This is a satire that I wrote earlier in the year on the play "Hamlet" as an assignment for my Shakespeare class. It does help to have read the actual play in order to understand all the humor in the satire.

The Melancholy Crustacean: A Satire


Midnight Meeting

Eerie moonlight filtered through the deep water and cast wraithlike shadows around the hulk of an old, sunken Spanish galleon. Three silent figures scuttled stealthily to the high, rotting deck where the water flowed cold and clear. Below, the gleam of lantern fish lit up a party of obnoxious crustaceans—varying in size and style from the fat, red, lobster-king to pale, young sand crabs. If he had had a nose, the handsomest of the three onlookers would have wrinkled it in disgust. Instead, he contented himself with displaying his elocutionary skills and lecturing the other two on the crudity, immorality, and corruption of the “dram of evil”—or quantities of intoxicating zooplankton.

Suddenly, Hamlet the hermit (for that was his name) staggered back in shock. “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” cried he, eyes bulging hideously as he stared at the leering crab skeleton approaching of its own accord. “Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned?” He seemed to recognize the apparition, however. “Thou com’st in such a questionable shape that I’ll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal crab. But it is so hard to tell without the meat,” he sighed. The skeleton lifted an ominous claw and beckoned.

Horatio, the larger of the other two crabs, found his voice. “It beckons you to go away with it, but do not.”

Obstinate by nature, Hamlet replied, “’Twill not speak. Then I will follow it. Hold off your claws!” He scurried away, following the retreating ghost.

“Let’s have after!” said Horatio.

“Something is rotten down under the sea,” said his companion gravely.

A Sinister Revelation

Arranging his bones creepily in the moonlight, the old ghost addressed Hamlet. “I am thy father’s spirit,” he began, and launched into a long explanation of life in the oceanic purgatory. Finally, he got to the point: “If thou didst ever thy dear father love, revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.” He stopped for dramatic effect and began again when the scary music started playing. “If duller shouldst thou be,” he threatened, “I’ll secure thine afterlife as a fat weed in hell. Now, Hamlet, hear. ‘Tis given out that while I dimwittedly crawled unawares, the vile fishermen deceived me with his despicable lure. But nay, I tell thee, one evil relative when I slept hooked me with the angler’s lure and thus committed foul murder.”

“O my prophetic soul! My uncle!” cried Hamlet.

“O your prophetic nothing—who else?” said the ghost. After an hour of denouncing Claudius, that “adulterate lobster,” the ghost exhausted his vocal cords—or at least his store of insults—and decided to end the interview. “Adieu. Remember me,” he said, as he exited in proper ghost-fashion.

Horatio and Marcellus crab-walked over to Hamlet. Lost in the drama of the moment, he insisted that they swear to secrecy in proper thespian manner on his boxer claw. Although shocked by Prince Hamlet’s disrespectful reference to the “old mole” and “worthy pioneer,” the two companions humored his whim.

Enter the Angel

“Squawk!” burst out an old parrotfish, immediately glancing around to confirm that no one had heard him. As he swam along the ocean floor, he muttered continuously to himself. “If only I knew Laertes was behaving himself. Oh! I’ve got to know…must send Reynaldo. Probably squandered my wealth instead of studying…. Good thing I’ve properly checked Ophelia’s youthful waywardness. Poor child, led astray by that scheming, demented excuse-for-a-prince—that boggled-eyed hermit….”

As he entered his cave, a beautiful young angelfish met him with scared look in her luminous eyes. “O my lord, I have been so affrighted,” she exclaimed. “As I was cleaning my teeth in my closet, Lord Hamlet, with his shell entirely off his pale pink underbody, came before me. He pinched me by the fin and held me thus, never talking, but glaring, and then left. Thou knowest how unnerving his detached eyes look.”

“Come, go with me, I’ll seek the king. This is the very ecstasy of love. Have you given him any hard words of late?” said Polonius (the parrotfish).

“No, my lord, but as you commanded I declined his coral bouquets and denied his access to me,” replied his daughter Ophelia.

“This hath made him mad,” intoned Polonius somberly.

Of Drunken Lobsters and Related Things

In a pile of gold below deck in the rotting ship, a great red lobster lolled. Still suffering from yesterday’s hangover and eagerly awaiting that night’s carousing, he thickly welcomed his courtiers and subjects. Next to him, a blonde lady-crab beamed at everyone, interpreting the king’s frequently unintelligible statements. Polonius suddenly interrupted the peace of the hall, chattering full-steam ahead even before he reached the golden throne of coins. “…I have found the very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy!”

