: when you have a task you know you’re going to fail at anyways, so why not have some fun with it before it all comes crashing down

cassandrean task: when you have to deal with people you KNOW won’t listen to you, despite having accurate information, and having to watch them fumble about when you told them the solution from the start (most often witnessed in customer service)

RADISHN’T: Prithee, which one of you had planned to tell

Of diff'rent flavours gained by simple act

Of brewing tea with water hot, not cold?

MOTHMAN: Egad! you poured the water cold? Wherefore?!

FROG: An answer from you, Radish, I must beg.

RADISHN’T: Indeed I did, dear friends - why does this shock?

Without the guide of others I assumed

That heat was merely added for the sake

Of expediting this solution’s brewing!

Half a decade I have spent, or more,

Not questioning this worldview I had made.

In fact, I am myself a bit surprised

That you might think that I, your dearest friend,

Might have a patience of sufficient stock

To wait until a pot of water boils.

FROG: Three minutes overtaxes patience so?

The microwave will beep when it is done!

CATS'N: My friend, this answer vexes me the more!

Can it be true that thou dost boil by nuke?!

FROG: Are you in turn, my friend, so shocked to know

That I have not the patience, like our Root,

To boil upon the stove our favour’d drink?

CATS'N: It takes less than a minute!

FROG: On what plate?

Perhaps your dinner cooks atop the sun?

CATS'N: How long can take your stove to fill the task

Of boiling but a single cup alone?

FROG: In minutes?

CATS'N: Yes!

FROG: I counted seven, once.

CATS'N: Perhaps you ought to have your timepiece checked!

If on a middle heat you place the cup

You soon will have the scalding drink you crave.

Two minutes, in a mug upon the plate

Or even less, if you should have a pot.

FROG: You cause me tears - is this how thou dost live?

You place upon the iron stove a mug?

A mug, ceramic, filled with water cold?

How do these flames, though medium in height,

Not shatter like a glass this fragile thing?

Surely, then, your kitchen is bewitched

With magicks far beyond the mortal ken!

(The FOUR realise they have wandered into the THRONE ROOM. The ROYAL COURT watches with fascination.)

The fact that nearly every line is so metrically considered- near perfect iambic pentameter witb the occasional trochee for emphasis, but usually retaining a strong sense of rhythm nonetheless. And then the king comes in at the end, so wound in his disbelief that his response is reduced to prose.

And the even better thing about this is how easy it would have been to structure the king’s line into iambic pentameter: it is effectively already said as such because of the way wizardlyghost has phrased it, yet they haven’t!! They did not break the line, rendering what, by all typically of both Shakespearean canon and other periods context should be the character with the most command and authority in the whole play. If there was ever a more effective way to convey a genuine “what the fuck??”, I know of it not.

But it gets better!! Shakespeare regularly uses meter in order to represent class divide; the nobility usually speak in iambic pentameter, save for a few particularly chosen moments (e.g. Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness, Othello’s realisation of Desdemona’s “betrayal”) or just lines where Shakespeare needs to suggest high emotion or when a character is lost in thought. Supernatural characters like the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Witches in Macbeth usually speak in trochaic tetrameter, an inversion of iambic pentameter. Lower class characters, particularly those used for comic relief (usually under the influence of alcohol), speak with no structure at all: their language is plain prose. Therefore, if this is a conversation between these types of characters, as the prompt from silvergirachi suggests, why the hell are the characters speaking so eloquently???

Now, this is Tumblr. It is subsequently logical to assume that this may have merely been a humorous recreation (and a very good one at that) of the Shakespearean style in a way that is widely recognisable to an audience that may or may not have read a great deal of Shakespeare, which is understandable. However, logic is boring so I’m going to probe further into this to the point where future historians will look to this as an example of overanalysing.

The inherent eloquence of the characters here suggests an unusual subversion of the roles typically assumed in Shakespearean comedy. This could be interpreted along two major avenues: firstly, that the rhetoric displayed by the speakers is fundamentally representative of how truth can be expected even from the most seemingly pointless or ludicrous discussions. Furthermore, it could suggest that it matters not how well constructed your speeches are: if you talk bullshit, it’s going to sound that way despite your attempts to hide it.

This is similar but not identical to the second avenue of interpretation: there is the implication that the noblemen in the play are in fact the comic relief characters, therefore implying that the “common people” of the play are the ones whose influence, though not expressed in such a highly spoken manner, makes a lot more sense than whatever the hell this is. If this was a real Shakespeare play, I would call it a subtle exploration into the innate corruption of the rich and powerful. Well done, op.