Chorus:
I: I wish we'd ability to rhyme and form couplets
II. I wish that our audience would eat more pork cutlets
I: I wish this play were something pithy and elegant
II: We're lucky to feast on posterity's excrement
I: I wish that the muse would begift me with fire
II: Your muse is a whore and a Jew and a liar
I: I wish her to sing the injustice of Mariamne
II: To rhyme a word like that you'd wear out your bad knee
I: You see now the level this poet is working at
II: To even attempt a play like this he's jerking it
I: Oh sing to us muse the injustice of women
II: Who lie in their beds with their blood stain-ed linen
I: Oh sing to us muse of the rage of old Herod
II: Of those debauched trysts and those lusts that are torrid
I: Oh sing to us muse of the jealous one, Salome
II: The whore and the slut she deserved a lobotomee
I: Oh sing to us muse of the tragic Jersualem
II: A city been with us since before Methusalem
I: Oh sing to us muse of Judea and Isra-el
II: Whose conquest crowns every empire impera-el
I: Oh sing to us muse of the days of Hasmonea
II: And of feats, acts, beliefs, deeds, lives fit for Draconia
I: Oh sing to us muse the beliefs of the Maccabees
II: Who brought Israel back from sound reason to quackeries
I: Oh sing to us muse of Mariamne's great tragedy
II: And all of the great faults that may catalogue history
(The invocation of the muses stops here, but judging by the gap in the scroll the original may have gone on for another five-hundred lines. - Richard Westenbach: Free University, Berlin 1952)
I: The fanatic from Mod'in stripped Israel from Greece,
II: For Jews they're all known to give reason the fleece.
I: Matthias was pure and it's said he was holy
II: If virtue is this the Heeb spirit is lowly.
I: And like all those Godfools he made many babies
II: And like all those Godfools their rage spreads like rabies.
I: Since Yahweh throws tantrums without full compliance
II: But all we Greeks wanted was give Jews some science.
I: There's no prize for science so why would Jews bother?
II: Do they have some brains left for something but slaughter?
I: They kill everything from their kings to their penis,
II: If everything's dead why're they haunted by cleanness.
I: Jews say they have books but their book is just laws,
II\ Yet customs and code are ignored without cause.
I: But the world of the Jews is so empty and bland
II: It's the silence they need or they get out of hand.
(enter Marc Anthony)
Marc Anthony:
HOOOOORRROOOOOOOORRR!
I have seen horror from Brutus to Germans
Yet no Roman knife chills the blood like this vermin.
And Rome has seen slimefilth from Crassus to Cassius
Yet no feces stays in the nostrils like ashes.
Jerusalem burns as no city of fame,
Yet light never dies for a tribe without shame.
In every last alley scenes worthy of Medea
Yet no Grecian poet could render Judea.
No place in the world with affairs quite so lurid
As this abattoir lead by their butcher King Herod.
Chorus:
I. Yet you wanted King Herod as ally and friend
II. And a hemorrhaging pain in Augustus rear end.
I. You wanted a monster confusion and peril
II. And so you inherited people who're feral .
Anthony: I just wanted some money to go with my trouble
Chorus II: And some Jewish girls while you reduce them to rubble.
Anthony: I just want to make Rome a place nicer than Greece.
Chorus I: It already is you laid waste to the East.
Anthony: When I first met Herod he seemed just like me.
Chorus I: I'm nothing like you -
Chorus II: says the fly to the flea.
(Enter Herod)
Anthony: He'd drink and he'd screw and he'd smoke and he'd cuss.
All: Who'd think a barbarian's made just like us?
Anthony: I'm leaving poor Israel for Egypt right now.
Chorus I: You've left Rome and Israel your problems and how.
Anthony: Anthony's gone and no payment's worth this!
Chorus II: All this just because he showed up to a bris...
Herod:
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOORES!
(exit Anthony)
Whores everywhere! Whores to my east and whores to my west!
Whores among priests for treyf meat to get blessed!
Whores among soldiers, whores among spies,
Whores among whores who're rabbis in disguise!
Whores that I kill or I marry like Mariamne
I shouldn't kill her just abandon like Ariadne.
Whores like her mother Alexandra the kalvah
Whored daughter to me then whored me Cleopatra.
Whores that rule nations like glorified cats
While Jews and the Arabs are left for the rats.