The king smiled idiotically, and Queen Gertrude translated: “O speak of that: I do long to hear.”

Polonius, always one for suspense (as long as he didn’t have to endure it) forced the admittance of the ambassador to the mollusk colony first and made the royal couple sit through the boring report. Finally, having had enough time to fine-tune his speech, Polonius booted the ambassador out and began his explanation, preening his colorful fins importantly. “Your noble son is mad. That he is mad ‘tis true; ‘tis true ‘tis pity; and pity ‘tis ‘tis true. And now remains the cause of this effect…” His pompous, monotonous voice lulled the queen to sleep—the king was already snoring—until he launched into some most painful lines of poetry.

“Came this from Hamlet to thy daughter?” cried the anguished queen. “Hath we wasted money on education to result in this?!”

The mention of money awoke the indolent lobster, and he tried to pretend to understand the conversation and end the terrible recitation. “But how hath she received his love?” he asked, wildly casting about for a reply in context and recalling Polonius’ preoccupation with his daughter and her affairs. Polonius explained Ophelia’s angelic obedience in rejecting Hamlet’s attentions and told the king to make fish-fillet out of him if his surmise that Hamlet’s madness resulted from lethal intoxication of Ophelia’s crab-repellent proved wrong. Still blabbing on about the little game he planned to play with Hamlet, he left, a devious smile on his foolish fish-face.

Words, Words, Words…

As he swam and absent-mindedly talked to himself, Polonius bumped into Hamlet—grotesquely scholarly looking with his thick glasses on his goggling eyes and his claw clamped on a rotting book. Hamlet stared unnervingly at the parrotfish, hoping to convince Polonius that he truly was mad. He accentuated his effort with quite the eccentric conversation. Some brief allusion to females immediately confirmed Polonius’ suspicion that Hamlet was in love with his daughter and desperately insane from her rejection.

Satisfied, Polonius changed the subject. “What do you read, my lord?”

“Words, words, words,” sighed the demented hermit disappointedly.

“What is the matter that you read?”

“Slanders, sir. For the satirical rogue says that old fish have graying skin, their faces sag with wrinkles, their eyes bulge, they have plentiful lack of wit, together with weak tails—all which, sir, though I powerfully believe (for you yourself tread water before me as an example), I deem not honesty to print. If only like a crab you could go backward!”

Polonius, for once, was silent, trying to see if this worked into a compliment. He disliked straining his brain, however, and decided to depart. “My lord, I will take my leave of you.”

“You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I’ll not more willingly part withal—except my life!” called Hamlet, in truly a touching, theatrical pose.

Sneaky Arrangements

From the royal sunken ship’s entrance, a terrible din arose to welcome a motley crew of actors. Hamlet rushed over to silence the awful court band that made noise whenever possible and to welcome the theatrical troupe to Elsinore. Polonius turned up and shook his head to see Hamlet obviously insane. He and one of the players were competing to see who could remember the most songs out of various musicals. Hamlet had just launched lustily into “Under the Sea” when Polonius—scandalously unappreciative of quality music—broke up the party and packed the actors off to their quarters.

Before they left, however, Hamlet arranged for them to perform The Boiling of Gonzago on the morrow. “Could you study a speech of some dozen lines, which I would set down and insert?” asked Hamlet, making puppy-dog eyes most frighteningly at the troupe director.

“If ye can write like ye sing, I’ll accept it gladly,” he replied with admiration.

After they exited, Hamlet entertained himself by contorting his face and soliloquizing at length. He took after his father in his garrulousness and plentiful supply of insults. Finally, when he had vented his feelings about his lobster-uncle and his coward-self, he devised his plan of action. “About, my brains,” he said. “Hum—I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play have, by the very cunning of the scene, been struck so to the soul that presently they have proclaim’d their malefactions… Ah, Hamlet, thou art a genius—play something like the murder of my father before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks. If he blenches, I know my course.”

Tricksy Dealings

With much heaving, hemming, and hawing, Polonius and the Queen hefted the great lobster behind a broken board. Polonius swam in after him. They had arranged Ophelia prettily near the entrance of the hall, and now dismissed the Queen and waited under cover for Hamlet to scuttle into their trap. Soon he came, lethargically dragging his shell and staring up towards the water’s surface.

“To be, or not to be, that is the question,” he said, trying to look both intelligent and melancholy and failing utterly. “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer, or to take arms against the sea of troubles. To die—to sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream—” here his voice dropped to a frightened whisper—“ay, there’s the rub: for in that sleep of death what dreams may come?” He remembered his father-skeleton’s awful descriptions of Davy Jones’ locker and trembled.

