Collection of Tools & Utilities/Collection of Tools and Utilities.iso/tex/pcb101_1.zip/HAMLET

Text File | 1989-10-11 | 23KB | 473 lines

<FOLIO TEXT>                                                                    [BR= /I60.62 /J22.20 /K0.0 ]

    The Folio of 1623 (or First Folio) is the standard textual basis for most
of Shakespeare's plays.  However, the later Quartos (Second, Third, and
Fourth) contain excellent versions of Hamlet, and many editors have combined
these Quartos with the First (and later) Folios to derive a published edition
of the play.

    The text given here of "To be, or not to be" is from the First Folio;
the few significant differences from the later Quartos are noted in the cross-
references.

    This famous speech also exists in the First Quarto in a much different
form (see Quarto Text [quarto] for comparison.)

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<TO BE, OR NOT TO BE> ── First Folio version

To be, or not to be ── that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing, end them?  To die, to sleep ──
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.  To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream ── Aye, there's the rub,   (Rub[?glossary])
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,             (Coil[?glossary])
Must give us pause.  There's the respect                (Respect[?glossary])
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the poor man's contumely,        (Contumely[?glossary])
The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay,           (Disprized[?glossary])
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes
When he himself might his quietus make                  (Quietus[?glossary])
With a bare bodkin?  Who would these fardels bear,      (Bodkin[?glossary])
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,                  (Fardels[?glossary])
But that the dread of something after death ──
The undiscovered country from whose bourne              (Bourne[?glossary])
No traveler returns ── puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,         (Thought[?glossary])
And enterprises of great pith and moment                (Pith[?glossary])
With this regard their currents turn away               (Moment[?glossary])
And lose the name of action.

    (Notes are available on the provenance of this transcription.)

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<THAT IS THE QUESTION>

    It's intriguing how different this monologue is in its first recorded
version, the Quarto of 1603.  (See Quarto Text [quarto].) For example, "that
is the question" is, in the Quarto, "aye, there's the point."  The sense of
the speech is there, and many of the words and phrases, but there the
resemblance ends.  (See Transcription [quarto] for a brief discussion of the
First Quarto as a true copy of Shakespeare's play.)

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<OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE>

    It's intriguing how often writers grab a phrase from Shakespeare as the
title of a popular work ── such as Forsythe's "The Dogs of War," Steinbeck's
"The Winter of Our Discontent," or even the Bette Midler/Shelley Long film
"Outrageous Fortune."  In an odd way, such borrowing contributes to keeping
Shakespeare alive even for those who've never read or seen one of his plays.

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<BORROWING>

    Hamlet is an especially prized source for borrowed phrases.  An
extraordinary number of them remain in the public consciousness (even when
misquoted):
        "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"
        "Goodnight, sweet prince"
        "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in
            your philosophy"
        "Alas, poor Yorick; I knew him well"
        "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" (along with a half dozen other
            aphorisms from that scene)
and, of course,
        "To be, or not to be ── that is the question"

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<PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS>

    The character of Hamlet, like that of Oedipus, has become conversational
shorthand for a particular human trait.  Never mind that Sophocles' hero is
more than a man who makes love to his mother (and that by accident), or that
the Dane is not just a man who ponders when he should act.


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<A MAN WHO PONDERS>

    It's worth noting that when Hamlet does take action, four of the play's
five major characters shuffle off this mortal coil in a mere 45 lines, a
mortality rate even Titus Andronicus is hard pressed to match!

    As any actor will confirm, virtually all of Shakespeare's characters are
rich and complex.  Most importantly, they are characters with contradictions
── which, as Brecht has pointed out, makes them very human.  (Even
Shakespeare's minor characters are multidimensional.)

    Is Hamlet kind?  He is to Horatio, and was to his father, yet he is
exceedingly cruel to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, among others.  Is he unable
to act?  He can't kill his father's murderer when the perfect opportunity
presents itself, yet he casually orders the deaths of two old friends
(Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) and is quite hot-blooded about fighting Laertes
in Ophelia's grave.  Whoever Hamlet is in one scene, we may find another where
he is someone quite different.

    But only in literature is there any expectation that a character is a
constant, that one can use a straight-edge to draw a line through a
character's actions.  Yet you are not the same with your mother as with your
lover, with with a co-worker as with a friend.  If theatre should hold the
mirror up to nature, why accept characters who lack dimension?  (In truth, we
don't ── Shakespeare's plays draw audiences throughout the world, while a
production of a Ben Jonson play is a rarity.  Yet it is Jonson's characters
that can be summed up in a single phrase.)

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<MINOR CHARACTERS>

    Consider young Fortinbras; is he simply the guy at the end who gets the
bodies off a curtainless stage?  As Jan Kott rightly points out, he is
Hamlet's mirror, a young prince unencumbered by the weight of reasoning and
contemplation.  He acts directly, and will have his own way.  He's onstage
but briefly, yet he is an important counterweight to Hamlet himself.  Hamlet
may lose his way in a labyrinth of considerations, but is that Norwegian
paragon of the Me Generation in any way a better man?  Fortinbras' character
is detailed in order that we may weigh our judgment of Hamlet.

    Or consider the two messengers in Act V of Macbeth; in interchanges of
less than a dozen lines each, they detail the transformation of Macbeth's
presence in the kingdom from vital and commanding to tired and out of touch.

    Such characters are easy to pass over in the reading of a Shakespearean
play, especially when they lack obviously "choice" lines.  (Readers invariably
remember Macbeth's porter and overlook his steward Seyton, though their lines
are roughly equal in number.)  It is only in the acting that the richness and
utter theatrical necessity of these roles emerges, especially when good actors
and an alert director are part of the mix.

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<SEA OF TROUBLES>

    The phrase "a sea of troubles" has engendered more editorial attempts at
emendation than perhaps any other line in this play.  Pope suggests