Words, words, WORDS!

Hipster Hamlet.

The great film critic Tom Servo once said, "I thought frailty's name was Carl."

Unfortunately, one of the many memories of Hamlet I have is of that abysmal English-dubbed German television production the MST3K boys were brave enough to slog through for our ironic pleasure.

"Perchance to dream--"
"--the impossible DREAM!"

"He said bare bodkin."

"When Danish flirting goes bad."

"Losertes!"
"Craplet!"
"Claudi-ass!"

"--tis a consumation devoutly to be wished."
"Especially with Ophelia, man! Hehehe!"

Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, Hamlet became my favorite play (the Henriad coming in second) as soon as I started reading it for myself. So much naval-gazing amongst the dramatis personae and unerringly perfect poetry effortlessly appealed.

Long before this project, I set myself to learn Hamlet's most famous soliloquy. I remember muttering the lines under my breath and rolling them around in my head one half of the dreadful summer in 2007 when I had a greasy temp job at a short-order restaurant... never mind. Let's just say that whilst I was scraping half-eaten chicken-fried steak and curdled sausage gravy from plates, Hamlet's words were slowly sinking into my brain every day. It took me a long time to memorize the whole sucker, but now I can spew it out almost without pause, even while partaking of ale or wine. You can bet your hawk and handsaw that I am very proud of myself.

Over the years, I have become more intimately engrossed by the nonpareil prose of Hamlet. This year, I learned three more of his monologues, and at least two more are on my wish list. Hamlet will always be the perfect example of the notion that Shakespeare's words are coded with action and emotion, giving any close reader of the text a clear insight into the characters' inner worlds.

"To be or not to be" can be unpacked in multiple ways, which will make my thousandth utterance as mysterious as the first. I worry if I don't feel or hear something new in it every time I say it aloud.

Hamlet, Act III, Sc. I

Hamlet: 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 heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation 
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; 
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
Must give us pause: there's the respect 
That makes calamity of so long life; 
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, 
The insolence of office and the spurns 
That patient merit of the unworthy takes, 
When he himself might his quietus make 
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, 
To grunt and sweat under a weary life, 
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn 
No traveller 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,
And enterprises of great pith and moment 
With this regard their currents turn awry, 
And lose the name of action.