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Song Parodies -> "An Actor's Dilemma"

Original Song Title:

"To Be, Or Not To Be"

Original Performer:

Shakespeare (Hamlet)

Parody Song Title:

"An Actor's Dilemma"

Parody Written by:

Phil Alexander

The Lyrics

Do porn, or not do porn: that is the question:
Whether 'tis better for the career to suffer
The wooden acting and outrageous plot lines,
And two bare arms against a sea of bodies,
And more imposing ends, then? To wit: to woo;
If wooing lacketh wit, then partake not
The ball-ache and the large unnatural rocks.
That flesh is bare too, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To lie, to sleep;
Sleep with: perchance to cream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleeping with, what dreams may come
When she has nuzzled off this vorpal blade,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes celebrity of so long a knife;
For who would wield his weapon scores of times,
In celluloid, stands proud the man's contumely,
The video, the DVD that may
The insolence of tabloids and the press
Who print when merit shows and with fame endowed
When ev'ry page doth show photos they take
With a bare bodkin? who would condoms wear,
To grunt and sweat under a leary wife,
But that the dread of something infectious
The undiscover'd spirochete from whose bed
No traveller returns, the whole unharmed
And makes us show when bare those ills we have
Then finding others that we know not of?
Thus syphilis makes cowards of us all;
And yet the highly-defined resolution,
Lets loose the driving hormones' rush, past all thought,
And promised vistas of great piles of money
With this regard then heads are turned awry,
And in the name of action. - Soft it ain't!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in technicolor
Be all my sins remember'd.

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Voting Results

 
Pacing: 4.6
How Funny: 4.7
Overall Rating: 4.6

Total Votes: 26

Voting Breakdown

The following represent how many people voted for each category.

    Pacing How Funny Overall Rating
 1   1
 1
 1
 
 2   1
 1
 1
 
 3   1
 0
 1
 
 4   1
 2
 1
 
 5   22
 22
 22
 

User Comments

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2nz - November 22, 2005 - Report this comment
Hey ones guy, you old bastard. Phil, I'm scoring you 5s to counteract his work, but the line 'Sleep with: perchance to cream: ay, there's the rub;' was enough for me to warrant 5s anyway. Take 'em and think on that, ya pervert.
alvin rhodes - November 22, 2005 - Report this comment
i woulda read more shakespeare in high school if it was this entertaining...5s
Rick C - November 22, 2005 - Report this comment
Great job, Phil! Someone once asked me if I'd ever read Shakespeare. I said, "I'm not sure, who wrote it?" 555
Arwen - November 22, 2005 - Report this comment
I am beYOND astounded. And I don't think I've ever said that about anything porn-related, Phil...so count yourself a pioneer. This is perfect...stye-wise...and very funny. I just don't know what else to say.
Peter Andersson - November 22, 2005 - Report this comment
I remember reading/seeing an interview with Randy West where he said that he gave up Shakespearian acting because he'd rather be a big frog in a small pond than a small frog in a big one. That, and something about there's no such things as small parts in porno. Good choice of title here, you'd never have gotten our elf princess to check this out if you'd stuck to the title in the comment that I'm guessing did spawn this. BTW: "Vorpal"?
Meriadoc - November 22, 2005 - Report this comment
What can I say except I bow to you mastery, Phil... Excellent!
Matthias - November 22, 2005 - Report this comment
A Hell of a Lot better than my Pepsi or Not Pepsi monolouge...
Phil Alexander - November 22, 2005 - Report this comment
{blush}
But I can't take all the credit: once I started this, there were so many original lines that could be read in more than one way: my favourite "To grunt and sweat under a weary life," had me chortling all the way to the inevitable spoonerism :-)
Phil Alexander - November 22, 2005 - Report this comment
PS - Peter: "vorpal blade" actually comes from Jabberwocky - but it's been used enough times as that sort of euphemism, that I thought it was somehow appropriate.
stuart mcarthur - November 24, 2005 - Report this comment
"perchance to cream" is just one brilliant get - the spoonerism you just mentioned was another - 555
Dumb Ass Kid - December 08, 2005 - Report this comment
[SOTM] As dull as Shakey is, i'm not gonna be able to read Hamlet again without laughing after reading this! Nice one! 555
Josh 2 - December 10, 2005 - Report this comment
(SOTM) lol, very good, very good, 5s
Stuart McArthur - December 10, 2005 - Report this comment
(SOTM) see above - you're really pushing the envelope with this one, Phil - it'll be a while before misc/shakespearehamlet1.shtml arrives as a follow-up, I'm tipping - very clever
Red Ant - December 11, 2005 - Report this comment
(SOTM) Excellent parody Phil, very creative idea.
Agrimorfee - December 12, 2005 - Report this comment
(SOTM) Alas poor Yorick, he did him well!
Spaff.com - December 18, 2005 - Report this comment
So who's your wham-bam-meter-beater, ma'am? iamb iamb iamb iamb iamb.

There's just not enough Shakespearean porn, you know? There's an annual Shakespearean festival in Utah, and in all the plays in all the years, I don't think there's been so much as a single nipple shot. Go figure. Billy wrote some scandalous stuff for his day; shouldn't we be true to his spirit by following suit? Anyhoo. Fun stuff, Philbo. Quite a concept, and the "leary wife" line is classic. This makes me want to get a bumper sticker that says COUNTRY MATTERS. Everyone would think it's a simple expression of patriotism, and that would rule.
bobpiecheese - December 22, 2005 - Report this comment
(SOTM) You dirty bastard. Good job.
Adam Eccleshall - December 24, 2005 - Report this comment
(SOTM) (Soliloquy Of The Month?) Great stuff :)
Tim Mayfield - December 28, 2005 - Report this comment
SOTM - I don't know what to say.
John Jenkins - December 28, 2005 - Report this comment
You earn high praise for originality, as well as for great ironic substitutions such as syphilis for conscience.
wannabemustangjockey - December 29, 2005 - Report this comment
(SOTM) What a funny coincidence that I was assigned Hamlet to read over Christmas break from school. And then I saw this. Wow. This would have been even funnier in iambic pentameter...or is it already?
Kristof Robertson - December 30, 2005 - Report this comment
(SOTM) I doff my cap to someone who can pull Shakespeare off so thoroughly..(heh heh) Big 5's Phil
Johnny D - December 30, 2005 - Report this comment
(SOTM) I coff my dap to anyone who can slip "vorpal" so frumiously into Hamlet's codpiece!
2nz - January 02, 2006 - Report this comment
It's hard to respect anything that contains this subject matter, but it's also hard not to respect anything that took this much work and was this well-written, and also what I said earlier. Ah... choices...
Claude Prez - January 02, 2006 - Report this comment
I confess I'm only familiar with a few of the more famous lines of the original rather than the whole thing so I had to google it to appreciate it better. Extremely clever and naughty. Very well done, of course.

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