CHARACTERS FROM
HAMLET COMMENT ON
THE FISH ODOR COMING
FROM THE OFFICE
MICROWAVE.
BY JULIA McCLOY AND TRAVIS TYLER
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King Hamlet
"My ghostly torment is great, and the desire for sweet vengeance lingers yet in my soul ... but, Christ, not half so much as the fetid stench of burning fish-shit, which seemeth to engorge the air that moistly sweats from the microwaving witch-box. Is death no respite from this floating miasma of fearful fish-filth? Truly! Come thou on!"
Ophelia
"Alack! What measures must one undertake in seeking sweet respite from this soul-haunting stench? There may be no escape other than to place mine own face into the water cooler and hold it there until I can count no longer, or until I hear the chime of the box to alert me of the sweet end of the smell that now seeps into my soul."
Hamlet
"Truly, is it nobler to suffer the fish, which harrows my face with haunted stench, or to just place my face directly into Yorick's skull and breathe heavily, perchance dream? Just stick my head in a goddamn'd skull for sanctuary, man. And ... um, is Ophelia, like, in the water cooler?"
Polonius
"I swear that mere moments after I speak to Hamlet's manner of being open to incontinency he must have gone and shit right here in this great hall."
Gertrude
"Who put the fish in the warming box? I will make ev'ry man in this great hall a bag lunch if it will keep the horror-scent of taintfish safe from the warming-magicks. I will pack it nice and add a napkin and even, possibly, add a pudding that does not need refrigeration."
Laertes
"As surely as the face of my sister dost foully bob within the festering lake that is the water cooler—by the way, how did she do that?—that abhorrent microwaven scent doth upwards drip into my skull with no foreseeable relenting. I forbid my tears ... from the goddamn'd smell of rot and possibly dead, dirty socks—socks cover'd in afterbirth, yes?"
Claudius
"Whoever is warming the fish in the box, if you are going to poison us, at least have the decency to pour it straight into my Christ-blasted ear like a man of civility, and not slowly stew our noses in the cloying taint of swampfish."
Horatio
"If the witches of fate could overcome us, ev'ry one, leaving all bodies bloodi'd, marr'd, or possibly lake-scum-infested, 'twould be better than to live another moment with the drifting bile of sea-rotted devils flaking over all. To be certain, hast thou sharp-check'd that it might not simply be a sea-slim'd bag of rime-worn clown meat? Really, though, how long is Ophelia gonna stay in there? I need some water for my cocoa—I brought some delightful marshmallows to top it! Shap'd like ghosts!"
Hamlet
"A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the
fish that hath fed of that worm. Then he can apparently just bring that fish to work and make us all smell it by remicrowaving it, for chrissakes. I wish we were all dead."
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