Call for Shakespeare Spoofs

Tris and Izzie will be published October 11, which is six weeks from tomorrow exactly! Yeah! As the first in a series of six promotion posts for this, I am calling for retellings/spoofs of your favorite Shakespeare monologues written for a contemporary audience.

I will pick my favorite (some of the giveaways will be random, but this one isn't) and that person will get a goodie bag full of swag from me (including a T-shirt, a bookmark, a tiny little potion bottle for mixing your own potion—recipes available on www.trisandizzie.com—plus lots of good karma points). Egmont will also send a brand spanking new hardcover copy of Tris and Izzie to your home address as soon as they get them in.

Post your interpretation (including which play it is from and which character speaks it) in the comments below or send them to me (mette at metteivieharrison.com) and I'll post them for you. Next Monday, just before the next promo, I'll announce the winner.

As an example of what I am looking for, I am posting my own versions of three famous Shakespeare monologues rewritten for a contemporary YA audience:

Hamlet:

To breathe or not to breathe, Dude, that is the question. If you think you're tougher if you deal with it, over and over again, all of the heaviness of life. Or if you think only wimps keep on living and the smart nerds get it over with a quick jump over the bridge. To kick the bucket and dream the big dream in the sky. That would be the end of all the hard stuff, the freaky moments, the stupid pain of the body that means nothing. Dude, it sounds like nirvana, totally. I mean, the end of everything is the final grade of life, the big A in the sky. Only one problem with it—what if it's not the last test? What if there is a teacher up there with a big gnarly voice, waiting to smack us down again if we don't do our homework? What if the end of life isn't the end at all? What if there is more of the same? What if the truth is that we can never get rid of who we are and what we make of ourselves? What if there is no end, ever? That's the real problem with a long life. We run on a wheel like hamsters and we eat and sleep and pay for everything our whole lives, and what's the point of it? If we could end it earlier, wouldn't that be better? But if there is something waiting for us after, some funky darkness at the end of the tunnel instead of light, then that's the reason not to die. At least here we know what it's like. There, no one has ever come back to tell us about it. It might be worse. And we are all chickens when it comes to pain. It's not the nothing that we're afraid of. It's the something that we don't know. That's what makes us stay here, and be the real weaklings, not in body, but in mind. We are afraid. We are always afraid.
Juliet:

Romeo, Romeo, what kind of a name is that anyway? Romeo? Did your parents hate you to give you that name? Or were they trying and just were so lame that they couldn't figure out anything better? I can think of a hundred better names for you. Dude, you are so hot. How about Hotness? Or Sting? Or if you don't like those names, you can choose your own and I'll use it. Or maybe you don't like my name. My parents were thinking something classic, but I'll take any name you choose to match yours. How about Romea? Or Roliet? Or something like that? It doesn't really matter, does it? A name is just some random letters and sounds. People make up their own names all the time and they work just as well. They might stink, but who cares?

Macbeth:

Is that a knife floating in the air around me? Knives don't float, so I suppose it can't really be a knife. I can't touch it, either. It must just be a really weird trip. Maybe I drank too much or just ate the wrong thing. I heard that some mushrooms can be, like, mushrooms. You know? But I don't know why I would imagine a knife. It's a butter knife, too. With one of those short handles and no sharp edge. Because, you know, you don't need a sharp edge to cut butter. Because butter is pretty soft, unless it's like, frozen or something. But who freezes butter? Wo, that knife is still there. And it's dancing around with a fork and a spoon. Which makes me think of that nursery rhyme, hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle. And the thing about the dish running away with the spoon. Which doesn't make any sense because if you were a dish, why would you fall in love with a spoon? I mean, a knife maybe. But not a butter knife.