Inferno

[snakevin]

Superman.

"Superman, what are you doing here?"

"I killed a hooker. She made a crack about me being faster than a speeding bullet and I ripped her in half like a phone book."

God, superman could just replace the devil himself

 

[That's Funny]

Saddam Hussein, I mean he was not a very nice chap. Oh and Robert Mugabi, just give a few more years to think on that one.

 

[Kryzantine]

T'would be a hard thing to do. You want an inspiration in play, don't go for Inferno. Inferno had novelty going for it, but if you want a format or setting to borrow, try Our Town by Thornton Wilder. It would be easier to represent the modern day by putting all the modern day characters in the same community, and focusing on their interactions. If you still want the novelty value of something unique, then Act III of Our Town may interest you a lot; it's essentially the arrival of the latest death in the town, the lead female act, her interaction with the people who had died before her (her mother, the town drunk who committed suicide, etc) and highlights what's important in life and what isn't. Easier to pull than something based off of Dante's Inferno.

But I just find that Dante's Inferno has a great message to convoy.

IMO, poetic justice is usually best served for poetry. I agree that it has a great message, but replicating it in the form of a play is simply unfeasible.

If you can pull it off, hats off to you; but if you don't pull it off or if it's bad, there's a good chance that the problem is subject matter.

 

[Kurokami]

Hey guys, I am writing a play based on the Inferno part of Dante's The Divine Comedy, because the majority of plays this year are based on Alice in Wonderland, and I don't want to follow the pack, so I decided to base it off the book I was reading at the times. The problem is though, I want to have recognizable people in Hell, and all I can come up with is Cassius, Brutus, Judas and Hitler. Do you guys have any suggesting of who should be in hell, and if so, which level?

Carmen....Sandiego.

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

Son of Sam as the guy listening to Cerberus

What does that mean?

The Son of Sam was a mass murderer in the 70's who believed that his dog was some big space demon lord or something and was giving him orders to kill several people. Cerberus is like a dog (at least in Greek mythological terms) and i thought it was funny making a parody situation out of it

While that would be funny, Son of Sam would be in violence, while Cerberus is in gluttony, sorry about that

Hey at least i tried....can't blame me for that eh?

 

[snakevin]

Hey guys, I am writing a play based on the Inferno part of Dante's The Divine Comedy, because the majority of plays this year are based on Alice in Wonderland, and I don't want to follow the pack, so I decided to base it off the book I was reading at the times. The problem is though, I want to have recognizable people in Hell, and all I can come up with is Cassius, Brutus, Judas and Hitler. Do you guys have any suggesting of who should be in hell, and if so, which level?

Carmen....Sandiego.

i think she would belong in Fraud

 

[snakevin]

Son of Sam as the guy listening to Cerberus

What does that mean?

The Son of Sam was a mass murderer in the 70's who believed that his dog was some big space demon lord or something and was giving him orders to kill several people. Cerberus is like a dog (at least in Greek mythological terms) and i thought it was funny making a parody situation out of it

While that would be funny, Son of Sam would be in violence, while Cerberus is in gluttony, sorry about that

Hey at least i tried....can't blame me for that eh?

Meh, it's ok, it would have been funny if we could

 

[snakevin]

T'would be a hard thing to do. You want an inspiration in play, don't go for Inferno. Inferno had novelty going for it, but if you want a format or setting to borrow, try Our Town by Thornton Wilder. It would be easier to represent the modern day by putting all the modern day characters in the same community, and focusing on their interactions. If you still want the novelty value of something unique, then Act III of Our Town may interest you a lot; it's essentially the arrival of the latest death in the town, the lead female act, her interaction with the people who had died before her (her mother, the town drunk who committed suicide, etc) and highlights what's important in life and what isn't. Easier to pull than something based off of Dante's Inferno.

But I just find that Dante's Inferno has a great message to convoy.

IMO, poetic justice is usually best served for poetry. I agree that it has a great message, but replicating it in the form of a play is simply unfeasible.

If you can pull it off, hats off to you; but if you don't pull it off or if it's bad, there's a good chance that the problem is subject matter.

I'm gonna try and pull it off, and if it sucks, then, it will be worth the experience

 

[Margrave Rinstock]

Found a list of the top ten evil people, that are real.

