Edd Joseph decided to text the plays to the seller after his PS3 failed to arrive

Mar 19, 2014 13:00 GMT  ·  By
Edd Joseph found an unusual way to get revenge when he realized he was defrauded
   Edd Joseph found an unusual way to get revenge when he realized he was defrauded

A graphic designer from Bristol took Shakespeare's line “Revenge should have no bounds” from Hamlet to another level when he texted entire works of the well-known author to an Internet seller who failed to deliver a PlayStation 3 console.

Edd Joseph bought a PS3 games console on Gumtree for £80 ($132/€95.6), but he never received the device, so he thought of this ingenious way of getting his revenge.

“It just occurred to me you can copy and paste things from the internet and into a text message. It got me thinking, ‘what can I sent to him’ which turned to ‘what is a really long book,’ which ended with me sending him Macbeth,” Joseph said, as reported by Bristol Post.

So far, the 24-year-old man sent the rogue seller no less than 22 plays, including Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello, which have been delivered in 17,424 texts. Given that one individual text message can only include 160 characters, the 37 works of Shakespeare will be divided in 29,305 separate SMSs.

Before turning to this extreme form of revenge, Joseph complained to the police, but they said his chances of finding the fraudster were slim.

Although he started getting abusive replies from the Gumtree seller, Joseph plans to continue with his plan of sending all 37 plays.

“I'm going to keep doing it. If nothing else I'm sharing a little bit of culture with someone who probably doesn't have much experience of it,” he said.