window and into the moat where she drowns. Because Hamlet knows what he did, Claudius attempts to kill him. Hamlet, aiming to kill Claudius, accidentally kills Polonius (Chief Wiggum). Polonius implores his son, Laertes (Ralph Wiggum), to avenge his death ("I like revenging!"). Set to duel Hamlet, Laertes accidentally kills himself taking his "practice stab", and Hamlet proceeds to murder Claudius. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Carl and Lenny), meanwhile, have been covered in poison and kill each other with a high five. Hamlet walks away to celebrate, but he slips on some blood and dies. Seeing a big mess she does not want to clean up, Gertrude commits suicide by hitting herself in the head with a mace. Bart thinks Hamlet was boring despite every character being murdered, but Homer tells him that the story became a great film called Ghostbusters, and all the Simpsons dance to the theme. Production "Tales from the Public Domain" was directed by Mike B. Anderson and written by Andrew Kreisberg, Josh Lieb and Matt Warburton. It originally aired on March 17, 2002 on the Fox network. "Tales from the Public Domain" is the third trilogy episode produced for the series, the other two being "Simpsons Bible Stories" from season 10, and "Simpsons Tall Tales" from season 12. Al Jean, the show runner for the episode, stated that trilogy episodes are "very fun for the writers" to do because it allows them to parody "great works of literature" and condense them into one act each. Before writing the episode, the writers had decided that one of the segments would feature Lisa as the main character. According to Jean, the writers found it very difficult to find a historical story for Lisa because there are "so few [historical stories] that star women". They had the same problem when pitching stories for "Simpsons Tall Tales", in which they resorted to giving Lisa the role of "Connie Appleseed", a feminization of the historical figure Johnny Appleseed. The writers eventually settled on Saint Joan of Arc. According to the episode's supervising producer Don Payne, Scottish actor David Tennant watched "Do the Bard, Man" along with the cast of Hamlet during their first rehearsal. The segment has also been used in schools to teach students about Shakespeare's literary work. In the DVD audio commentary for the episode, Anderson stated that trilogy episodes, like the Treehouse of Horror episodes, are "much harder"