The Top Ten Evil
1. Tomas de Torquemada (pictured here) - Born in Spain in 1420, his name is synonymous with the Christian Inquisition's horror, religious bigotry, and cruel fanaticism. He was a fan of various forms of torture including foot roasting, use of the garrucha, and suffocation. He was made Grand Inquisitor by Pope Sixtus IV. Popes and kings alike praised his tireless efforts. The number of burnings at the stake during Torquemada's tenure has been estimated at about 2,000. Torquemada's hatred of Jews influenced Ferdinand and Isabella to expel all Jews who had not embraced Christianity.


2. Vlad Tepes - Vlad the Impaler was a prince known for executing his enemies by impalement. He was a fan of various forms of torture including disemboweling and rectal and facial impalement. Vlad the Impaler tortured thousands while he ate and drunk among the corpses. He impaled every person in the city of Amlas -- 20,000 men, women and children. Vlad often ordered people to be skinned, boiled, decapitated, blinded, strangled, hanged, burned, roasted, hacked, nailed, buried alive, stabbed, etc. He also liked to cut off noses, ears, sexual organs and limbs. But his favorite method was impalement on stakes, hence the surname "Tepes" which means "The Impaler" in the Romanian language. It is this technique he used in 1457, 1459 and 1460 against Transylvanian merchants who had ignored his trade laws. He also looked upon the poor, vagrants and beggars as thieves. Consequently, he invited all the poor and sick of Wallachia to his princely court in Tirgoviste for a great feast. After the guests ate and drank, Dracula ordered the hall boarded up and set on fire. No one survived.

Note: Every Romanian who contacted me said I should remove Vlad from the list. They said he was not evil and seemed to like him. In an effort to understand how our views of evil can be so different, I reproduce an exchange I had with Marius who was born in Romania. Perhaps this will help us understand more generally how the perception of evil can differ from person to person. Other strange discussions on this same web page focus on Bill Clinton and those people who truly believe Clinton was more evil than Adolf Hitler who exterminated millions.


3. Adolph Hitler - The dictator of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, was born on April 20, 1889, at Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary.

4. Ivan the Terrible - Ivan Vasilyevich, (born Aug. 25, 1530, in Kolomenskoye, near Moscow) was the grand prince of Moscow (1533-84) and the first to be proclaimed tsar of Russia (from 1547). His reign saw the completion of the construction of a centrally administered Russian state and the creation of an empire that included non-Slav states. He enjoyed burning 1000s of people in frying pans, and was fond of impaling people.

5. Adolph Eichmann - Born in March 19, 1906, Solingen, Germany he was hanged by the state of Israel for his part in the Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II. "The death of five million Jews on my conscience gives me extraordinary satisfaction."

6. Pol Pot - Pol Pot (born in 1925 in the Kompong Thom province of Cambodia) was the Khmer political leader whose totalitarian regime (1975-79) imposed severe hardships on the people of Cambodia. His radical communist government forced the mass evacuations of cities, killed or displaced millions of people, and left a legacy of disease and starvation. Under his leadership, his government caused the deaths of at least one million people from forced labor, starvation, disease, torture, or execution.

7. Mao Tse-tung - who killed somewhere between 20 and 67 million (estimates vary) of his countrymen, including the elderly and intellectuals. His picture still hangs throughout many homes and businesses. Mao's own personality cult, encouraged so as to provide momentum to the movement, assumed religious proportions. The resulting anarchy, terror, and paralysis completely disrupted the urban economy. Industrial production for 1968 dipped 12 percent below that of 1966. In short, the Revolution led to the destruction of much of China's cultural heritage and the imprisonment of a huge number of Chinese intellectuals, amongst other social chaos. This policy is usually regarded as a complete disaster.

8. Idi Amin - Idi Amin Dada Oumee (born in 1924 in Uganda) was the military officer and president (1971-79) of Uganda. Amin also took tribalism, a long- standing problem in Uganda, to its extreme by allegedly ordering the persecution of Acholi, Lango, and other tribes. Reports indicate torture and murder of 100,000 to 300,000 Ugandans during Amin's presidency. In 1972, he began to expel Asians from Uganda. God, he said, had directed him to do this. (Acutally, he had been angered by the refusal of one of the country's most prominent Asian families, the Madhvanis, to hand over their prettiest daughter as his fifth wife.) Over the years, Ugandans would disappear in the thousands, their mutilated bodies washing up on the shores of Lake Victoria. Amin would boast of being a "reluctant" cannibal - human flesh, he said, was too salty. He once ordered that the decapitation of political prisoners be broadcast on TV, specifying that the victims "must wear white to make it easy to see the blood". One of Amin's guards, Abraham Sule, said: "[Amin] put his bayonet in the pot containing human blood and licked the stuff as it ran down the bayonet. Amin told us: 'When you lick the blood of your victim, you will not see nightmares.' He then did it."


