ghost

I Made a Ghostbusters Shakespeare Parody!

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The Concept

So, why Ghostbusters? Well, as William Shakespeare’s Star Wars has shown, it’s not only fun to adapt popular stories into Shakespearean parodies, it can also be educational. I knew I wanted to do a short play for my school’s fall festival, but I didn’t think to do “Ghostbusters” until I saw the final joke in the Simpson’s parody of Hamlet, where Homer says: “Son, [Hamlet] is not only a great play, but also became a great movie, called Ghostbusters!”

This joke got me thinking- Hamlet has a comic scene where the prince and his two friends are running around the stage away from a ghost, one that refuses to speak to them and then terrifies them. This reminds me of the moment where the ghost of the librarian shushes the heroes, and becomes a hideous creature:

The librarian in Ghostbusters is similar to the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father.

From this realization. I took it as a personal challenge to adapt Ghostbusters into a one-act stage play with as much Shakespearean dialogue as possible.

My Process

Re-writing the script of a movie into a Shakespeare text required me to overhaul the story of Ghostbusters, as well as retrofitting Shakespearean lines and speeches from Hamlet, Macbeth, Henry IV & Henry V. I knew I wanted to freely cut-and-paste from Shakespeare, as if he’d written the original Ghostbusters. The result is a sort of stitched together blanket of Shakespeare lines, lines adapted from Ghostbusters, and some lines I created myself.

The Outline

Like I said, I kept the story limited to how the four Ghostbusters learn that ghosts are real, become professional ghost catchers, and then receive a call from a damsel in distress (Ms. Dana Barrett), who allows them to become heroes by defeating the ghost that has possessed her. I also decided to use the commercial in the movie as a framing device:

In my version, the Ghostbusters start by doing a commercial that then becomes a flashback where the heroes recap everything that has happened to them over the past week. I then ended the play by joking referring to the play as “A very long commercial.”

Scenes I Included/ Scenes I Cut

I only had 30 minutes allocated for my show, so I knew I’d have to pare down the story to its bare bones. This meant I had to eliminate a lot of subplots and characters and condense several scenes. As much as I love Walter Peck, Dean Jaeger, Louis Tully, Janine Melnitz, and the guy who gets electrocuted, they are not absolutely essential to the plot, so I cut them from my version. I also combined the characters of Dana and Gozer, eliminating the two terror dogs and limiting the antagonists to Gozer and the Stay Pufft Marshmallow Man. So I watched the film a few times, and created an outline of just 7 scenes.

Character Models

One thing I’ve said again and again is that Shakespeare’s characters are all based on archetypes that we see everywhere throughout literature, theater, and yes, movies. While I was watching Ghostbusters, I tried to find the Shakespearean archetypes that match the best with the characters in the movie:

Ray Stantz- Hamlet from Hamlet– Ray is a bookish man who is obsessed with death and with the occult, which makes him very much like the scholarly Prince Hamlet. He’s also a man on a mission to try and understand the supernatural and help keep it from destroying our world. Dr. Venkman describes him as “The heart of the Ghostbusters”, and that humorous heart gets him into trouble sometimes.

Egon Spangler- Horatio from Hamlet If Ray is the heart of the team, Egon is the brain. He is the no-nonsense scientist who provides the team with data and equipment to help them fight ghosts effectively, much like how Horatio reports to Hamlet that his father’s ghost has returned from the grave.

Dr. Venkman– Sir John Falstaff/ King Henry V

Dana Barret- Ophelia from Hamlet

Gozer– Hecate from Macbeth

The Stay Pufft Marshmallow Man- Snug the Joiner from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Sneak Peak

Here’s one of the scenes I wrote, with the original scene for context


[The ghostbusters climb the stairway to the penthouse, where Gozer is sitting in a cloud. They have been going for a while and are clearly tired].
Venkman: Though I have not known fair Dana long, I know she must be a virtuous maid. Ascend this penthouse tower and let’s rescue she!
Like to the Knights of ancient chivalry!
Egon: These apparitions whizzing in the air
Give so much light that I may read by them.
[They reach the top and behold Gozer]
Ray: I am resolved to speak to Gozer. This is the latest parle we will admit.
Gozer: Art thou a god?
Ray: Nay.
Gozer: Then perish, half-man!
Winston: Enough Ray of thy diplomacy!
Speak, thou proton pack for me! [He fires, then the rest join in] Gozer disappears
Venkman: The sky hath bubbles as the water hath, and she be one of them!
Gozer [in Voice Over]: Sub creatures! Hark! Tis time! Pick the Destructor’s form
Be it a Goblin damned or angel bright!
Tornado or a earthy bright
Or greatest Monkey with an appetite!
Winson: Our thoughts contain the form that seals our doom?
Then make them blank as a new-made room! [They all gesture to their heads as if pushing thoughts out]
Gozer: Thy choice is made. Prepare to meet thy doom!
Venkman: Nay! I chose nothing
Winston: Nor I!
Egon: Nor I
[Pause]
All: Ray?
Ray: Twas not my fault! It popped into my mind
Venkman: What? What hast popped in?
Egon: LOOOK!!!