But Ophelia couldn’t wait for him to notice her anymore. She quit making mooneyes at him and came right out. “How does your honor for this many a day? I have remembrances of yours that I long to redeliver,” she said. “Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.”

Hamlet quickly switched on his “insane mood” and laughed at the angelfish. “I did love you once. I loved you not,” he said confusingly. After a while, he decided that “harsh mode” might work better. “Get thee to a nunnery, farewell,” he said, scowling, but inwardly chuckling at the thought of the pretty fish in a wimple.

“Heavenly powers, restore him!” cried Ophelia as he finally left.

Grumpily, Claudius clambered out of the cramped hiding-place after Polonius. “Hmph, love?” he said. “His affections do not that way tend. Instead of frying thee, though, for a wrong conjecture, I’ll speed him off to live with mad English crabs for a while—that’ll teach him something…”

The Crime Confirmed

While the audience got settled, Claudius slept off his hangover, Gertrude laughed flightily, and Hamlet made amends with Ophelia for catching her tail in his claw the other day, the theatrical troupe announced the play—The Boiling of Gonzago. The general chatter of the court’s assortment of crustaceans, fish, urchins, and things in between subsided when the player king of the drama—a magnificent crab—clattered onstage with his beautiful Queen. The King rolled his eyes and moaned eloquently about his old age and imminent death while the Queen scuttled around, distractedly spewing vows of fidelity. “Even if they make crab cakes of thee, I’ll ne’er love another under the sea,” she cried poetically as the scene ended.

This seemed to arouse the drowsy lobster, and he leaned over to Hamlet. “Have you heard the argument? Is there no offense in it? What do you call the play?”

“No, they but jest—no offense i’th’world. ‘Tis called The Crabtrap—Gonzago is the King’s name.”

Next, a shifty-looking lobster crept on stage towards the sleeping player king. He muttered incantations while slipping a hook through the other crab. Slowly, the king drifted upwards as the “fisherman” above reeled in his line. The audience heard a voice offstage: “Ha!” it said, “’Twill be boiled crab tonight!”

Claudius suddenly astonished everyone by catapulting frantically off his seat and out the door—his fat, red face turned deathly pale. The ensuing chaos ended the play. After winking broadly at his fellow-conspirator Horatio, Hamlet headed towards Gertrude’s bedchamber.

Almost Revenge

Crawling along the dim passages, Hamlet heard a familiar voice. He stuck one eyeball around the corner to check things out. There, with his back to the doorway, sat the lobster-king. In between swigs out of an oversized bottle, he seemed to be praying. Seized with as much passion as his little hermit-body could hold, Hamlet scurried into the room and whipped his rusted pin from the scabbard at his side. Just as he was about to stick the king through, a new thought hit him. Would the despicable crustacean go to oceanic bliss if killed while praying? Unable to figure out this puzzle, Hamlet replaced the pin and hurried away.

Disastrous Discourse

“Now, mother, what’s the matter?” began Hamlet condescendingly.

“Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended,” she said.

“Mother, you have my father much offended.” He liked this game.

“Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.”

“Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue,” he replied impertinently.

When she tried to spank him, he chased her around the room, boxer-claw snapping. The Queen never could take a joke. “Thou wilt not murder me?” she shrieked. “Help!” From behind a curtain came another S.O.S. squawk. The feisty hermit poked his pin through the cloth and skewered—Polonius!

Easily excitable, Gertrude went into hysterics even over such trivial matters—although she did like fish-eyeball-soup. But Hamlet quickly silenced her and launched into a formal accusation. Hamlet had spent hours learning new insults and put them to good use. Finally, the Queen tried to plug her ears. The hermit had no intention of cutting short his excellent speech, however.

Suddenly, Hamlet’s voice leapt a few octaves upwards. “Save me you heavenly guards!” he yelled, staring at the doorway. “What would your gracious figure?”

“Alas, he’s flipped,” sighed Gertrude.

But she couldn’t see the rattling crab-bones nor hear the dreaded voice that spoke to Hamlet. “Do not forget,” the ghost said. “This visitation is but to whet thy almost-blunted purpose.”

Hamlet quickly regained composure as the ghost exited, and he finished his speech with his own version of the Ten Commandments, especially for royal, female hermits. The poor Queen had nearly fainted at least thrice within the last few hours, however, so most of Hamlet’s words were lost on her. Wanting to make a good show, she staggered to bed and flopped over. “I’ll lug the guts into the neighbor room,” Hamlet said in farewell.

Hide-and-Go-Seek

With his arrest-party puffing behind him, Hamlet waltzed into the royal hall. Haughty and unusually sober, Claudius asked, “Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?”

