Channelled by authors from Margaret Atwood to Malorie Blackman, hitherto unsuspected verses show Hamlet haunted by zombies and Iago given the third degree
To mark the 400th anniversary of his death this week, “deleted” scenes from Shakespeare have been published online. Dreamed up by authors including Margaret Atwood and Jasper Fforde, the hitherto unseen passages add zombies to Hamlet and Star Wars to The Tempest.
Goodreads asked the writers, who also include Malorie Blackman tackling Othello, to write the deleted scenes as part of its “Shakespeare Week” celebrations. Fforde, whose fourth book about the literary detective Thursday Next features Hamlet as a character, took on the Prince of Denmark again with an essay about the “earlier ‘problem’ manuscripts of Shakespeare’s most famous work”.
Related: Shakespeare first folio discovered at stately home on Scottish island
Thy hands and thy feet, they shalt be shackled,
Knave, thou art to be pulled upon the rack
Till thy skin tears and thy bones crack.
The power to forestall such grim torments
Lies within thine own grasp, if thou wouldst but admit
The why of thy sins and freely repent …
Bring me my magic garment! Here’s my luck!
Mine enemies, and sailed within my reach!
Thunder, I say, and darkest clouds boil forth,
The portrait of mine anger! Ariel, strike!
Two odd and errant systems of belief.
I bid thee, tell me father, who prevails?
Those who are bound unto the sky walker,
Or those who bow unto the mighty kirk?
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