9. Joseph Stalin - Born in 1879. During the quarter of a century preceding his death in 1953, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin probably exercised greater political power than any other figure in history. In the 1930s, by his orders, millions of peasants were either killed or permitted to starve to death. Stalin brought about the deaths of more than 20 million of his own people while holding the Soviet Union in an iron grip for 29 years. Stalin succeeded his hero Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in 1924. From then on, he induced widespread famines to enforce farm collectives, and eliminated perceived enemies through massive purges.


10. Genghis Khan- The Mongol Temjin, known to history as Genghis Khan (born 1162) was a warrior and ruler who, starting from obscure and insignificant beginnings, brought all the nomadic tribes of Mongolia under the rule of himself and his family in a rigidly disciplined military state. Massacres of defeated populations, with the resultant terror, were weapons he regularly used. His Mongol hordes killed off countless people in Asia and Europe in the early 1200s. When attacking Volohoi, Khan convinced the city commander that Mongols would stop attacking if the city sent out 1,000 cats and several thousand swallows. When he got them, Genghis had bits of cloth tied to their tails and set the cloth on fire. The cats and birds fled back to the city and ended up setting hundreds of fires inside the city. Then Genghis attacked and won. At another time, Mongols rounded up 70,000 men, women, and children and shot them with arrows. Genghis told his comrades: "Man's greatest good fortune is to chase and defeat his enemy, seize his total possessions, leave his married women weeping and wailing, ride his gelding, use his women as a nightshirt and support, gazing upon and kissing their rosy breasts, sucking their lips which are as sweet as the berries of their breasts."


11. H. H. Holmes - built a hundred-room mansion complete with gas chambers, trap doors, acid vats, lime pits, fake walls and secret entrances. During the 1893 World's Fair he rented rooms to visitors. He then killed most of his lodgers and continued his insurance fraud scheme. He also lured women to his "torture castle" with the promise of marriage. Instead, he would force them to sign over their savings, then throw them down an elevator shaft and gas them to death. In the basement of the castle he dismembered and skinned his prey and experimented with their corpses. He killed over 200 people.


12. Gilles de Rais - A Fifteenth Century French war hero, Gilles was also one of medieval Europe's worst killers. He enjoyed killing mostly young boys, whom he would sodomize before and after decapitation. He enjoyed watching his servants butcher the boys and masturbated over their entrails. He killed over 140 people.

Some Runners-Up: Nicolae Ceausescu decreed that all women must bear five children. Due to terrible food shortages, many women were unable to support their "decree babies." They turned them over to state-run orphanages. More than 150,000 children were crowded into these institutions. Many died of malnutrition and disease. Others ran away becoming homeless beggars. Ceausescu also forbade testing of the nation's blood supply for AIDS. Through transfusions and shared vaccinations needles, thousands of orphans contracted AIDS. Eventually Romania had over half of Europe's cases of childhood AIDS.

Basil the Bulgar Slayer blinded 14,000 prisoners. Heinrich Himmler was the architect of the "Final Solution." Tallat Pasha decreed there must be no Armenians on the Earth. 1.5 Million Armenians were beaten, raped, robbed, and killed.

Basil II? Though not the Nicest Ruler in history, He Did Much to Help the Lot of the Poor of His land (Including Bulgaria, whose aforementioned army was blinded), Lowering their Taxes and increasing the Taxes of the Rich.

I'd say that His misdeeds where no where near the Level of say, Himmler, and Far worse men can be found throughout history who not Merely blinded but Gorily Murdered their Prisoners of war.

