And Now For Something Completely Different
by Brianna R.

Disclaimer #1: This paper knowingly and willfully plagiarizes and then proceeds to butcher large chunks of copyright-protected material. However, since parody is safeguarded under federal law, I may venture to say that I can suffer no legal repercussions from the taking of such liberties. It suddenly strikes me as strange that I am using my first disclaimer to state that I do not, in fact, need a disclaimer, but I’m sure that I have some sort of mental reasoning behind this.

Disclaimer #2: While this paper exploits a wide variety of authorial voices, Messrs. Chaucer and Twain have been knowingly and willfully excluded from their numbers due to my complete and utter inability to write verse or dialect. I may be accused of being simply “lazy” by this omission, but I truly have at heart the emotional and intellectual well-being of anyone who might be forced to read this.

Disclaimer #3: The “D” word is used approximately 2.5 times during the course of this paper. In at least 2.1 of these cases, the word was taken directly from the original source text. If anyone’s sensibilities are offended in any way, shape, or form, they are free to pretend that I am referring to houses built by beavers during these instances, though I take no responsibility for any narrative confusion that many result from such an interpretation.

Disclaimer #4: The Vatican claims no responsibility for the content of this paper or for the questionable taste in which it was written.

1. If T.H. White had written Beowulf . . .

Twilight had already begun to cast the hallowed hall of Heorot in blue-edged shadow when Wiglaf stole quietly across the echoing vestibule. Beowulf sat on a low-slung bench toward the far wall of the vast chamber, his head cradled in one large hand and his shoulders slumped forward in a posture of dejection. “Sir?” his young kinsman spoke tentatively. “What ails you?”

Beowulf glanced up at his companion blearily. “I don’t think it can be right, Wiglaf.”

“Your pardon, my lord?” Wiglaf was Perplexed.

“I mean, it simply mustn’t be right, you see. Slaying Grendel, I mean.”

“If you mean to say it can’t be done, my lord,” said Wiglaf gently, “no one would hold it against you. After all, it’s what everyone had been saying from the very—“

“No, no, I don’t mean it can’t be done, I mean that it oughtn’t to be done,” interrupted Beowulf agitatedly. “I mean, look here. Killing one creature just because it kills one of ours isn’t the way to go about solving things, is it? Because if we kill one of theirs, they will only see fit to kill another one of ours, and then there’s no end to the violence. No, an eye for an eye isn’t the way to go about things.” Beowulf paused pensively. “Now, if only there was a way to harness Might to serve the purposes of Right—maybe persuade the monsters to channel their bloodlust into recreational sports and public works commissions? Maybe if we were more accepting of monsters in general and made them feel wanted—special, really—instead of ostracized, they would feel less compelled to go about committing random acts of gratuitous violence all the time. Or maybe if we…”

“You’re in a queer humor tonight, sir,” put in Wiglaf, eyeing his lord suspiciously. “I think the voyage must have put you out of sorts. What you need is a slab of raw meat and a stiff drink. That’ll put you back into a proper killing spirit.”

“Yes, perhaps you’re right. I am feeling a bit unlike myself. How about you forgo the meat and ale, though, and bring me back some toast and chamomile tea? I find they relax the senses most admirably. Run along now, there’s a good lad.”

Wiglaf managed the first few steps at an easy pace and then, giving it up as a bad job, broke into a dead run, eager to put as much space between himself and Beowulf as possible in case whatever strange malady he had contracted today was catching.

2. If Euripides had written The Good Earth . . .

WANG LUNG

Woman, it seems I’ll need to give good reasons,


and, like an experienced farmer gathers in his crops before the storm,


jump behind my proverbial plow and run before that storm


blowing from your raving tongue. In my view,


you overestimate your favors to me.


Just because you can brew a mean cup of green tea

and know a thing or two about making ends meet in a scrape

and can pop out children like some kind of self-contained fertility factory

doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re God’s gift to womanhood,

if you catch my drift.

However, you have served me, and you have done so well. 


