Shakespeare to be Cloned for Upcoming Festival!


By Mistress Ann Hathaway
April 01, 2008

In what was described as the “ultimate marketing tool,” backers of the proposed Shakespeare Chattanooga festival have announced that they have obtained a sample of the playwright’s DNA and will clone him.

“We fully expect that he will write a whole new canon of plays and sonnets,” said one SC board of directors member. “Titles such as The Merry Wives of Red Bank and Much Ado About Nooga have already been proposed.”

Speaking under condition of strict anonymity, the same source revealed that a secret expedition was sent to Stratford-on-Avon to dig up a bit of the Bard. Posing as members of Chattanooga’s elite SWAT team, they pretended to demonstrate how the site could be protected against marauding Christopher Marlowe-lovers, while actually doing a micro-excavation that successfully extracted the genius’s genes.

“It was pretty easy, really,” the source revealed. “Those Brits have watched so much Law and Order they’ll believe anything.”

Asked about the famous curse engraved on Shakespeare’s tomb (Good Friend for Jesus sake forbeare/To digg the dust enclosed heare:/Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones/And curst be he yet moves my bones), the source commented, “Well, none of us appears to be curst yet…although several have reported feeling like the Black Death after the red-eye plane trip home.”