Hamlet: The Odyssey

Cecil B. de Mille,

Much against his will,

Was persuaded to leave Moses

Out of The Wars of the Roses.

—Edmund Clerihew Bentley.

Hamlet was translated into Arabic

In 1901 by Lebanese Tanyus 'Abdo,

as a musical with a happy ending.

How now might a Homeric rewrite go,

With Ophelia doubling for Penelope?

Laertes once an Argonaut,

And father of Odysseus, sought

To hunt the Calydonian boar,

A dreadful beast that brought

About the death of Meleager,

Burned like a Yule log in his mother's fire

(It's said in Ovid's Metamorphoses).

Amber tears are shed for him

Elder Pliny hears, in countries beyond Hind.

Let, then, Laertes perish on the Boar's tusks—

Half a fathom long, Pausanias asserts!

Whilst trooper Hamlet takes the stage,

Singing of royal just deserts.

That's rather how the Beirut version works,

The rest is silence. Legend turns a page.

Wednesday, September 30, 2026