But by marrying me you got in return


more than you gave, as I will demonstrate.


You live now in your own house, upon your own land


not as a belittled slave in some great house.

You’re able to manage your own household and care for your own children

rather than kowtow to the orders of some shrewish,

opium-guzzling mistress.

As for your complaints about my second wife,

I’ll show you that in this I’m being wise.

Ever since I met Lotus, I’ve been lovesick, distracted,

neglectful of my family and of the land.

wasting the fruits of my hard labor on gifts for her, and forgetting

my greater responsibilities, in order to maintain her interest.

Now that I have brought her here, into my house,

I will no longer have to be away so often, and having definitively concluded

that tumultuous, expensive period of courtship,

I’ll now be able to rest easy on that score and return my attention

to the land, after which Lotus will be slowly and gradually disregarded

until I learn to ignore her existence as thoroughly and as equally

as I usually tend to ignore yours.

Was this a bad scheme? You’d agree with me, if it wasn’t for the sex.

But you women are so idiotic—you think if everything is fine in bed,

you have all you need, but if the sex is bad,

then all the very best and finest things

you make your enemies. What we farmers need

is some other way to get our children—

a way to grow them quickly, organically, and en masse,

like rice or bean sprouts. There should be no female sex.

With that, men would be rid of all their troubles.

RANDOM CHORUS OF SINGING FARMHANDS

Nice try, Wang Lung.

I have a feeling someone’s next cup of tea is going to be laced with arsenic.

O-LAN

So I am to rejoice in the presence of your harlot

because her intrusion may in some way further the continued success

of your agricultural endeavors? God, you have a one-track mind.

May I never want a merely prosperous life,

accepting great wealth at the expense of the happiness of my heart!

WANG LUNG

Could you try to be more reasonable?

You should not pretend to be so wretched

when things are going well for you.

O-LAN

Keep up the insults. You have your land and your mistress.

I, I am alone, friendless, little better than a servant in my own house.

WANG LUNG

If that’s how you feel, then it’s your own fault.

The blame rests with you.

O-LAN

What did I do? Did I marry you

and then take up with some hot young thing from the tea-house?

WANG LUNG

I’m not arguing with you any more about all this. I’m finished.

O-LAN

Then get out of my kitchen!

3. If George Orwell had written The Glass Menagerie . . .

After the humans had departed from the scene, the glass animals scurried to edge of the shelf and peered down at the floor below, where the shattered remains of three of their companions still lay, struck down by the coat that Tom Wingfield had angrily hurled across the room.

“He knocked them to the ground without a second thought!” Strawdust, the glass unicorn, cried in a tear-thickened voice. “And soon they’ll be swept up and tossed away with the rest of the rubbish! Who will care to give them a proper burial?” The other animals brayed their agreement with these melancholy sentiments.

“You see the treachery of humans!” cried Bonaparte, the glass pig, decisively. “We are nothing to them, and we shall suffer for as long as we are under their rule! How many others like these poor three must perish before we recognize this threat for what it is?”

“But what can we do?” cried the animals. “What can we do?”

“We can fight!” cried Bonaparte. “We can shake off the yoke of human oppression! No longer will we sit idly by, collecting dust on wooden shelves, mere playthings for the amusement of witless men! Not while our comrades suffer and perish so! No longer will this be known as the Wingfield Apartment! We shall call it… CHOTCHKE CHAMBER!”

“And the under the totalitarian regime we subsequently set up,” put in Branwell, the glass goat, “I sincerely hope that alliteration is made into a crime punishable by death.”

4. If the original Beowulf poet had written My Life and Hard Times…

And then did Thurber, wielder of anecdotal wisdom

Peer deep into the eyepiece of the wondrous-wrought

Microscope; unable to divine within

The shapes of things small and sinuous

And most vital to his grade-point average.

Though presently he did adjust the cunning device

Such that a strange and marvelous shape he perceived

Upon the lens, and with swift pen-strokes

Commended its likeness to his smoothed paper

And called out his triumph to the room.

