The photgraph here, courtesy of Mr. Jacob Lucas, is today's prompt from One Stop Poetry.

Plagairise! Plagairise!

Just look at that!  If all the world's a stage,

where are the infants, schoolboys, lovers, ghosts

witches, soldiers, judges, pantaloons

and shrill toothless old gits? Their revels are

just starting is my guess. They're backstage, drunk

on spirits Prospero said dreams are made of.

Maybe in cloud capped palaces they hoped

to make with a bare bodkin quietus

had Props not left the bodkins on a bus?

And if the play's the thing wherein to catch

the conscience of the King, where is the King?

Plenty of kings to choose from. Try inside

that clapped-out wardbrobe, looking tired, stage right.

Two Richards. John. A clutch of Henrys. Lear.

Don't say they're all afflicted with stage-fright?

Has conscience made base cowards of them all?

Enter with hautboys! Each play's just five Acts small.

The audience doze and yawn, longing to end

the heartache and the thousand natural shocks

boredom is heir to.  They'll shuffle off back home,

with chip suppers devoutly to be wished,

to sleep perchance to dream and by a sleep 

forget soliloquies that Shakespeare takes 

so long to reach the point of.  Life's too short.

Plays are for weirdos, fruitcakes, cranks.

The curtain falls. For this relief, much thanks.

(With apologies to As You Like It, The Tempest, Hamlet, The Scottish Play, the History Plays, King Lear and the master poet who wrote them . . . )