Scott Green

Public school education focuses on long-dead poets and trigonometry but de-emphasizes things that are actually useful, like how to cheat on your taxes or identify a narc. This is why I know so much about William Shakespeare, literary icon and total hack.

Today is the Bard’s 445th birthday and the 393rd anniversary of his death. (It’s bad to die on your birthday, because people only give you one present.) Chicago’s Mayor Daley declared it “Talk Like Shakespeare Day,” which is a troubling sign for the economy, because Shakespeare couldn’t have offered much of a bribe.

It’s a major pain to talk like the guy because he wrote using “iambic pentameter,” which means “unnecessary apostrophes.” Let’s say you have to go to the bathroom. You can’t just say, “I have to go to the bathroom,” because that statement is surrounded by quotation marks. No, you’d have to say, “Verily, m’ bladd’r ars’t ‘bout t’ ‘xplode; O, won’t thou help’st me t’ thine t’e’r’l’e’t?” Of course, by the time you finish the sentence, it’s too late.

In his proclamation Daley noted that Shakespeare contributed more than 1,700 words to the English language, including “eyeball,” “assassination,” “froing,” “ptowda,” “glorum” and “Shakespearean.” But 1,700 words is less impressive than it sounds. More were invented per episode of “The Osbournes.”

Even if you excuse the writing, Shakespeare’s plays all still have the exact same ending, in which the main characters take turns killing each other in an overly elaborate manner. This gives them time to languish, mortally wounded, and speak in perfect poetic verse on how they’re about to expire.

Take “Romeo and Juliet.” Romeo, thinking Juliet has died, drinks poison; Juliet, who wakes to find Romeo unconscious, stabs herself. Then Romeo, who had confused poison with vodka, sees Juliet’s body and jumps off a bridge.

Juliet, who had only nicked herself and passed out from the sight of blood, is so depressed that she jumps too, only to learn the creek running under the bridge is about four feet down. Finally alive and embracing, the lovers are tragically shot to death by Hamlet.

Not that Shakespeare’s plays were original in the first place. “Julius Caesar,” which the Bard went to his grave swearing had been his own invention, was later discovered to be the transcript of a 44 BC Roman Senate session. Also, “Romeo and Juliet” was a rip-off of “West Side Story.”

That’s part of why some people speculate Shakespeare didn’t pen the works for which he’s famous. Academics are pretty certain he didn’t write his own CliffsNotes, for example. In a story that ran in the Wall Street Journal last week, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens claimed Shakespeare’s works were actually written by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.

Stevens bases this conclusion on de Vere’s aristocratic status, the similarity between de Vere’s acquaintances and characters in the plays, and the fact that Stevens and de Vere were boyhood friends. And since a Supreme Court justice firmly believes it, you can be certain it’s not true.

To prove there’s nothing special about what Shakespeare did, I’ve created my own theatrical masterpiece. The Bard only wrote three different types, histories, tragedies and comedies, but my work encompasses all three. It’s called “MacBlago.”

I already have a pretty solid ending, in which the main character is crushed by a falling children’s hospital. I think crowds will love it, provided MacBlago doesn’t return to haunt the talk show circuit.

When “MacBlago” makes it big, you’ll see how easy it is to do what Shakespeare did. And you’ll know it was written by me. No matter what the Supreme Court says.

Scott is a third-year law student.