Juliet against the Patriarchy

 Hi All,

It is the mid 21^st Century and humanity has reached the stars, exploring and meeting new civilisations. While Earth managed to get there by her own merit (merit being a dirty word in some circles) , the revolution in industry, medicine and transportation, was helped by the initial trade deals of first contact. For every do-gooding civilisation that refused to export advanced technology to humans, there were plenty who were willing to trade tech (in reality it was akin to humans giving away the technology of antiquity). In return for this technology, the aliens ransacked places like the British Museum, the Hermitage, the Louvre and New York’s art galleries. It wasn’t just the west who permitted this, as the ‘Benin Bronzes’, returned to West Africa as part of the West's ‘de-colonisation’ and' anti-imperialism',  were immediately  flogged off by that country to Roswell Greys from Zeta Ritculi, in return for a Warp Drive.

Today this trend continues with the export of human art, culture and literature, the most prominent not being Hollywood, but  Shakespeare and because of the (mostly controversial although unsuccessful) efforts of Evangelical missionaries, the King James Bible,  to wit the educated  ‘Johnny alien’, when writing and speaking fluent English does so from these tomes. The key problem for many alien academics was that no-one was sure how Shakespeare sounded to the original audience, so upon visiting Stratford Upon Avon and the wider West Midlands region of England, helped by the fact that the UK’s successor state PUB( Planetary Union of the British) had made Birmingham the federal capital, concluded that the nearest approximation would be that of the Birmingham accent.

Therefore when mastering the English language, aliens use what is called Shakespearian -Brummie English as their method of communication. The idea that Shakespeare was anything to do with the West Midlands or Birmingham sent shivers down the spines of the English Oxbridge and the South East establishment- what next? Burns was Scottish?!-  and did their best to try to stamp on this idea. To which aliens noted that as part of the human ‘culture war’ in England and America the same academic and elite ‘Woke Blob’ had declared that Shakespeare had really been a native American (half Mohican) and half African America slave , transgendered, sexually fluid  and a secret Muslim married to Francis Bacon (in reality a woman)  in what had been a totalitarian Protestant State, the  English equivalent of the Evangelical  Right in America, but in ruffs and breeches.   

In the past decade Shakespeare plays had been substantially re-written for ‘modern audiences’ to accommodate ‘the message’ against  White Supremacy, colonialist imperialism, Zionism (somehow Shakespeare was a pro-Israel , Zionist)  , the Patriarchy and to promote minority and queer representation. In the now renamed play the  ‘Merchant of LA’ , instead of Shylock being Jewish, he (or rather she) is now a gender fluid Muslim and Shylock’s (now Ahmed’s) monologue was seen as an attack on modern day Islamophobia.

 In Juliet against the Patriarchy ,  Romeo was now a simpering white beta male-idiot that had to take his lead from Juliet. Juliet is recast as an ‘Alpha’ African -American, hence the Montagues and the Capulets were not feuding houses but part of a neo- Nazi  race war. Juliet is a Sophomore Social Justice Warrior,  who pays the check on the first date : it is Romeo desperate for a relationship, who calls out ‘Juliet, Juliet, where are thou?’. Juliet  being  a ‘strong female character’ in which nothing stands in her way and has no real ‘journey’ or character development,  is a  polymath and excellent swordswoman , who thrashes Tybalt – now cast as a skinhead white supremacist neo-Nazi- in Act 3 for being accosted with her trans lover,  Mercutio. Romeo fanes death on the advice of Mullah- rather than Friar- Larry. Juliet kills all the Montagues in a dramatic boss fight armed only with a lightsabre and saves Romeo with new found and previously undisclosed Jesus like powers of resurrection, who goes on to rule a now unified nation under intersectional socialist politics.

You could get ‘original’ versions of the plays, on the web and in alien libraries (before the  copies were burned on earth)  but these were the equivalent of prescription medicines and came with a whole trigger warning and essays on how in reality later male authors had corrupted Shakespeare and that academics were now valiantly restoring the works into their ‘true authentic state’.

This rewriting of history would have succeeded if it had not been for the discovery of the ‘Dogger Bank’ discovery, in which an original quill written version of Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet had been discovered. This treasure trove was authenticated by carbon dating and comparison with Shakespeare’s signature. EngGov, who got into a tussle with PUB, was eventually allowed to sell this manuscript at auction, the reason being that they needed to ‘save the NHS’ or more accurately pay for the 500% pay rise demanded by junior doctors....