Chorus:
I. You stick up for Jews and the Arabs like Moses
II. I'm sure Yahweh won't find in your virtue some poses.
Herod:
I guess if he he does or he doesn't's no matter
The Jews and the Arabs are mad as a hatter.
Chorus:
I. And Herod's quick brain has a clean bill of health,
II. I'm sure that his bloodlust is just for the wealth.
Herod:
If I'm just so bad when it's time to kill kin
How do you explain all the kings that have been?
Cleopatra has killed all her husbands and brothers
And then she colludes with Mariamne's drek mother
So I dropped everything and I dashed to her summons.
I knew that I might not survive when I come in
So I had to think of a hole to put thumb in
Chorus:
I: Ye gods that was three rhymes where there should be two!
II: An incompetent poet so what else is new?
Herod:
So they had to know that by murdering me
They would kill someone loved like my Mariamne.
I told Uncle Joseph to kill her if they eliminate me.
But how's he to know what to do if she irritates me?
Herod:
It's a shame for that price to deliver your hide
But they expected Mariamne I knew they'd abide.
But I had to offer some great bit of holdings
Not gold and/or rainment and surely not mouldings.
Chorus:
I: This poetry's terrible, dreadful, horrific!
II: So you try conveying a style that's mythic.
Herod:
The balsam of Jericho's what I presented
She acted as though she just meant to renounce it
But I knew she wanted the deed to forever
She thinks she can hold it and that she's so clever.
Alexandra reminded Cleopatra her oath:
Aristobulus's murder, revenge for us both.
Cleopatra did call for a recess to pondra
But then did I speak to deranged Alexandra
I said not to kill me her daughter's a captive
You see when it comes to my life I'm adaptive.
Alexandra dejected in horror rescinded
And then we go back to our home all is mended.
Chorus:
I. You think all is mended you dumb little Jew?
Herod:
Of course I don't think all is mended you fool!
(Enter Mariamne)
I'm a king and my life is perpetually threatened
So one small mistake my life's bodily deadened
You try surviving this pit of sheer terror!
I guarantee you'd make chess riddled with error!
Mariamne: WEEEEEEEEEAAAAAK!!
(exit Herod)
Weak little men in the shadows at court
Who hit us and maim us and rape us for sport.
Who pray and play virtue to all powerful Yahweh
Then bribe little men robbing poor on the highway.
There's only one man fit at court to be king,
It's sweet Uncle Joseph who'd let freedom ring.
Chorus:
I: But Joseph was sworn to assassinate you!
Mariamne:
If you think he was capable that's just untrue.
His history speaks of all manner of gore
But he loved me, yes, and I loved him more!
My love for him reaches from rivers to seas
Not like for Herod who thought me a tease.
We all know I hated that murdering wretch
But he made it worse cuz he smelled and he'd kvetch
With Herod men pisched their pants holy with terror
But woman thought Herod too feeble to scare her
He's more scared of women than women of him
And if they thought he'd power their opinion'd grow dim
He'd ply them with presents and raiment and jewels
And then he would stutter his words like his fools
Then he'd fall off his chair and he'd trip on his feet
The most powerful king would turn white as a sheet
But he dare not turn girls out or rape them for fear
That they'd hate him or make him a subject for jeer
Chorus:
I: Is it possible Herod just wanted a love
II: From a woman who'd see through some murder thereof?
Mariamne:
Herod's whole life's at court which he played like a master
But Israel's court couldn't drive women out faster
And Herod was built to feel hate, not to love
It's the most natural thing for him, crushing a dove
But women for this scum was object to worship
For Yahweh's king had use for no nuanced courtship
Coitus for Herod was something for breeding
And finding her spots he'd a map of misreading
He'd go out and seduce from some book bought in Rome
And our God only knows what disease he brought home
His sores were like pox and it made him insane
He'd accuse me of lovers with holes in his brain
And disease was the only gift he gave to me
After winning me with rubies large as the sea
Chorus:
I. I thought he carried you off with Marc Anthony
Mariamne:
All was a show, he in private played gallantry.
Chorus:
II: We'd heard that he forced you to marry with sword
Mariamne:
He did then said it's because he adored...
Chorus:
I. We've all heard stories like this but did you believe him?
Mariamne:
Of course not but he's King, I had to receive him!
He said that he'd wait and in time I would love
And he tempered his fury, not even a shove.
Chorus:
I. This rhyme scheme is Greek but it really is corny.
II. Do you think this couplet will end without 'horny?'
Mariamne:
With women this giant was tonguetied as Echo
His
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