Take the Coen Brothers’ 1998 cult film, The Big Lebowski, and put it in Shakespearean verse, and what do you get? Two Gentlemen of Lebowski as written by Adam Bertocci. It begins:
In wayfarer’s worlds out west was once a man,
A man I come not to bury, but to praise.
His name was Geoffrey Lebowski called, yet
Not called, excepting by his kin.
That which we call a knave by any other name
Might bowl just as sweet. Lebowski, then,
Did call himself ‘the Knave’, a name that I,
Your humble chorus, would not self-apply
In homelands mine; but, then, this Knave was one
From whom sense was a burden to extract,
And of the arid vale in which he dwelt,
Also dislike in sensibility;
Mayhap the very search for sense reveals
The reason that it striketh me as most
Int’resting, yea, inspiring me to odes.
The Wall Street Journal has more on this creative bit that has gone viral during the past week, and will be soon performed on stage in NYC. See Kottke.org for more on that.
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