Brush Up Your Dickens

Baiting the Bard Dept.: Damned if I can find the clipping, but it was a Schenectady Gazette piece from many years ago in which the reporter credited A Tale of Two Cities to Shakespeare. I wrote the following for my own amusement. I would like to say that I learned the melody from a "Kiss Me, Kate" recording, but the truth is that I first encountered it on an Alvin and the Chipmunks LP, and I feel better for this confession. Apologies to Cole Porter, of course.

                                                                       

Dickens, not Shakespeare

Verse

If winning women will be your strength
Give them books they can read at length,
For a lengthy novel will clearly show
You're a sensitive man to know!
So give her Tolstoy and Henry James,
Thackeray and those Bronte dames;
Unless you have Melville and Wolfe and Stowe
You won't seem like a regular Joe,
But the bard whose books get shared
Though this tribute would have galled him:
Is the one who never cared
Just what the Dickens they called him!

Refrain

Brush up your Dickens,
Make Dickens your own;
Brush up your Dickens,
And you'll never read alone!
If when loving she wants it two-fisted,
You can say that your Oliver's Twisted;
If when handling your Nick she will fickle be,
Show her just what a pickle your Nick'll be!
Just convince her you're packing a thick wick,
And you'll see just how quick she can Pickwick!
Brush up your Dickens,
And they'll moan, moan, moan!

Brush up your Dickens,
Make Dickens your own;
Brush up your Dickens,
And you'll never read alone!
When she longs for some closer relations,
You can fill her with Great Expectations;
If she laughs when she's standing before it,
Say, “It's Little, I know, but a-Dorritt!”
If from London to Paris she flitties,
You can bet she's a Tail of Two Cities!
Brush up your Dickens,
And they'll moan, moan, moan!