How Doth the Little Crocodile
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!
Commentary
Yesterday’s 8-line Kipling poem [“The Idiot Boy” -m.] somehow reminded me (maybe coz of the similar rhythm) of another famous 8-liner, also a parody of something I don’t quite remember. But then, when a parody is more familiar than the original…says something about the parodist, doesn’t it?
“How Doth the Little Crocodile” had the same effect on me as the Kipling poem…it does not make me roll over in laughter…but just smile happily for a long time appreciating the impact of the imagery.
— Raj
Martin adds
Carroll was parodying Isaac Watts’ “Against Idleness and Mischief”, a rather tedious and moralistic poem (and a prime example of what I call “Good Advice for the Younger Generation”) that well deserved it. As Raj said, when a parody is more famous than the original it certainly does say something about the parodist; in this case we can safely conclude that it says something about the original too.
Links
http://home.earthlink.net/~lfdean/carroll/parody/crocodile.html has a side-by-side printing of Carroll’s parody and Watts’ original
Kipling’s “Idiot Boy”: Poem #962
Some links on Carroll as parodist : Poem #935
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Suresh Ramasubramanian · 16 December 2001
Jaws - reminded me of this Shakespearean spoof from Huck Finn… attributed to the ‘Duke’ (part of those two conmen, the King and the Duke, that Huck and Jim meet when rafting down the river).
It is supposed to be from Hamlet’s soliloquy - and there’s a lot of Shakespeare brilliantly mixed up from Othello, Macbeth …
In particular, the last line where Hamlet telling Ophelia “Ope thee not they ponderous marble jaws …” :)
-srs
“Hamlet’s Soliloquy”
- Mark Twain / Samuel Langhorne Clemens
To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the innocent sleep, Great nature’s second course, And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of. There’s the respect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The law’s delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take, In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, Breathes forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i’ the adage, Is sicklied o’er with care, And all the clouds that lowered o’er our housetops, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery – go!
Martin DeMello · 19 January 2003
I don’t know why he wrote ‘em, or what he’s trying to say I guess he thought them funny in a twisted sort of way But I’ll never live down how my verses were mocked in Alice