School ruined poetry

[just mercedes]

My father introduced me to poetry, used to read me poems like "The Wreck of the Hesperus" which we both loved. One day he told me of a poetry contest between Shakespeare and Marlowe. They had to extemporize on the same scene.

Marlowe: Down the hill, along the road
there comes a man whose legs are bowed.

Shakespeare: Ho! What manner of man is this
who holds his balls in parenthesis?