“At supper,” replied the hermit glibly.

“At supper? Where?”

“Not where he eats, but where he’s eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat the fish that hath fed of a worm.”

“Where’s Polonius?”

“In heaven,” said Hamlet, but then thought he shouldn’t sound so sure. “If you find him not there, seek him i’th’other place yourself.” Then, thinking the game not entirely fair, he decided to give Claudius a hint. “If you find him not within this month, you’ll nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.”

Soon a search party was dispatched to search for Polonius, the worms, and other sundry suspicious-looking characters. As the crew of creatures all but knocked the ship apart and created a terrible racket, a bit of underhanded treasure-seeking and minor felony also took place. Hamlet had the time of his life imitating Polonius’ voice and scaring members of the search party. He nearly forgot he was merely pretending to be mad with the fun of surprising the annoying crabs and fish with sudden pinpricks. Finally, however, his little game ended when Claudius’ emissaries packed Hamlet on a seahorse and sent him off to the English inlets.

With Hamlet safely on his journey, the lobster-king seemed happy. He guzzled a few bottles of some indescribable, ghastly-smelling liquid and explained to himself his plan. “Letters congruing to that effect, the present death of Hamlet, we’ve sent to the English Crustacean Parliament. His ugly eyeballs cooked on a plate would seem much more becoming than attached to his revolting face.”

The Sad Demise of a Deluded Fish

Needless to say, with the King drunkenly incoherent, the Queen crying her eyes out and pining for Hamlet (she always was a fickle crab—only the day before she desperately wanted him, and especially his pin, safely out of the vicinity), and various search parties still wandering around looking for Polonius, the kingdom was in an uproar. The game of hide-and-go-seek had unearthed some curious findings—certainly more interesting than a dead parrotfish—and excavation crews had almost demolished part of the castle. Without supervision, chaos ruled and every creature did as he saw fit.

Into this mess floundered the sweet angelfish Ophelia. Sadly, in a fit over her father’s death, she had mistakenly nibbled loco seaweed for breakfast and had already begun to go crazy. Finally, she found her way into the royal hall. “Where is her beauteous Majesty?” she asked, staring at the Queen and understandably not recognizing the royal hermit after such violent weeping had wrecked havoc with her mascara and make-up; in fact, Gertrude looked horrid.

Ophelia sang a few catchy dirges while the Queen interjected “Alas” frequently and dramatically. When the King opened one eye, the Queen explained the problem. “Never could we convince Ophelia that fish cannot by nature wed crabs,” she said. “And now—look what has happened to the poor, deluded dear because of her love for Hamlet.” The little fish serenaded them until she lost her voice. After she left, the King mused drunkenly and philosophically on her insanity, attributing it also to their “hugger-mugger” to bury Polonius—even the Queen couldn’t quite translate this, however.

Brotherly Wrath

As the noise outside the palace rose to fever pitch, the King finally opened both eyes. From sea cucumbers to cuttlefish, everyone in the kingdom seemed to be calling, “Laertes for King!” This really shook up the current monarch, who feared loss of power would mean loss of quality drink. The entire ship shook as the crowd stormed the palace, and Laertes, brother of Ophelia and a fine specimen of swordfish, burst with a flourish into the throne room. “O thou vile king,” he said nobly, “give me my father.”

“What is the cause, Laertes, that thy rebellion looks so giant-like?” asked the King coolly, seeing the menacing octopi at the door. “Tell me why thou art incensed—speak, fish!”

“Where is my father?” demanded Laertes. Somehow this conversation sounded familiar to the King.

“At supper,” said Claudius, but caught himself quickly. “I mean, dead.” He decided not to mention any worms.

“How came he dead?” asked the swordfish. “I’ll not be juggled with.” For effect, he added a few vows to get revenge even if he would rot in Hades for it.

For a drunken sop, the King did pretty well diplomatically and deviously explaining the situation to Laertes and winning him over. He promised him his day of judgment, but a sound outside cut off their conversation.

“Oh please,” muttered Claudius as Ophelia entered, singing. “Not that cacophony again.”

Laertes uttered interjections at the sight of his insane sister. The whole hall almost became one big pity-party as everyone moaned and groaned about the state of things under the sea. Claudius played the audience and drank. Ophelia passed around bits of sea anemone and, on the whole, acted pitifully mad. With a few more songs, she finally departed.

