Renaming plays of Shakespeare as if they were books by Robert Ludlum,
Salman Rushdie found for two of them a brand new name,
demonstrating to his friend Christopher Hitchens how to muddle ’em,
and with the Hebrew Bible I myself will try to do the same.
“The Rialto Sanction” is the name that they gave to “The Merchant
of Venice,” “Hamlet” became “Vacillation in Elsinore.”
The title with which I propose the Hebrew Bible should be surgeoned,
is “God’s Great Protocol for People Whom the Gentiles Would Deplore.”
In “Standing on Invented Ground,” WSJ, 6/11/21, Boyd Tonkin, reviewing Languages of Truth by Salman Rushdie, writes:
His years as headline and symbol have often occluded the wit and fun of [his] work. That zestful spirit makes a comeback here. He calls Kurt Vonnegut “the most intellectual of playful fantasists and the most playfully fantastic of intellectuals.” The tag fits Mr. Rushdie too. He once told his friend Christopher Hitchens—subject of a heartfelt tribute—about a game in which you rename Shakespeare plays as Robert Ludlum novels: “The Merchant of Venice” becomes “The Rialto Sanction” and “Hamlet” yields “The Elsinore Vacillation.”
Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.
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