In Competition No. 3337 you were invited to submit a soliloquy composed by Giovanni Fontana’s marble statue of Shakespeare, which has graced Leicester Square since 1874. Bill Greenwell, Alan Millard, Sylvia Fairley and Paul A. Freeman were star performers, but a standing ovation and £20 go to the winners below.

Here stand I, with Lord Leicester’s patronage,

Four-square, and can survey from every side,

The life of London, multiplied and squared,

Watching the things that change, yet do not change.

Young ladies, and the not so young, still ply

Love’s trade, but pliable young men now stir

Remembrance-echoes in my marble breast,

Aye, of the ale-house and theatre, too,

Though now, I hear, there are no heads displayed

On pikes, but that corrupt and wicked men,

Their heads intact, head businesses instead.

Of bear-pits, too, the city now is bare,

And baiting is reserved for Parliament.

The foul miasmas of my days are gone,

I could breathe safely now (were I not stone),

Safeguarded in my low emission zone.

Brian Murdoch

‘O, you are men of stones’, declared King Lear,

And though I’ve shuffled off this mortal coil,

Methinks I have become one such myself.

Macbeth had thought that when the brains were out,

The man would die, and so, forsooth, did I…

What bloody man is that, who doth inscribe

His name upon my too, too solid flesh?

Is this a pigeon that I see above me,

About to drop its load upon my head?

I cannot move my arm to ward it off,

Nor even rub my stiff and aching back.

What rough magician brought me to this spot,

Sans breath, sans touch, sans almost everything?

This riddle doth perplex me in the extreme:

How cometh it that I, though dead, still think,

And that mine eyes do itch, yet cannot blink?

Brian Allgar

Oh! Would that I, like cold Hermione,

Now standing yet like stone, might live and breathe,

To move among this happy breed of men,

This other Eden, Demi-Paradise,

This teeming womb of Greggs and Burger Kings,

McDonald’s, Subway – oh this septic isle,

Fair Leicester Square! – set in a silver sea

Of pizza boxes, crisp packets and vapes,

Abodes of cardboard, conscience Costa cups;

To move among the beauty of the world –

Oh what a piece of work’s your Englishman!

Infinite of good cheer; how like an angel;

The very paragon of animals!

On high, this brave o’erhanging firmament,

This goodly canopy, this English sky,

That cleanses all with soft eternal rain!

David Silverman

Is this a city which I see before me,

Or else a busy wilderness of brands,

Each clamouring as mendicants beg alms

Or suitors woo the favours of fair ladies

With silken promises of faithful love

Too soon in tatters once the prize is won?

Here witness the fanatic public swarm,

A company of ever-strolling players,

Big spenders, locust-hungry to consume.

All hotfoot for the buzzing news and fashions,

How many rush to buy identity!

Here I perform, a stone epitome.

One marble arm upholds my beard; the other

Cues words I gave a wise, gaslighting fool.

Should I have added ignorance is bliss,

Seeing commerce reigns throughout cosmopolis?

Basil Ransome-Davies

I’m but a statue, yet my heart of stone

Must ache whilst I’m amidst this shambling crowd,

Who munch bad food with eyes fixed on their phones,

Then gaze around and wonder where real life

Is happening. They rarely notice me,

Or if they do, they’re like the unkempt youth

Who stared with bile and said resentfully:

‘Because of that sod I failed English Lit.’

I wrote a play once where a statue spoke

And came alive, and brought the happy end

A comedy needs – but that’s beyond my powers.

I can but stand here, looking epicene,

With arm fixed rigid, so I cannot raise

My pen to do the thing I yearn to, write

A play that puts your strange chaotic age

Where it belongs, made clear upon a stage.

George Simmers

Atop my pedestal, I can gaze down

Upon a city’s throngs, behold them move

Through all the comedies and tragedies

That spawn our history and our romance.

These passersby search out TKTS

To purchase discount access to my works,

On which the spotlight never seems to set

Despite new modes of art and artifice

That traffic all the stages of this realm.

How much the mirror I held up to life

Reflects today a world they know and feel

I have no way to reckon from up here.

One bides as best one can above the fray

Of this quotidian, unstructured play.

Chris O’Carroll

How like a tall Olympian I look

With heart of stone and proud, unseeing eyes.

Why, surely I bestride the narrow world

Like a colossus, grandeur in my gaze.

My maker settled me by leafy trees

And I admire admirers. Could I know

Reflecting on what scenes I might behold

When I had shuffled off my mortal coil

That I would rise sublime, seeing the world

As one great stage where I alone perform?

Let me have those about me who view art

As something cherished. May their lips recite

Some words that pensive Hamlet may have said,

Or poor King Lear or tragic Romeo.

I thank my country for her fond affection

That gave her bard a stony resurrection.

Frank McDonald

No. 3340: Dietary restriction

You are invited to submit a poem calling for a particular food to be banned. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 6 March.