AUG 30, setting words to music: "THE WRECK OF THE DANISH ROYALTY", as would be sung by Gordon Lightfoot

   a) Reprise of material posted on August 30 in previous years ...

2020: singable satire, w-i-p (parody lyrics)

2021: singable satire, Fickle Twist of Fate 2 (parody lyrics)

2022: singable satire, F.O.P.-shop Wine (parody lyrics)
2023: singable satire, Funniversary Song (parody lyrics)

To access the details of any item in slide format, type its title, as displayed above in red font (e.g. ... Funniversary Song), into one of the two search bars at the the top of your blog-page. Underneath the slide(s) for each entertaining delight that you discover, you will find a clickable link that lets you easily explore a more widespread collection of wonderments (verse, photos, wordplay, song-lyrics etc.) on the topic of your choice. 

b) Today's Offering (Aug 30, 2024): 

PASTICHE with PARODY-LYRICS

POETIC UNDEPINNINGS:  Hamlet's Soliloquy, Act iii, Shakespeare's "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark", 1600.

MUSICAL UNDERPINNINGS: "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is a  1976 song by Gordon Lightfoot dealing with a marine disaster in shipping on the Great Lakes. It is used here primarily for melody and meter.

PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, 2014.

UKULELE and GUITAR-FRIENDLY LINK: Our whole series of songs can be found in a friendly format for ukulele (and guitar)-players on our sister blog "SILLY SONGS and SATIRE" with chord-charts for both the parody and original song, as well as helpful performing suggestions. 

 To find ukulele and guitar chord-charts to help you accompany "The WRECK OF THE DANISH ROYALTY" on your favorite instrument, click HERE.

Ken Branagh as Hamlet ponders man's fate

THE WRECK OF THE DANISH ROYALTY

A RE-WRITE OF THE HAMLET SOLILOQUY

(to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald")

The question is …… Whether ‘tis nobler to suffer,

 Fate’s arrows and stings so outrageous

 Or to be, and take arms against troubling seas,

 And oppose them with action courageous?

To die, not to be; it's just sleep, possibly

- An escape from heart-aches flesh is heir to -

All quiet past that portal, where no longer mortal

- consummation we offer a prayer to.

To die, to sleep, perchance to dream; there’s the rub;

For death’s dreams may provoke dissolution;

And the puzzling dread of that something when you’re dead

Discolours our strong resolution.  

With dagger that’s naked we’d easily make it

To that land whence no traveller’s recovered.

But that puzzles our wills, rather bear our known ills

Than fly off to others undiscovered. 

Explaining persistence of troubled existence,

For Time’s whips and scorns, who would bear’em? 

The haughty, oppressors, and rejecting lovers -

The wrongs and the spurns they don’t spare’em.

And who would bear "fardels" - whatever those are -  

With a life grimy, sweaty and weary, 

Hauling tons of iron ore to the desolate shore
Of that low-lying lake some deem eerie? 

Yet there’s puzzling dread of that thing when you’re dead 

And the pale cast of thought which can sicken,

Enterprise of great moment and pith turns awry          

And thus conscience makes all of us chicken. 

The question lives on …… When the chips are all down,

To bear outrageous fate so much drearier?

Or to be, and take arms against troubling seas,

|And oppose them with action superior?|X2

The Fitzgerald in Nov '75, just prior to the iconic shipping disaster