Friday Funny: A Play About Elon Musk's Hubris, in Shakespearean Blank Verse

Looking for a way to forget about the Boring Company for a little while? You've come to the wrong place.

1 minute read

December 21, 2018, 6:00 AM PST

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Tesla Roadster

In addition to building a 1.1-mile tunnel in Hawthorne, Elon Musk has used his billions to launch a Tesla Roadster into space, captained by a mannequin wearing a spacesuit named Starman. | James McCloskey / Flickr

In a week of "big Elon Musk news," Dave Jaffer shares news of a new play written by Joe Bagel called Trapped in Elon's Mansion.

Far from launching on Broadway, the play got a staged reading in Montreal last weekend. Still, the conceit of the play is peak plan-nerd. The stage is written in iambic pentameter, and it details the controversial Twitter debate between billionaire Elon Musk and transit planning consultant Jarret Walker, when the former called the latter an idiot almost exactly a year ago.

There was an angle involving Shakespeare that you might have needed to be an English major-nerd to catch. In Q&A Joe Bagel explains in a way that really ties the whole scene together:

The fight I (and my friend, Audrina) got into with Elon was actually about Shakespeare. I was chirping him about his moronic Boring Company. So was a transportation expert, Jarrett Walker. Then, Elon called Jarrett an “idiot” and brought up dirt about Jarrett having gotten a PhD in Shakespeare Studies before he became a transit expert. Low blow! Such a jackass! So what better way to respond to Elon’s anti-Shakespeare tweet than a 17,000-word clapback in iambic pentameter?

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