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Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 3.15.97: Top | Help
This was an interp written to be perfomred for middle school and high school
kids as part of a Shakepearean show. Hope this helps.To be, or not to be, that is the question:
To live, or not to live, that is the big question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Each person must make a choice whether it's better to put up with all the garbage that life dumps on you ...
Or take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them.
Or to fight back and either win, die trying, or kill yourself. Either way, it's over.
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.
To die - to just fade away; no more troubles;
'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.
Yeah!
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.
To die - to sleep. To sleep - maybe to dream: that's what stops us; because in that sleep of death, when we leave our bodies behind, who knows what we'll dream; dreams or nightmares.
Theres' the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
That's what makes us stick it out through a long, tough life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Who would put up with growing old,
The oppressor's wrong,
Getting shoved around,
the proud man's contumely,
being humiliated and put down,
The pangs of despis'd love,
having your heart broken,
the law's delay,
being sued,
The insolence of office,
rude salespeople,
and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
having to be nice to jerks,
When he himself might his own quietus make
With a bare bodkin?
When you could end it all with one stroke of a knife?
Who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death -
The thing that keeps us from killing ourselves is the fear of where we might go after death -
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveler returns -
Since no one can come back to tell us what it's like -
puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Who wants to risk trading bad for worse?
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.
When we think too much about a very important decision, we get confused, and scared, and we don't do anything.
Posted by Terry on March 22, 1997 at 17:22:26
In Reply to "To be" posted by Hamlet on March 20, 1997 at 09:37:28
Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 3.15.97: Top | Help