Shakespeare, swordplay, wordplay!

My esteemed colleague, Mr Braxton Hicks MRSA, consultant anaesthetist at The Royal Merkin Hospital, until he was unfairly struck-off for some minor infringement of a supine patient, has, in his enforced retirement, become something of an authority on British literary history. We have got into the habit of staging an informal book club one Wednesday each month, just Hicks and myself poring over some knotty text and pouring out a great quantity of cognac. Our discussions can become heated – sometimes culminating in fisticuffs and, on one particularly hazy evening, the wielding of a samurai sword – but we usually come round the next morning in total agreement. Throbbing head pain is a great unifier. If nothing else, these stimulating sessions have reawakened my interest in the great poets. And I have come to respect them as a fellow toiler in the metric mines. I don’t think we can overstate how relevant some of these great writers are to our times. In fact, I have been moved to write about one of them myself….

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Regarding William

Let's take time to marvel once more at The Bard,
That fellow was truly unique.
He coined several hundred original words
We use every time that we speak:
Like "cellulite", "herring" and "trillionaire",
"in-tray" and "bidet" and "bra",
And everyday phrases like "What's over there?"
And "Look what you've done to my car!"
What would we do without "chemical loo",
"Douche-bag" or "detox" or "torte",
Those words that enrich this great language of ours?
Cry "server" and "genital wart"!
How strange to have lived in an earlier age
Where none of these bon mots were known,
'Til Shakespeare delved into our lexicon's cleft
To pluck out "cucumber" and "cellular phone".
Now love is conducted high up in the mind,
Not merely pursued down below,
Since William described true romance of this kind:
"Your butt is mine" and "you had me at hello".
When Juliet gazed from her balcony high,
As Romeo shinned up a vine,
She sized up her Montague chap with a sigh:
"My boo is fit, buff and fine."
Yes, much of our idiom's owed to good Will,
So much that is written, so much that we spout.
So much that is modern flowed out of his quill,
Yet still we don't know what he's on about.