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Readers Nuggets:
More Nextian literary parodies.
This one from Jon Brierley who describes it as 'Goliath Laments'.
Posted: 14th Jan 2003
Now is the summer of our greatest profit, Made unto winter by this Thursday Next, Who Jack Schitt, that pow'r of our house, In the deep bosom of The Raven buried.

Now are our efforts made to win our just deserts; Our bruisers' arms beat up our enemies; Our stern alarums given out to SpecOps, Our bribes giv'n out to delighted ChronoGuards.

Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd our wayward path; And now, our rifles in the far Crimean steppe Shall fright the souls of fearful adversaries. We caper nimbly into Mycroft's chamber For the lascivious stealing of our loot.

But she, that is so shaped for sportive tricks, And made to court an amorous looking-glass; She shall be rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty And become naught but a wanton ambling nymph; She shall be curtail'd of this fair proportion, Cheated of husband by chronupted Guards, Deformed, unfinished, sent before his time Out of this breathing world, scarce half made up. And then so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at her if she halt by them.

Why, she, in this weak piping time of peace, Has no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy her husband in her mind And descant on time's own deformity: And therefore, since she cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair well-spoken days, She is determined to prove a villain And hate Goliath and all their evil ways.

Plots have we laid, inductions dangerous, By crooked prophecies, libels and dreams, To set her father Colonel and herself In deadly peril, the one after the other: And if the Colonel be as true and just As we are subtle, false and treacherous, This day should Thursday closely be mew'd up, About a prophecy, which says that 'D' Of life on Earth the murderer shall be.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here Thursday comes.

(Shakespeare - Richard III, act 1 scene 1)

Jon Brierley