Speech: “All your worlds’ my stage”
By Corona Virus (with apologies to Willi. Shakes.)
From As You Tested Positive, spoken by Covid-19)
All your world’s my stage,
& all you men & women merely players;
You have your exits & your entrances;
& 1 human in time plays all the parts,
Your acts being 7 ages. @ first like infant,
Coughing into your arms;
& then as whining student, with satchel
& shining fevered face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. & then lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a medicinal ballad
Made to raise eyebrows. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, & masked like the nurse,
Serving in honour, sudden & quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even with covered mouth. & then injustice,
In fair round belly due to quarantine,
With eyes severe & beards uncut,
Full of fake news & social distancing;
& so you play your parts. 6th age shifts
Into lean & slippery buffoon,
With spectacle as diversion;
The youth pose, well-selfied, a world too wide
For shrinking economies; & big manly vices,
Turning toward childish troubles, pipes
& whistles in deference. Seen last of all,
To end thy unhealthy history,
Is 2nd childishness & mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans vaccination.
