Rewriting Classics (in Rhymes)

All in fun

Sharpening a quill — Philip van Dijk — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quill#/media/File:The_bookkeeper_by_van_Dijk.jpg

What if publishers such as No Crime in Rhymin’, with their talented and experienced staff of writer/editors, ruled the 19th century as they are bound to rule the 21st? Would writers of those times have felt compelled to present their work in rhyme? Would their opening lines have gone something like this?:

1. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (1813)

https://www.goodandbeautiful.com/products/pride-and-prejudice-by-jane-austen/

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

It is a truth universally accepted,
That a single man unconnected,
Must be in want of a wife,
After all, isn’t that life!

2. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville (1851)

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781466804128Call me Ishmael.

“Call me Ishmael”

Call me Ishmael,
Listen close, I’ve a story to tell
Of a beast the color was white,
And a man obsessed, an epic fight.