Literary Limericks

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

In our Facebook group, Stanley Anderson from Orange County, California, has been posting what he calls limerizations.

Limerizations.

Limerizations. This is where he takes a well-known literary passage or speech and then he translates it into limerick format, which is a really hard thing to do.

I bet.

If you think about it, they’re recognizable and pretty wonderful, I have to say.

For example, here’s his rendering of Hamlet’s to be or not to be speech in limerick form.

There once was a question of being, or not, as I’m presently seeing.

Is’t nobler to bear, oh, a fortune of arrows and slings in outrageous fleeing?

Okay, that kind of works.

That’s pretty brilliant, right?

I think it works really well.

How about this one?

See if you can guess what this one is from.

And he usually starts out with the there once was a blah, blah.

Okay.

There once was acknowledged a fact.

Universally, single men packed with good fortune must be, if yet maritally free, in great want of the wife that they lacked.

I don’t know what it is.

Isn’t that wonderful?

I don’t know what it is.

It’s the beginning of Pride and Prejudice.

Oh, nice.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged.

I think these are great.

And he was asking for more people to chime in with their own versions of limerizations.

And this is Stanley…

Stanley Anderson from Orange County, California.

You want to hear one more?

Yeah.

And this one, he uses the word trow, T-R-O-W, which means to think or believe.

So see if you can guess what this is.

There once was a time years ago, about four score and seven, I trow,

When our forefathers brought to this continent’s lot a new nation conceived in the know.

Well, it’s fresh in the mind, the Gettysburg Address.

Yeah, right, right, yeah.

But try it.

I was trying to do Juliet’s speech from the balcony, and I just—

Somehow the gravity is lost from Lincoln’s speech, though.

But the cleverness is there, the enjambment, and I just think it’s terrific.

How far did you get on Juliet’s speech from the balcony?

Not far.

There once was a maid on a—I mean, what do you say?

Balcony, who wasn’t very much of a phony.

Right.

She looked down at her bow and she said, well, dost thou marry me tomorrow or shall we die by stoning?

I don’t know.

That’s very good.

That’s very good.

And you’ve provided me the opportunity to mention that that was the original pronunciation in English of balcony.

Yeah, I use that all the time when people talk about, oh, language changing.

It’s terrible.

I’m like, all right.

Well, what do you call that thing?

Balcony borrowed from Italian.

Yes, indeed.

Well, if you want to find more limerizations of classic passages from classic works,

Find our Facebook group, A Way with Words.

Just look for it.

Or you can send yours, if you’ve come up with a few, to us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And by all means, give us a call and recite them in full flower at 877-929-9673.