Some levity.
LONDON — To be or not to be vaccinated, that is the question.
After an 81-year-old named William Shakespeare became the second person in the West to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine in Britain outside clinical trials Tuesday, social media erupted with joy, puns and many quotes from the great British playwright.
“They really are prioritising the elderly: this guy is 456,” wrote one user, while the term “Two Gentlemen of Corona,” a play on “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” swiftly became a top trend in Britain.
Others quipped that the first batch of inoculations, part of the first mass coronavirus immunization campaign in the West, marked the “Taming of the Flu.”
Is this a needle which I see before me?” one Twitter user wrote, recalling the words spoken by Macbeth — or as some joked, “Vacbeth” — in one of Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedies.
British tabloids also pounced on the fact that the Shakespeare inoculated Tuesday, who lives in Warwickshire in England, shares not just the same name as the poet but also a home county.
It's much ado about nothing.