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Bits and Pieces from the NR Trivia Collection
#8: Shakespeare in the 'Net

by Jens Kreutzer, M. A.

Act the First

Assumed to be the greatest playwright of all times by quite a few people, the Bard, the Swan of Avon, better known as William Shakespeare, has sustained his fame for some 400 years now, and it is unlikely that he will pass into oblivion anytime soon. That said, it is not too big a surprise to discover that he has found his way into the not-too-distant future world of Netrunner as well. With the Renaissance-like figures pictured on the artwork of Riddler as a backdrop, we can set the stage for Shakespeare's cameo appearance. Dressed in the Elizabethan attire of Shakespeare's times, the "Riddlers" seem as if they might pull a skull out of their pockets at any time and start off reciting the Hamlet soliloquy.

Act the Second

We go in medias res with the flavor text of Asp, taken from Shakespeare's King Lear with a few modifications. On the card, it says, "Oh how sharper than a serpent's tooth is one of these suckers clamped onto the boot sector of a drive!" Having Asp make the Runner pay a bit and miss an action to get rid of the "serpent's tooth" might be harsh, but King Lear has sorrows of his own. In Act I, Scene 4, he laments the thankless behavior of one of his daughters, invoking Nature to curse her, so that she may experience the same insults he had to suffer from her:

Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!

We all know that Lear turns mad in the end, of course.

Act the Third

On we go, traversing "this wooden O", the round stagehouse of Elizabethan London (or rather, "this criss-cross'd matrix"?), only to find us in the middle of historical Verona, where tempers run high as two houses, the Capulets and the Montagues, fight it out over Romeo and Juliet. Filled with a deep hatred for each other, the families only realize their folly when the two young lovers have died. Earlier, when a fight in the street is about to claim him as a first victim, the wounded Mercutio curses in Act III, Scene 1:

Help me into some house, Benvolio,
Or I shall faint. A plague o' both your houses!
They have made worms' meat of me: I have it,
And soundly too: - your houses!

Much evil could have been prevented if the families' hot-blooded swashbucklers had been glued to the spot instead: "Epoxy both your houses!", it says in the flavor text of Classic's Superglue, epoxy being a key component of modern industrial glues. The handle "Bard" of the Runner quoted on the card only makes the reference (and reverence for Shakespeare in the cyber age) more obvious.

Act the Fourth and Act the Fifth

As in any classic Shakespeare play, there should be five acts to this article - unfortunately, they must be put off until future expansions (as you have guessed, this is not a comedy, nor a history, but a tragedy) are released to pay the Bard his due. :-)