William Shakespeare
MacBeth (1611?)
Doctor: What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands.
Gentlewoman: It is an accustom’d action with her, to seem thus washing her hands. I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour.
Lady Macbeth: Yet here’s a spot.
Doctor: Hark, she speaks. I will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.
Lady Macbeth: Out, damn’d spot! out, I say! —One; two: why, then ’tis time to do’t….
Doctor: Do you mark that?
Dick and Jane
Dick: Look, Jane. Look at mother. Mother rubs her hands.
Jane: I see mother. She rubs and rubs.
Mother: I see Spot!
Dick: I hear mother. I can write. I can write her words.
Mother: Out, Spot, out! Out, d***’d Spot, out. One, two, go.
Dick: I hear a bad word, Jane. Do you?
Flannery O’Connor
A Good Man is Hard to Find (1953)
“A good man is hard to find,” Red Sammy said.
Dick and Jane
Look, Jane, look. I see a good man!
Where, Dick, where? I do not see the good man.
I cannot find the good man.
It is hard. It is hard to find the good man.
Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω
year-struck 
Clever, installment 2 of classic literature reinvented and/or interpreted in the Dick and Jane style.
Thanks for reading, Tina.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover next?
Kate, I am so not surprised at your choice. 🙂
It just occurred to me that Lady MacBeth probably suffered from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Good on the bard for noticing that!
It makes for great theater.
Thank you for the laugh! I am in the middle of teaching Romeo and Juliet, so the Shakespeare’s Macbeth meeting Dick and Jane is just what I needed to read today!
I actually considered Romeo and Juliet. Glad you liked it.
How do you sleep with a brain like that?
It’s on loan from the library. Due back any day now.
Is it Dick and Jane or Deconstruction or Deep Case Grammar? Lovely!
Didn’t consider Deep Case Grammar! Thanks.
😀 I am loving your Dick and Jane series, Yearstricken.
So glad to hear that. Thank you for reading.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Aw, man, I’m cryin’ over here.
I hope they are happy tears.
I cannot… stop… LAUGHING. (I just read this out loud to a friend over the phone.) Oh, THANK YOU. I needed this right now.
Could you do Raymond Chandler? My friend is requesting H.P. Lovecraft. (Still laughing!)
I will see what I can come up with. Some texts lend themselves so easily; others not so much.
Any which way you do it— I am SO excited about this series!
Dick and Jane make almost anything bearable. 🙂
Dick and Jane do: Dr. Seuss. Herman Melville.
Jane Austen. Stephen King. Ouch. Laughing already.
*clapping hands* Melville! Yes, Melville!
“As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night” Chapter 96, The Try-Works (Herman Melville, Moby Dick)
Gads, woman, what a challenge!
made you look
yearstricken, h**l – I’m awestricken. You’re such a clever little Dickens (hint)
He’s on my list. 🙂
Nice to see Dick and Jane with a new script after years of seeing Spot run. The imagination is a beautiful thing. Your posts are a beautiful thing.
I’m so glad you like the posts, Pat.
I am certain that my American Literature students would prefer the Dick & Jane version of O’Connor’s story. Her humor is far too sly for their modern-day sensibilities!
Anyone who has not gotten hit over the head by O’Connor is missing out. I love her humor.
I am wondering how Dick & Jane would ‘translate’ James Joyce.
I have been wondering the very same thing.