MSZ - Textbook English
HORSE-CHARLY AND LADY DI

"A horse, m y kingdom needs a horse!" exclaimed the good Queen Bessie the second and her husband-daddy Long-Tall-Phil from Germany succeeded in making her pregnant with young Charly and later on came Little-Annie. Now this story is already history. "A y, every inch a king!" said the British, when they watched young Horse-Charly roaming around the courts and polo-fields of Europe. "England expects every man t o d o his duty!" his father had told him, and the girls, when they saw him, smiled and thought by themselves: "God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man." Broken hearts on his tracks - the eyes o f the world were upon him - he always asked himself: "T o marry, o r not t o marry, that i s the question." With a n auspicious and a dropping eye he followed the daughters of the high and mighty, filled with the milk o f human kindness.

At the same time, his sister Princess Anne spent her days on horseback. "Come, what come may", she thought, and when she fell of her horse she only said: "Here I lay, and this I bore m y point." A good-looking Squire, the Mark of Philips, saw her once with her favorite horse. Being no fool o f fortune he didn't bother with the problem, that i t was the lark and not the nightingale and proposed to her. "Every man has his price", remembered Annie, bought him a new horse and together they breeded from thereon fillies for the noble Royal Family.

In the meantime, Horse-Charly, never paled b y the cast o f thought, got orders from his mother to care for the United Kingdom. "More matter with less art!" was the advice, Queen Bessie was giving him. Deep in his heart, Horse-Charly had already made up his mind, but, as the better part o f valour i s discretion, he didn't tell anyone about it. But you can fool all the people only some o f the time! Coming events cast their shadow before and after a winter of general discontent he announced his engagement with a certain Lady Di.

"Who's she?" the public kept on asking. So Horse-Charly took her out one night, and only men stroken with blindness could avoid to notice what a really great heart she called her own. "O h, that this too solid flesh would melt!" was Charly's problem, whenever he was with her, and: "I would i t were bedtime!" A Royal wedding was announced and the British people cheered: "'T i s a consummation devoutly t o b e wished!" Only a few stubborn republicans stood frustrated in the corner and cursed bitterly this vanitiy fair: "Woe t o the land that' s gouverned by a noble horsy!" But as reasons are by far not a s plenty a s blackberries and knowledge has nothing to do with power, everybody in Britain and people all over the world watched the celebration on tv. Thus, in June 1981, for one day all the world' s a stage and though this b e madness, yet there i s method i n' t.

(MSZ-Textbook. Contributions by William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, William Thackeray and Thomas Campbell are printed in italics.)