of W. Shakespeare

how many words Shakespeare just...
made up out of whole beam, and they stuck!
Because he had a knack for it.
The language,
for him,
was not just one
but many horses, and he rode each one
'til it was fit to be knackered, and it was never
the same beast
afterwards.

A fine neologian! He was.
Bastard dramatist, though.

All that contorted bullshit
he put Hamlet through,
as if any sane Prince

could have stretched that shit out
beyond an Act's worth.

Hamlet's sin
wasn't to have been born indecisive.

- it's that he thought insanity

was a plausible plea to build a stratagem upon.

Still,
he did it cannily, if you don't mind
the collateral damage. Please,
it's Laertes

and Ophelia I mourn,

primarily. Theirs,
the price of being born

in a world whose creator
makes the words up

as he goes.