 

[Blindswordmaster]

Remember that Dante wrote the Divine Comedy as a religious work, a historical work, and a social satire. Just put pop culture icons that you don't like, they don't even need to be dead. Also in the epic poem, the city of Dis, city of heretics, was make to reflect mosques; so definitely add any suicide bomber or terrorist into Heresy. For the other circles see the following list:
Limbo-Leonard DiCaprio,comedians(the poets of our time)
Lust-Michael Jackson, Charlie Sheen, JFK+Marylin Monroe
Gluttony-John Goodman,
Greed-any rapper, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump
Heresy-Tom Cruise, Scientology in general, Richard Gere
Anger-Mel Gibson(if you're that way), Walt Disney
Violence-Michael Vick, OJ Simpson, Hugo Chavez
Fraud-Bernie Maddoff
Treachery-Johnny Cockrin, Celine Deon, Barbra Streisand

 

[snakevin]

Remember that Dante wrote the Divine Comedy as a religious work, a historical work, and a social satire. Just put pop culture icons that you don't like, they don't even need to be dead. Also in the epic poem, the city of Dis, city of heretics, was make to reflect mosques; so definitely add any suicide bomber or terrorist into Heresy. For the other circles see the following list:
Limbo-Leonard DiCaprio,comedians(the poets of our time)
Lust-Michael Jackson, Charlie Sheen, JFK+Marylin Monroe
Gluttony-John Goodman,
Greed-any rapper, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump
Heresy-Tom Cruise, Scientology in general, Richard Gere
Anger-Mel Gibson(if you're that way), Walt Disney
Violence-Michael Vick, OJ Simpson, Hugo Chavez
Fraud-Bernie Maddoff
Treachery-Johnny Cockrin, Celine Deon, Barbra Streisand

What did Celine Deon and Barbara Streisand do?

 

[Blindswordmaster]

Remember that Dante wrote the Divine Comedy as a religious work, a historical work, and a social satire. Just put pop culture icons that you don't like, they don't even need to be dead. Also in the epic poem, the city of Dis, city of heretics, was make to reflect mosques; so definitely add any suicide bomber or terrorist into Heresy. For the other circles see the following list:
Limbo-Leonard DiCaprio,comedians(the poets of our time)
Lust-Michael Jackson, Charlie Sheen, JFK+Marylin Monroe
Gluttony-John Goodman,
Greed-any rapper, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump
Heresy-Tom Cruise, Scientology in general, Richard Gere
Anger-Mel Gibson(if you're that way), Walt Disney
Violence-Michael Vick, OJ Simpson, Hugo Chavez
Fraud-Bernie Maddoff
Treachery-Johnny Cockrin, Celine Deon, Barbra Streisand

What did Celine Deon and Barbara Streisand do?

I just don't like either of them. They betrayed humanity with their terrible singing and have left a terrible scar on the face of music, they called it "the 90's". That's the beauty of social satire, it's based on your opinion and no one can say boo.

 

[Kinguendo]

Jesus - For the shock factor. (Although I dont advise it unless you want to be on national and international news... and probably recieve a few death threats too.)

Hmm, Rupert Murdoch - Most evil man alive, but he looks like he is stood on deaths doorstep.

Henry Ford - We all know why.

Walt Disney - For pretty much the same reason as Henry Ford.

 

[Kinguendo]

Remember that Dante wrote the Divine Comedy as a religious work, a historical work, and a social satire. Just put pop culture icons that you don't like, they don't even need to be dead. Also in the epic poem, the city of Dis, city of heretics, was make to reflect mosques; so definitely add any suicide bomber or terrorist into Heresy. For the other circles see the following list:
Limbo-Leonard DiCaprio,comedians(the poets of our time)
Lust-Michael Jackson, Charlie Sheen, JFK+Marylin Monroe
Gluttony-John Goodman,
Greed-any rapper, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump
Heresy-Tom Cruise, Scientology in general, Richard Gere
Anger-Mel Gibson(if you're that way), Walt Disney
Violence-Michael Vick, OJ Simpson, Hugo Chavez
Fraud-Bernie Maddoff
Treachery-Johnny Cockrin, Celine Deon, Barbra Streisand

What did Celine Deon and Barbara Streisand do?

I just don't like either of them. They betrayed humanity with their terrible singing and have left a terrible scar on the face of music, they called it "the 90's". That's the beauty of social satire, it's based on your opinion and no one can say boo.

Also, its common knowledge that Barbara Streisand is an absolute *****.

And Celine Deon did the soundtrack for Titanic.

