Wednesday, October 3, 2018

A Little Shakespeare Every Now and Then in Pearls Before Swine

Pastis, Stephen. BLTs Taste so Darn Good.  Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2003.

———. The Crass MenagerieKansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2008.

———.  Pearls Falls FastKansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2014.

———. Pearls Sells OutKansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2009.

———. Sgt. Piggy's Lonely Hearts Club ComicKansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2004. 

———. Pearls Gets SacrificedKansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2015. 

We've seen some good use of Shakespeare in the comic strip Pearls Before Swine before (for which, q.v. and q.v. and q.v. and q.v.).

Well, there's even more! I've gathered a few examples from the books listed above. Enjoy!



from BLTs Taste so Darn Good.



from The Crass Menagerie. Please note, Mr. Pastis, that you will find some good crocodile material in Antony and Cleopatra. And Hamlet also mentions one!



from Pearls Sells Out. The Shakespeare is really in the annotation rather than specifically in the comic itself.



from . . . well, I've lost track of where this one is from, I'm afraid. I'll try to track it down. In the meantime, I'll just agree with Mr. Pastis on this one (though I've pretty much always felt that way about the play).



from Sgt. Piggy's Lonely Hearts Club Comic. It's not exclusively Shakespearean, but he has his share of cuckold jokes. Thanks, Mr. Pastis, for continuing the venerable (?) tradition.



from Pearls Gets Sacrificed. The humor comes in the unexpected cultured quality of Larry the Croc's parents.

Bonus Image: The Strip at the Beginning of this Post in Full Color:

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Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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