The instructor, approaching,

Was thrown into a great frenzy of passion

And cried out shrill beratements against the unknowing Thurber,

Crying that he had drawn to a whit

What was but the glimmered reflection of his own eye.

Then, Thurber, alight with impatience and wrath,

Decided to forsake these pansy-faced studies

And instead attacked his tutor most violently

With the weight of the microscope

Such that his life-blood spewed forth and gore welled in waves

And many a high school student cried out hoarse and fierce with glee

Because gratuitous bloodshed is just so much more fun

To read about.

5. If F. Scott Fitzgerald had written Medea . . .

Creon’s daughter smiled wide with gleeful malice. “Your husband never loved you, old sport!” she declared. “He’s never loved you. He loves me.”

“You must be crazy!” exclaimed Medea automatically.

Glauce sprang to her feet, vivid with excitement.

“He never loved you!” she cried. “He only married you because you helped him on his quest and betrayed your homeland for his sake and saved his life innumerable times and defended him against his enemies and spent hours enduring the excruciating pains of labor in order to give him sons! It was a terrible mistake, but in his heart he’s never loved anyone except me!”

“That’s a gods-damned lie! Jason loved me when he married me and he loves me now. Or he’d better, at least, or come tomorrow he’s going to be missing some very crucial parts of his reproductive anatomy.”

Jason gulped heavily and tried to edge away from the conflict, but, somewhat predictably, found a large pillar blocking his escape route. “You’re revolting,” he muttered.

Glauce walked over and stood beside him. “That’s all over now,” she said earnestly. “Just tell her the truth—that you never loved her—and it’s all wiped out forever.”

Jason looked at her blindly. “Why—how could I love her—possibly?”

“You never loved her.”

He hesitated, as though the fate of his reproductive organs was weighing rather heavily on his mind—as though he had never, all along, intended to do anything at all. But it was done now. It was too late.

“I never loved her,” he said, with perceptible reluctance.

“Not in Colchis?” demanded Medea suddenly.

“No.”

“Not that day when I dismembered my own brother and cast the pieces into the ocean to save your stinking skin?!”

“Well, you have to admit, it wasn’t exactly the most romantic of gestures, dearest…” said Jason hesitantly.

“Well, I’m sorry if our relationship wasn’t all hearts and roses, dearest! Maybe the next time we’re fleeing for our lives, I’ll make a chocolate soufflé or something!”

6. If Pearl S. Buck had written The Great Gatsby . . .

Now suddenly did Gatsby see how to satisfy his hunger and thirst after this girl he loved. He would bring her into his house and make her his own so that no other man could come in to her and so that he could eat and be fed and drink and be satisfied. And he rose up at once from post behind the refreshment table and he went out and motioned secretly to his next-door neighbor and he said, when he had followed him away from the tinkling noises and lights of the glamorous party, outside of the gate and behind the cover of his obnoxious yellow car where none could see him or hear what he had to say, “I have need of a woman in my house.”

Nick shrugged. “And why not? So have all men who have prospered. Actually, so have the majority of men who haven’t prospered, either. It’s just one of those things, you know?” Thus he spoke, knowing what Gatsby would say next, and Gatsby went on as Nick had planned.

“But who will negotiate for me and be the middleman? A man cannot go to a woman and say, ‘Come, leave your husband and live in my house’.” Gatsby paused for a moment. “Well, he could, but it would be damned awkward. These matters are so delicate.”

To this Nick answered instantly, “Now do you leave this affair in my hands. Only tell me which woman it is and I will manage the affair.”

Then Gatsby answered unwillingly and timidly, for he had not spoken her name out loud to anyone in many long years, “It is the woman called Daisy.”

It seemed to him that everyone must know and have heard of Daisy, forgetting how six years ago he had not known she lived. Fortunately and coincidentally, however, Nick had heard of Daisy.

“Daisy Buchanan? How fortunate and coincidental! She is my cousin. She lives just across the water, does she not?”

“By the green light that floats there in the darkness,” Gatsby said dreamily.

