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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Our Friend, Shakespeare



I was rereading Hamlet this morning, just for the fun of it. What can I say? I'm a fan.

Anyways, I started to read over Hamlet's famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy, and discovered that is is amazingly pertininent to our efforts here and across the blogs of the Orthodox Underground. I quote the master below:


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 disprized 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 pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.
The relevant passages are italicized for your convenience. For anyone who doubts that Shakespeare was a closet-Catholic, just read this and try to wrap your head around that which we call "reality."

No comments:

To Bishop Clark, From His Humble Servants:

"Prince of degredations, bought and sold,
These verses, written in your crumbling sty,
Proclaim the faith that I have held and hold,
And publish that in which I mean to die."