🎭 Strange bedfellows - Learn English vocabulary & idioms with Shakespeare Speaks

It's late in the evening.

William Shakespeare is visiting his actor friend Robert Harley.

Will! Just one moment... I have to rescue the cat.

It likes to sleep with the chickens and it gets locked in the henhouse... come on kitty...

The cat sleeps with the chickens? That's unusual.

It's strange, but they seem quite happy together.

So, Will, I've read your new play The Tempest

and I'm very excited about all the magic, the music and the monsters,

and my character, Trinculo, the lost traveller:

it's a wonderful part. His meeting with Caliban: it's very interesting.

Ah, yes, Caliban. Neither man nor fish - a weird sort of creature.

You put them both in a storm...

Yes: it's an old trick but it's a good way to bring them together.

Trinculo needs shelter and the strange, well, almost monstrous Caliban is wearing a gaberdine:

a large coat, big enough for both of them. Trinculo gets under it, safe and warm from the storm.

But Trinculo isn't happy...

He's feeling very miserable. He actually says:

Alas, the storm is come again!

Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to creep under his gaberdine;

there is no other shelter hereabouts: misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

Ohh, I do like that line: Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

When times are hard, people do things they don't normally do...

We'll leave them there for now.

Israel, Hamas strange bedfellows when it comes to reining in ISIS in Gaza.

You think Miley Cyrus and Michael Bublé should write a song together?

Well, they'd be strange bedfellows... but it might just work.

Now Will, it's getting late and there's a storm coming. You must stay with us tonight.

You can sleep in the henhouse - or you can share a bed with the Harley family.

Hmmm... To bed or not to bed: that is the question.