“It is but a simple matter, indeed. Everything is plain. I know Daisy, and she would do anything, even to making a mountain, if she could feel silver enough in her palm for it.”

And Gatsby, hearing this, felt his mouth suddenly dry and parched and his voice came from him in a whisper, “Silver, then! Silver and gold! Anything to the very price of my land!”

Nick looked at Gatsby quizzically. “Since when have you had land?”

Gatsby muttered something about there being a Japanese rock garden next to the pool in the backyard.

“God, you’re a strange one, Gatsby. But I’ll see what I can do.”

7. If James Thurber had written Animal Farm . . .

Now life on Animal Farm was anything but dull. Despite the fact that the animals were all undernourished and overworked and generally treated as sub-human (which, to be quite technical, they were), there were some pretty amusing incidents that happened periodically that all the animals laughed about. This is an especially strange occurrence, because animals, as it happens, cannot laugh. The only animal that can laugh is the hyena, and there didn’t happen to be any hyenas on the farm. It would have been even more terribly strange if there had been hyenas on the farm, since Animal Farm was located in England and hyenas don’t live in England. To get back to original point, though, the fact that the animals knew how to laugh at all was pretty funny in and of it itself. But some of the things they actually laughed about were funnier still. The time, for example, when Napoleon fell face-first into a mud puddle. The expression on his face was something that the animals still liked to talk about to while away the long hours, though it was difficult to describe to someone who hadn’t been there and many animals who had attempted to do so had been escorted away by the secret police and executed. Whether they were executed for speaking in a derogatory manner of Napoleon or because their storytelling just wasn’t to the taste of the secret police was a matter still under debate. Actually, most of the animals felt pretty awful about telling the story after the first few of their fellows had been killed, and they didn’t find it very funny after that.

But it was still funny. Really. You can’t really tell from this description, but it was. Really funny, I mean. Really.

10. If Tennessee Williams had written The Once and Future King . . .

MERLYN [crossing out to the adjoining tower room, airily]: Remember, violence is never the answer, my lads! There’s always a more morally sound expedient, if you take the trouble to look for it properly. Why, I remember in 1914…

[He enters the tower room]

KAY: I know what’s coming!

ARTHUR: Yes, but let him tell it.

KAY: Again?

ARTHUR: He loves to tell it. And anyway, you know the whole matter of living backward through time makes him forgetful about these kinds of things. He probably thinks he’s telling it for the first time. Or maybe he thinks he’s supposed to tell it to us later.

[Merlyn returns with a rather anachronistic bottle of tequila and a very anachronistic copy of The Times]

MERLYN: In 1914, the Germans and the Allies on the Western Front were blasting the daylights out of one another’s trenches! No end in sight! Then, come Christmastime, the fighting draws to a sudden halt! The men decorated their trenches and sang carols. Soldiers from opposing armies shouted greetings to one another, shook hands, even exchanged small gifts of cigars and whiskey! For an entire night, there were no shots fired! [He pauses.] Of course, they were back to bombing the daylights out of each other the next morning, but you get the principle of the thing.

KAY: Actually, I don’t.

MERLYN [takes a swig of tequila]: Well, that’s because you’re a silly, uneducated boy, and if you paid attention to your studies like young Arthur here…

KAY [rising irritably]: That’s it. I’m leaving.

ARTHUR [nervously]: Where are you going?

MERLYN: Yes, where exactly do you think you’re going, young man?

KAY [pauses briefly]: To watch jousting.

MERLYN [waggling his finger in a condemnatory fashion]: I don’t believe that lie! I don’t think you really go to watch jousting every day!

KAY [defiantly]: Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe I go all sorts of places. Maybe I’ll go watch jousting today, or maybe I’ll go and see a magic show or something instead and use it to draw some deep metaphorical parallels onto my pathetic existence. Anything to be away from here! [storms out]

MERLYN [angrily]: You get back here, you ungrateful… you… you… I AM a magic show, dammit!

ARTHUR [wearily, gesturing toward tequila]: Can I have a few shots of that?