In Competition No. 2656 you were invited to submit a dialogue between two well-known figures from different centuries, each using the argot of the time.
You responded to this challenge with your usual verve and skill, and I especially liked Frank McDonald’s conversation between Julius Caesar and Churchill (Templumcollis) on the trials of wartime leadership.
The winners, printed below, get £30 each and the bonus fiver goes to Brian Murdoch for an entertaining exchange between literary giants about Britain’s woeful performance in sport and song, of the sort that is to be heard in pubs up and down the land.
GC: ‘By Christes bludde and Goddes bones, saye me, Shakespeare, what men in Engeland nowadaye tell sootheliche of sporte and of playe.’
WS: ‘Well, as I am Will, so will I tell you, Dan Chaucer, and with a will, yet there will be naught for your comfort.’
GC: ‘Pricketh it not in hir corages, that the yonge carles of oure lande do winne at the balle?’
WS: ‘Not so. For by High Germanie was Albion’s expectation laid low, although the judges were, meseems, playing rather at Hoodman Blind. And at tennis was hope dashed by a naughty Spaniel. Ill-luck it be henceforth to name the Scottish Player.’
GC: ‘And eke with the troubadours? Whilom we could wel indite and singe lhude…?’
WS: ‘Swounds, yet there was Europa’s crown granted by Erato the Muse to a maid of Allemayne, for she had made the better musicke.’
GC: ‘Enow! I shall maken pilgrimage.’
WS: ‘And I’ll to bed betimes!’
Brian Murdoch (Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare)
DB: ‘Glad you could make the Manchester Derby, Mr Dickens. United will get stuck in till the final whistle.’
CD: ‘Indeed, I had to derby my watch and live on whistle-belly vengeance for days to pay for the train ride.
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