With Laertes’ revenge-complex successfully reigned-in, the King proceeded to intricately describe Hamlet’s crime of skewering Polonius. Claudius wisely skipped over the part about Polonius’ quick burial and the royal supper of fish-chowder. “I loved your father,” said the King affectedly. “We love ourself, and that, I hope will teach you to imagine—” But here a messenger interrupted him with letters from, of all crabs, Hamlet!

Apparently the young prince had tired of the mad English crabs and was on his way to reunite with his dear beloved (or not so beloved) at Elsinore. Realizing his plan of making Hamlet crab meat hadn’t worked, Claudius tried to think fast.

“Let him come. It warms the sickness in my heart that I’ll live and tell him to his teeth ‘Thus diest thou,’” said Laertes, solving the King’s problem and apparently forgetting Hamlet’s lack of teeth.

They quickly whipped up a scheme to “accidentally” kill Hamlet in a duel between Laertes and the princely hermit. With a little dab of poison on Laertes’ nose, Hamlet would surely meet his end. The swordfish could, no doubt, scratch him—even if Hamlet proved to have amazing prowess with his pin.

To top off the evening, the Queen entered and announced Ophelia’s death. The poor angelfish was so insane that she drowned herself, although nobody discovered quite how she managed such an ingenious suicide after living underwater her entire life. Like males, Laertes and Claudius seemed preoccupied with their sword-fighting plan. Laertes did shed a few tears for decorum’s sake, though.

A Dramatic Funeral

Beplumed and gaudily garbed, Hamlet looked quite picturesque as he gallantly urged his mount towards Elsinore. Horatio, who had reappeared, rode beside him. As they crossed the kingdom’s most notable graveyard, they almost got hit by flying skeletons, claws, and assorted bones. A bit of investigation revealed two large, industrious crustaceans in a flurry of activity, digging a grave by unearthing many more—and playing “loggets” (an obscure, bone-throwing game) on the side. Hamlet, ever sentimental, caught a few of the discarded remains and gravely remarked on their better luck in previous days.

When he tired of his philosophic musings he began a conversation with the gravediggers. They discussed Hamlet’s own madness (the gravediggers hadn’t recognized him), identified skeletons of crabs in the disarray around the grave, and talked of Alexander the Great (Hamlet learned a lot with those English crabs) until a funeral party interrupted them.

Hamlet and Horatio hid, surprised to see the King, Queen, and Laertes with the procession—all droning dirges off-tune. Laertes picked a fight with the priest immediately after they reached the grave, howling about laying the dead angelfish in such coarse sand. Hamlet nearly tripped when he saw Ophelia lying so placidly dead. When Laertes leapt into the grave atop the coffin, Hamlet couldn’t let himself be outdone. He hollered, brandished his pin, and jumped on Laertes. The swordfish and hermit exchanged pokes and insults until the King “plucked them asunder.” He subdued them by promising them a chance to fight out their argument later like a civilized crab and fish.

Finally, The End

Not one to take chances, Claudius had poisoned just about everything in the great hall—even the fermented plankton—in his plan to eliminate Hamlet. He grinned as Hamlet and Laertes shook fin and claw, exchanged long, eloquent speeches, and clanked awkwardly in their armor to their positions. Soon, the fight was on. After each triumph of Hamlet’s pinprick of Laertes, the King praised him loudly and tried to convince him to drink to his own health. But Hamlet wanted to finish their sword game first.

Excited and terribly proud of her dear little boy after an especially good poke, Gertrude scuttled over to the flagon and shrilly “caroused to his fortune,” taking a long swig of the poisoned liquid. Either entirely drunk or engrossed in the sword fight, the King didn’t seem to mind that Gertrude would die in the next few minutes. The ensuing moments were poignant and action-packed. Laertes nicked Hamlet with his poisoned saw-nose, but somehow Hamlet managed to wield the nose against his opponent and stab him. Suddenly the Queen fell, crying, “O my dear Hamlet! The drink! I’m poisoned!”

“O villainy!” yelled Hamlet. Seeing himself slashed with his own nose, Laertes graciously informed Hamlet of their impending deaths. “The treacherous instrument is in thy claw, unbated and envenomed,” said the swordfish, staring gloomily at his snout. “The king—the king’s to blame.” Thinking quickly, Hamlet lugged Laertes toward the throne and ran the saw-nose into the King. For good measure, Hamlet also drenched Claudius in the poisoned alcoholic beverage. In their last moments, Laertes and Hamlet touchingly exchanged forgiveness for their crimes. “I’m dead, Horatio,” lied the little hermit pitifully at least three times before he really got around to departing. Amidst fading, minor chords, the little bodies ceased twitching one by one. All fell silent as the deep, dim water swept the desolate remains over countless years into oblivion.