Italian Culture Going down the Drain

I just came across this on the web – a new commercial for an Italian toilet paper.

In it, Dante writes his Divine Comedy on a roll of toilet paper. Very sophisticated.

They took a few liberties (poetic licence?) too. Dante writes the last words of the Divine Comedy in his house in Florence in 1308... Every Italian knows since primary school that he finished his Comedy in exile (after being banned from Florence since 1302) just before his death in 1321.

His young wife looks suspiciously more like a Beatrice Portinari than a Gemma Donati. She says in the ad: "This Comedy of yours is very nice, Dante – divine [ha ha] – but don't you think it's too long?" To which Dante replies: "It's fits just one roll..."

A better joke, at least in English, could have been: "I'm on a roll."