Pop Sonnets: Shakespearean Spins on Your Favorite Songs by Erik Didriksen
Pop Sonnets is a cute, quirky little book. Didriksen takes popular songs from over the years, oldies through today's hits, and Shakepereanizes them, with the appropriate vocabulary and meter. There are few books I read parts of out loud to my husband, but this was one of them. It's fun to see how he takes songs we know and transforms them.
Here are the opening lines of a couple of my favorites:
Guns 'n' Roses, "Sweet Child o' Mine"
Her smile, it doth recall a simpler time -
the bygone years when I was but a boy;
each day held some discovery sublime,
each exploration brought some newfound joy.
Spin Doctors, "Two Princes"
Two noblemen before thee genuflect,
entreating thee in ernest for thy hand.
The first, he garners riches and respect;
the other's only flights of fancy plann'd.
Hmm, showing my age there, aren't I?
The Eagles' "Hotel California," is immediately recognizable.
I drove my carriage o'er the darken'd road
when faintly I observ'd a distant inn.
When I arriv'd, their greeting did forbode
the vile debauchery I...