Wednesday
For a humorous interlude, I share today a post I encountered on Spoutible that was triggered by someone offering driving advice. (I don’t know who started the thread.) Apparently some official somewhere asserted that “obeying the rules when you drive dramatically reduces your chances of crashing,” leading this wag to wonder what it in fact meant to “drive dramatically.” Could it, he or she wondered, involve quoting Shakespeare as one negotiates traffic? And if so, which passages would one turn to?
Responders weighed in with several creative answers, to which I’ve added several more. Feel free to send in your own.
You can use this as a quiz as well. Can you identify the original passage in each instance? (Answers at the end)
1. Is this a red light I see before me?!
2. Forsooth, yonder light is rendered green. And yet thou dost tarry! Shall I produce such a sound as to wake you from your slumber?
3. What light through yonder windscreen breaks? Is it the amber, and my brake pedal the sun!
4. Alfa Romeo, Alfa Romeo, wherefore art thou parked Alfa Romeo?
And now my own contributions:
5. Hell is empty and all the traffic is here!
6. Lord, what fools these others drivers be!
7. The first thing we do, let’s kill all the traffic cops.
8. The devil can cite traffic law to his purpose.
9. I wish my car had the speed of your tongue!
10. Beware the Ides of March—especially if it falls on a weekday between 4-7 and you’re trying to exit Atlanta.
Answer key:
1. Macbeth
2. I’m thinking a combination of Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night’s Dream
3. Romeo and Juliet
4. Romeo and Juliet
5. The Tempest
6. Midsummer Night’s Dream
7. Henry VI, Part II
8. Merchant of Venice
9. Much Ado about Nothing
10. Julius Caesar
