I Translated Shakespeare into Australian

Aussie version of Jacques’ speech, “All the World’s a Stage”, from As You Like It

Nichola Scurry
2 min readNov 23, 2022

A row of koalas sitting on a branch, each one superimposed with an image of Shakespeare’s head.
Shakespeare image: Public Domain. Koalas and author’s crappy design: Canva.

The whole world is a soapie,

And all the men and women are just bloody actors;

Comin’ and goin’,

One person could play shitloads of characters,

Their parts are seven age-brackets. First there’s the baby,

Bawlin’ and spewin’ up in his parent’s arms.

Then there’s the bratty ankle biter with his tablet

Zonked out from too much screen time, sittin’ in the car seat in the SUV

Sookin’ about goin’ to school. And then the horny teenager,

Sighin’ somethin’ chronic, listening to shithouse auto-tuned pop music

About boobs and bums. Then a thug at the pub,

Swearin’ flat out, covered in Southern Cross tatts,

Defensive of his rep, no filter, and ready to punch-on,

After fifteen minutes of fame

Even if it means getting bashed. And then the office worker

With a fat gut, and a promotion from brown nosin’,

With bitchy restin’ face, and wearin’ a wanky suit,

Full of shit, and new buzzwords,

Actin’ the part. The sixth age bracket is approaching

The age of old fartdom,

Glasses on a daggy chain around the neck and tight-arse habits,

Skinny jeans from back in the day, saved for yonks, way too baggy

For chook’s legs, and the big blokey voice,

Sounding more like a kid whose balls haven’t dropped

And a weird whistling noise. Last of all,

At the end of this weirdo story,

A baby again and then cactus,

No chompers, no peepers, no tongue, no nuthin’.

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Nichola Scurry

Australian human living in Barcelona, writing mostly about popular culture with a twist of quirky. If you like my writing, I like coffee. ko-fi.com/nicscurry