Hebden Bridge arts festival’s Pop Up Poet, Winston Plowes, has produced a light-hearted take on a row about Sainsbury’s in the town by trying to imagine how Shakespeare might have looked at it in his 450th birthday month, in April. A plan by Sainsbury’s to build a store in the heart of Hebden Bridge, which has outraged many locals keen to defend the viability of existing shops, led to Winston, pictured right, stationing himself in the town at the weekend in the hope of eliciting inspirational comments from car parkers. You can read the results, with a little help from the bard, below:  

 

 

Parking is Such Sweet Sorrow (1)

 

Wouldst our hamlet benefit not

by any challenge to dessert or crust? (2)

 

O give me leave to ease the anguish

of a torturing hour for lunch. (3)

I needeth a meal deal

of two broad slices of thy fair bread

and thrown between them all the food thou hast! (4)

 

Is babbling drunkenness (5)

to inhabit the frail blood of wandering fools

and lorries throng the streets so narrow? (6)

 

Will all protest melt into thin air (7)

or whilst they be sent packing? (8)

 

We haveth now such traders thrice,

our streets of Crown and Market blessed.

Tis too much of a good thing (9)

to add yet another to our table.

 

What's done is done (10)

Alas art thou ever destined

to wander the gaudy orange aisles of wonder? (5)

Pass miserable nights,

so full of fearful dreams,

of ugly sights on Valley road? (11)

 

O judgment!

I fear thou art fled from council

and men have lost their reason. (6)

 

Where are thee to parketh now?

Gone is thine space for further travel. (4)

 

Sources (some altered): (1) Romeo and Juliet; (2) Henry VI; (3) A Midsummer Night's Dream; (4) Antony and Cleopatra; (5) Twelfth Night; (6) Julius Caesar; (7) The Tempest; (8) Henry IV; (9) As You Like It; (10) Macbeth; (11) Richard III