I was in a production of Hamlet, produced by the “Loft”, the Cork Shakespearean Society in about 1964 when the best spoonerism I have ever heard was delivered by Gertrude, Queen of Denmark.
It is at the begining of the play, Hamlet arrives back from university still in black in mourning for his father.
Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother,who has every reason to want him to forget about his father, as she has married his murderer, tries to persuade him to change out of his mourning wear.
She says;
“Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, and let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark”
One night the ghost of Doctor Spooner tangled the Queen’s tongue and the line was delivered as;
“Good Hamlet, cast thy coloured nightie, off and let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.”
Comments
betty morgan
on June 26, 2007Martin,
Neville is regularly visited by the ghost of Dr Spooner, most memorably when he denounced a spoiled and brattish young man as a boiled sprat! But Dr S must surely have been far from the minds of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie when they named their daughter Shiloh Pitt.
Betty
Martin
on June 26, 200710 out of 10 Betty!
It is a wonderful consolation to us who are not exactly built like the Pitt/ Jolies of this life, especially when the six pack comes only in Waterford Large Bottles, to feel that we may not have their looks but neither have we got their way with words.
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