Hamlet of the Apes

We gave out keyboards to one million monkeys,
and waited for one Hamlet to be typed.

A million keyboards cost a lot of money
but it was worth it, for the time was ripe
to test the claim which “they” were always saying,
that given infinite time these monkeys would
produce a play that wasn't merely good
but rather great! And so we went on praying,
especially since the simians liked to destroy
the keyboards which they were supposed to employ
in typing out “to be or not” etcetera,
somehow emerging from mere random letters.

After a billion years, they had evolved.
“Come now, chaps, this problem's easily solved,
and we don't see what all the fuss is about.
Give us a copy and we'll type it out!”
We had to agree they sounded rather intelligent.
But we refused. Their solution was inelegant.

We somehow didn't have the heart to tell
them that they'd typed it once, but failed to spell
“Ophelia” correctly, which was quite a sorrow.
But, so what, they always had tomorrow!

They beat us in the end, for they invented
a time machine - they went back and attended
the first production of Hamlet at the Globe,
and even corrected our manuscripts, which drove
some Lit. professors into deep despair.

Replicate our experiment if you dare!