The speech of the Stay Pufft Marshmallow Man

How did Hamlet’s Father Die?

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I’m helping to direct a young actor playing Hamlet and we’re going over the “O That This Too Too Solid Flesh” speech. Going over the text, it occurred to me: what happened to Hamlet’s father?

Shakespeare makes it clear that Claudius poisoned Hamlet’s father with a vial of poison that he put in the king’s ear:

Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebona in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leperous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body. Hamlet, Act I, Scene v, lines 796-805.

The Ghost calls the poison “cursed hebannon,” which fis a poison that Shakespeare made up. Interestingly, Shakespeare’s original source for Hamlet makes no reference to poisoning, but that the king was stabbed in front of his own court. I think Shakespeare might have changed this simply because Queen Elizabeth was concerned about assassination herself, and Shakespeare didn’t want to make it look like he approved of assassination. Then again, maybe he changed it so that the murder didn’t seem like a repeat of Julius Caesar, (which Shakespeare’s company performed the year before Hamlet, (Source: New York Times, 1982).

The Ghost describes how, when the poison went through his ear canal, he experienced violent swelling, sores, and unimaginable pain. He actually compares himself to Lazarus, Jesus’ friend in the Bible who died of leprosy.

And with a sudden vigour it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine;
And a most instant tetter bark’d about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust
All my smooth body. Hamlet, Act I, Scene v, lines 807-811.

Detail from “The Raising of Lazarus” by Rembrandt c. 1630

Sadly, Leprosy is still prevalent in third world countries so its symptoms are still very well understood: CONTENT WARNING: DISTURBING IMAGES IN THIS VIDEO

The poison is made up, but could such a poison actually exist? I found a wonderful article from the Journal of ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat), where the author John Riddington Young posits the kinds of real-world poisons that might have this horrific effect on Hamlet’s father.

What actual poison was used? Shakespeare states, “the juice of cursed Hebenon” [6] but sadly, there is no such drug. Did he mean hemlock, or perhaps henbane? Laurence Olivier actually substitutes the name hemlock in his 1948 film. Belladonna, aconite and nicotine have all been suggested, but the most likely culprit is taxine from the yew tree. It is a deadly poison and its Old English name was heben. Shakespeare would certainly have known of it; he says in Richard II, archers bend ‘their bows of doubly fatal Eugh’ [7] (implying that apart from the arrows killing foes, there is an intrinsic toxicity in the wood).

JOHN RIDDINGTON YOUNG:
“History of ENT – Murder most foul, strange and unnatural”

I found a case study of a real case of Yew poisoning that emphasizes that it is incredibly fast-acting, “Fast as quicksilver”, that it can be misdiagnosed as another poison (like a snake bite, as Claudius later claims), and that it has no known antidote, the perfect way to kill a king:

. The taxine alkaloids (for example, taxine A, 2-deacetyltaxine A, isotaxine B, 1-deoxytaxine B) derived from p-dimethylaminohydroxycinnamic acid are the effective poisons of the yew [1]. In chemical terms, the compound is structurally related to veratrine, and the presence of an unsaturated lactone group makes this group of alkaloids similar to digitalis. Poisoning with the latter may be falsely diagnosed during a toxicological examination. Cardiac disturbances after intoxication by yew are ascribed mainly to the alkaloids paclitaxel and taxine B, affecting sodium/calcium permeability in cells [2]. The taxine alkaloid is absorbed through the digestive tract very rapidly, and the signs of poisoning manifest themselves after 30 to 90 minutes. An infusion made from 50 to 100g of needles is considered to be fatal [3–5], as no antidote is known.

Vališ, M., Kočí, J., Tuček, D. et al. Common yew intoxication: a case report. J Med Case Reports 8, 4 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1752-1947-8-4

So if you are playing Hamlet, in addition to the sadness and anger you feel after losing your father, you could also feel revulsion and pity at the painful, disgusting and cowardly way he was murdered. Truly, “MOST FOUL STRANGE AND MOST UNNATURAL.”