To Drive, or Not to Drive – What Would Shakespeare Say About Cars Today?

As we celebrate William Shakespeare’s birthday, we ponder: what if the Bard of Avon had lived in the age of the automobile?

Today marks the birthday of the one and only William Shakespeare – the world’s most celebrated playwright, poet, and perhaps, in a parallel timeline, petrolhead. While he penned immortal words on love, loss, war, and wit, one can only imagine how the great Bard might’ve turned his quill to combustion.

What if Shakespeare had lived in our time – or better yet, had cars existed in his? Picture him barrelling down the old Roman roads in a glorious Jaguar E-Type, his doublet fluttering in the wind, en route from Stratford-upon-Avon to the Globe Theatre. No more dusty days in a bumpy coach, no more hours lost to the tyranny of travel. Nay, he would have embraced the roar of the engine as his muse!

But, were he alive today, surrounded by sterile silence, lane-keeping nannies, and automated monotony, would he lament what motoring hath become? Would he raise his quill in protest?

We’ve taken the liberty of imagining what a Shakespearean soliloquy might sound like in praise of cars, and in mourning of what modern driving has lost. Read on, and let your inner Bard take the wheel…

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Title: “To Drive, or Not to Drive – That Was the Question!”
By William Shakespeare, Carthusiast Extraordinaire (in a parallel universe)

To drive, or not to drive – that was the question:
Whether ’twere nobler in the mind to suffer
The stalls and clutches of outrageous carriages,
Or to take arms against a sea of cobbles,
And by ignition, end them?

O wondrous steeds of steel and fire!
Thou noble engines of human enterprise,
With pistons pulsing like the hearts of knights,
Hast thou not made man swifter than the hawk?
Aye, from Stratford to Southwark I might hath flown,
Crossing fields and foul roads in hours, not days,
To tread the boards at Globe or Rose,
And home again by dusk – perchance to write!

Hadst thou been born in my sweet time,
My quill had danced with tenfold glee,
For every journey shortened is a moment gained,
And in that moment, art is wrought.

But lo! What light through yonder windscreen breaks?
It is the East, and the V8 is the sun!
The throaty roar of Mustangs, Cobras, and E-Types –
What music they did make upon the open road!
No sweeter symphony than a flat-six howl
O’er twisty tarmac ‘neath a crescent moon.

Yet now – alas! – the thrill grows tame.
The chariot electric hums but sings no soul,
Assisted brakes, and soulless screens doth guide
A motley crew who care not for the craft.
Where once we gripped the wheel like a broadsword,
Now comes the nanny tech to hold our hands
And rob us of the joy of man and machine entwined.

O for a throttle raw and steering pure!
Where art the days when drivers were brave?
“Give me my robe, put on my tireless wheels” –
Would I had said, were Teslas but a dream deferred.
But now? We mourn the petrol’s sweet perfume,
The manual shift, the heel and toe ballet,
As drivers turn to screens with vacant gaze,
Their hearts unburnt, their pulses unraised.

Let not this passion perish from our lanes!
Awake, ye spirits of the open road,
And drive again with verve and vision bright!
For in this engine-beat, we find our verse –
And all the world’s a road… if we but drive it right.

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So next time you’re behind the wheel, whether in a trusty old motor or the latest digital chariot, spare a thought for the Bard. He may never have driven a car, but in another life, you just know he’d have been an E-Type man through and through.

Happy Birthday, Will. And long live the joy of driving.

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