Spectator competition winners: Shakespeare on vaping

In Competition No. 3304, you were invited to submit Shakespeare’s reflections on a pressing issue of your choice.

In BBC Radio Four’s Taking Issue With Shakespeare, which prompted this task, Michael Gove discusses levelling up with reference to King Lear, Will Self reflects on toxic masculinity in Hamlet, and Gordon Brown draws parallels between a rabble-rousing Marc Antony and Donald Trump.

Many of your entries addressed our robot overlords. Here’s David Shields:

AI or not AI: that is the question;

Whether it is safer in the end to limit

The capabilities of such artifice

Or to take arms against a sea of robots

And by opposing end them?…

Hon menshes to George Simmers and D.A. Prince. The winners earn £25 each.

To vape or not to vape, that is the question:

Whether ’tis prudent for the body’s sake

To shun raw sotweed and inhale unburnt

The essence of my Lady Nicotine

That fills the ambient air with strange perfumes

As if the tribes of Araby had gathered

In scented celebration of their choice,

Each to his own, thus all together making

A multifarious symphony of smells

That woos the nose as music doth the ear.

Though studious men have vouchsafed that the vape

Harms less the vital organs than the pipe,

And leaves less foul the evidence of use,

Judgment on high will have the final word.

Vapers and smokers all will congregate

To breathe the unholy fire and smoke of Hell.

Basil Ransome-Davies

When I beheld the loss, such grief it took

To summon up remembrance of things past:

The purity, the babbling of the brook,

The chaste, untainted river, flowing fast.

’Twas beauty’s legacy, to cherish yet

The water’s vibrant flow that once beguiled

Our senses; though that place wherein we met

For sport and play is now debased, defiled

With excrement, abandoned filth, from whence

We keep our distance, danger doth abound,

The threat therein of plague and pestilence,

Yet who will halt while profit’s to be found?

When man deems nature over wealth, ’tis then

Our waters could perchance be clear again.

Sylvia Fairley

Tribune: What bode it if thy baubles be bestowed

Upon thy neighbour, or upon thy mare,

Or e’en that he whose energetic self

Hath seeded thee, and coddled thee from birth?

Whose honour is it, ay, within thy gift

If thou’rt forbid to offer it at will?

O! license that Sir as would anoint his clown,

For all’s as butcher’s offal, meaningless

If bloody too. Such gifts, so bounteous,

Stick on the fabric of whatever fool

Would fain possess them. Honour indeed, some say,

May thus be paid; but hear the public bruit –

My Lord or Lady, basted in such grease,

Shall soon be quite forgot. No matter, Sir:

For he that dispenses trifles, soon accurst,

Shall drink his fill, and after die of thirst.

Bill Greenwell

Of late in Oxford some would hear discourse

Delivered by a learned dame. Others

Would silence her. Though of the fairer sex,

They said that her private agenda had

Mis-gendered sex, although the common folk

See gender not un-sexed, and I myself

Grasped very little of the argument.

My plays – accounted great – do ever play

With both. My Juliet was a lad, as was

Viola, though not as Cesario;

Portia, a lad, dressed male to get a man.

And Puck? Let all act as they would be seen,

But let our pronouns stay grammatical,

And let honest discourse be unsuppressed.

Know and define thyself, each, each and each,

But meddle not with grammar and free speech.

Brian Murdoch

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

No warmth feel I in their unflinching gaze;

They blink not, nor from them do hot tears run –

Fie! I’ll compare her not to summer’s days.

No mortal blood runs through her wiry veins,

Her eyes are windows to an absent soul,

Cruel algorithms doth she have for brains

Which plan her evil treachery most foul!

I love to hear her speak yet well I know

From android speech do fatal flowers bloom,

Then as my mistress’ eyes do watch them grow,

She’s plotting e’en unto the edge of doom –

And yet with all my heart I love my bot:

For she in sooth’s the only friend I’ve got.

David Silverman

I shan’t compare thee to a summer’s day,

for future folk (when skies aren’t overcast)

wear hats and balms to keep the sun at bay

whose blighted rays might make you breathe your last.

An alchemistic vapour that can cool

both food and drink, or chill the dog-day air

is Satan’s cancerous, skin-corrupting tool,

escaping from a leaky, box-like lair.

These fatal fumes, though handy, must be swapped

for kinder magic ere a fragile face

turns wrinkly-red, its epidermis topped

with cankers which proliferate apace.

Let wizardry and wisdom join as one,

or else this globe we live on is undone.

Paul Freeman