I laughed when it occurred to me that, since their parser only accepts variables named after a character from a play, Shakespeare programs are limited by having a finite number of variables and storage, but laughed even harder when reading their solution to this problem, stacks.

Each variable is a stack that can push and pop, with no error handling:

"Trying to pop when the stack is empty is a sure sign that the author has not yet perfected her storytelling skills, and will severly disappoint the runtime system."

Fantastic. All the user-friendliness of assembly indeed.

I can't wait to compile Hamlet with it. I've been wondering for years what that script does.

Definitely deserves an A+ grade for turning in such an assignment.

Beautifully convoluted.

I'm still laughing hard! These guys deserve to graduate right now ... or maybe a perpetual grant to stay in school and write such assignments :D Excellente!

Edit: Just noticed 2001

This is amazing! I took a Shakespeare class in college, and it would have been awesome to have given my instructor some source code for assignments. :)

Reminds me a bit of Haifu http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/haifu.html

I like how easily the arithmetic can be mapped onto a stack or tree structure.

Poetry is code.