SOLILOQUI for OUR TIMES
Woke has descended on Stratford-upon-Avon. A jihadi troupe of militants, clad in hooded rainbow cloaks, invaded the premises of the Royal Shakespeare Company on the Poet’s birthday – loudly chanting their signature slogan “They-them! They-them.” Contrapuntal to: “ei,em, eirself!” The scene was eerily lit by a roaring bonfire fueled with pages torn from cheap editions of the Folio. The terrified Trustees trembled as they huddled all night desperately pondering how to respond. At dawn, harrowed and haggard, they surrendered. From a mullioned window, the Director vowed the Company’s dedication to modifying select portions of Shakespeare’s works to bring them into conformity with today’s sensibilities.
In a gesture of virtue signaling, he passed down the new draft of a famed passage from an iconic tragedy. Here it is:
SOLILOQUI
To be a male, or to be a female?
To love Ophelia as the man I am or the woman that I could be?
Or both
That is the question!
Do I love her as another or the self-same?
Indeed, if Truth be told I love her as she or me,
For I love myself – in all my genders
Need I suffer the slings and arrows of Misbegotten gender
Or, by confounding them, end the heart-ache,
and the thousand unnatural shocks of binary tyranny
That psyche is heir to, - ‘tis a consolation
Devoutly to be wished.
To mix and match; ay, there’s the rub;
For what dreams may S/he have
Must give me pause