To Be or Not to Be

I wanted to quote Hamlet's famous soliloquy today in a mass email whilst hyper-linking key words to some postings on my department's blog.

Seriously, why isn't Shakespeare used more often in Malaysian speeches and formal communication?

Polonius' Homily

The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold. 

Watched about 30 minutes of Franco Zeferelli's Hamlet last night. Blown away by the language. Shakespeare's got a hell of a way with words. I loved the fatherly advice of Polonius to Laertes:

Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;

But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,

Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man,

And they in France of the best rank and station

Are of a most select and generous chief in that.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all: to thine ownself be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Wasn't that just refreshing? If only sermons could sound more like this! Who needs explanations but if you want you can find some here. 

Still, couldn't keep my eyes open for long. I'm used to watching killers saying, "Die, mother-f*cker!" so I guess I'm a little unused to people saying things like, "A little more than kin, and less than kind." I'll watch it act by act, methinks. Should be fun studying one of the best-known dramatic tragedies ever (I just found out from Wiki that The Banquet, Zhang Zhi Yi's latest, is a Chinese adaptation of Hamlet). One eye on Gibson, Close, Bonham Carter and gang, and another on sites like Open Source Shakespeare ("An Experiement in Literary Technology") and SparkNotes with its loads of online study guides (FOC).

You just gotta admire the 'sentence-construction'. How did the man think of these things? And I thought people like Mitchell, Roy and Naylor were verbiose. Shakespeare makes their works look like Ladybird books.

Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe...Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, all saws of books, all forms, all pressures past that youth and observation copied there...And thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmixed with baser matter. 

You have GOT to be high to be able to write thousands of pages of stuff like this. Like Livingstone searching for the Nile's source, I'm in for the ride. I wish I had taken this stuff in A-Levels (except at that time I'd probably end up hating it - so, yeah, no point)

Hooked on Hamlet

I swear I've got a problem with old books. 

I dropped Lord of the Rings at the point where the big eagle rescued Gandalf from Saruman's steel perch (I recall it was just one almost insignificant line, not unlike the short description of Arwen and her white steed hurrying Frodo away from the Nazgul). I gave up on the Great Gatsby after two attempts, before I got a third of the way. I quit a class studying Romeo & Juliet something like midway through the first scene of the first act. I dropped Nietzche's Beyond Good & Evil after about twenty pages, his Thus Spake Zarathustra after five. I decided not to finish A Hundred Years of Solitude just as I approached the end (simply didn't feel it was worth it). And I struggled through The Old Man & The Sea.

What is this ambivalence I have with books written long ago? Am I doomed to never find delight in the classics?

Which is why, when Hamlet (a 400-hundred year-old play) can keep me hooked for almost a week now, I feel reborn. I'm not incapable of appreciating this stuff after all! A tone-deaf turned soprano couldn't have felt more elated.

I've been reading parts of Hamlet continuously. I whisper "whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", to the friendly ridicule of my wife, my colleagues and students. I pounce at a chance to throw a line at an appropriate time.

Say 'sleep' and I'll say, "and perchance, to dream". Say 'seems' and I'll do that whole gig in Act I, Scene II which end with, "these are but the trappings and suits of woe." Something unusual (or anticipated) happens and I cry, "O my prophetic soul!"

It all sounds weird, I know. You might think I've emerged from some cactus-infested island (or maybe I should be left in one to recuperate).

But I've discovered that filling your mind with these incredible verses has a soothing and clearing effect. My love for the language grows. Where I used to see words as tool pieces to be rearranged according to what fit the need, now I think of them as colours which await ever new shades, tones and juxtapositions as per what life says they must be.

I used to think of language as just one violin, versatile and able to create all manner of tune. But Shakespeare lets me hear a full symphony. And I doubt I've heard true music until I read Hamlet.

I play, flip and turn those words around in my mind, letting it sink in. I find my spirit soaring as I try to relive the mood and the depths of the verses. How can one remain glib and trivial when thinking (out loud) about, "...the whips and scorns of time, the law's delay, the pangs of disprized love (you gotta say all this slowly and with conviction, ok? or it doesn't work!), the insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes."?

I imagine that you could sell me my own shirt if you wrapped your pitch in Hamlet-like prose. And I can't wait to adorn with this wondrous gift of language the equally breath-taking gift of life, truth and love, to name just three more. I seem to have some missing part of me, eagerly seeking re-union with the rest of Being.

'Tis a consumation, devoutly to be wished.