 

[Ionflux]

Please, you think a bunch of Canadian high school kids will know who he is, I bet at least 20 would get that reference

I'm one of those 20!

OT: Adolf Hitler, Josef Mengele, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussain, Jack the Ripper, George Bush.... All I can think of at the moment...

 

[Kurokami]

Hey guys, I am writing a play based on the Inferno part of Dante's The Divine Comedy, because the majority of plays this year are based on Alice in Wonderland, and I don't want to follow the pack, so I decided to base it off the book I was reading at the times. The problem is though, I want to have recognizable people in Hell, and all I can come up with is Cassius, Brutus, Judas and Hitler. Do you guys have any suggesting of who should be in hell, and if so, which level?

Carmen....Sandiego.

i think she would belong in Fraud

After stealing all the gold from greed. =D

By the way, you can use the edit button to combine your posts instead of posting several times on the same page, or just copying the quotes you want as you go along. (it doesn't bother me, but it may others and I wasn't sure you were aware)

 

[Blindswordmaster]

Remember that Dante wrote the Divine Comedy as a religious work, a historical work, and a social satire. Just put pop culture icons that you don't like, they don't even need to be dead. Also in the epic poem, the city of Dis, city of heretics, was make to reflect mosques; so definitely add any suicide bomber or terrorist into Heresy. For the other circles see the following list:
Limbo-Leonard DiCaprio,comedians(the poets of our time)
Lust-Michael Jackson, Charlie Sheen, JFK+Marylin Monroe
Gluttony-John Goodman,
Greed-any rapper, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump
Heresy-Tom Cruise, Scientology in general, Richard Gere
Anger-Mel Gibson(if you're that way), Walt Disney
Violence-Michael Vick, OJ Simpson, Hugo Chavez
Fraud-Bernie Maddoff
Treachery-Johnny Cockrin, Celine Deon, Barbra Streisand

What did Celine Deon and Barbara Streisand do?

I just don't like either of them. They betrayed humanity with their terrible singing and have left a terrible scar on the face of music, they called it "the 90's". That's the beauty of social satire, it's based on your opinion and no one can say boo.

Also, its common knowledge that Barbara Streisand is an absolute *****.

And Celine Deon did the soundtrack for Titanic.

Thank you! Jesus Christ I had to listen to that fucking song by that ***** after Titanic came out, which sucked, that i just started banging my head against the nearest thing available in frustration/trying to knock myself out. The upside of that is that now my skull is harder than steel and I can give people the Glaswegian kiss without it hurting at all.
Also add Kurt Cobain to the wood of the suicides along with Ernest Hemingway. You could also add H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King for their books, maybe they could be in Heresy? You could also add school shooters to drown in the lake of blood in Violence. Also add Angelina Jolie to the circle of Fraud, for pretending to support a charity, if you're into that sort of thing.

 

[snakevin]

The upside of that is that now my skull is harder than steel and I can give people the Glaswegian kiss without it hurting at all.

I Can do that, too!

 

[snakevin]

Idi Amin, Many of the medieval Popes, Karl Marx (whom I have nothing against except for developing communism), Pol Pot, Emperor Nero of Rome, Vlad Tepes III, Richard III, Henry 8th, and finally Josef Mengele.

I can't really put Marx in there, he is one of my heroes!

 

[snakevin]

Idi Amin, Many of the medieval Popes, Karl Marx (whom I have nothing against except for developing communism), Pol Pot, Emperor Nero of Rome, Vlad Tepes III, Richard III, Henry 8th, and finally Josef Mengele.

I can't really put Marx in there, he is one of my heroes!

Very Well.

Limbo: In my honest opinion, Judas should be stuck here, since I believe-in the Christian story- that he was destined to betray Jesus, and has suffered far worse than he did.
Lust: Tiger Woods, Marylin Monroe, Bill Clinton.
Gluttony: Any famous man over 30 stone
Greed: Ghengis Khan, Adolf Hitler
Anger: Mel Gibson, Lorna Bobbit
Heresy: Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Mary Queen of England
Violence: Jeffery Dahmer, the shooter in the Virginia Tech Massacre, Vlad Tepes III
Fraud: John Darwin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Darwin_disappearance_case), Bernie Madoff
Treachery: Benedict Arnold, Guy Fawkes

I just want to keep Judas in treachery to keep some ties to the original story