To Be or Not To Be

Dare I say that Shakespeare is growing onto me? Reading his lethargic plays is actually becoming quite enjoyable. I never thought this day would come. I’m reading Hamlet right now, and I can legitimately say that I have fallen in love with the language. The Old English is just so…vintage. The characters speak so beautifully that even the simplest of statements become so magical and fluttery. Like Hamlet’s mother doesn’t just say to her son to calm down or take a chill pill or whatever hippies say these days (by the way, Hamlet's mother is not a hippie). No. Instead she says, “Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper, sprinkle cool patience.” Defenitely not a hippie thing to say. And even when the characters say that they’re going to be straight and to the point, they manage to create a whole monologue: “Why day is day, night night, and time is time, were nothing but to waste night, day, and time. Therefore, such brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. Your noble son is mad.” The guy is trying to tell some dude’s parents that their son has gone insane when in fact he’s the one who sounds loony. How cool is that? Probably not cool at all, but I love it. I find it unfortunate that I wasn’t able to enjoy the language with the past Shakespeare plays that I have read. I guess I was just being an ignorant, egotistical adolescent who was too blind to see the exquisiteness in this articulate language. Oh well. At least I’m enjoying its splendor now. I sound retarded when I try to sound smart by talking in big words. I think I’ll leave Shakespeare to all of the immaculate speech. I’ll just go and talk about Pokémon on Twitter.

While I suffer from an extreme case of boredom in this SAT practice class, you guys get to enjoy some of my favorite Hamlet quotes so far.

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

“To be honest, as this world goes, is to
Be one man picked out of ten thousand.”

“We are oft to blame in this—
‘Tis too much proved—that with devotion’s visage
And pious action we do sugar o’er
The devil himself.”

“Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,
And there I see such black and grainèd spots
As will not leave their tinct.”

“Be thou assured, if words made of breath,
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.”

Well, that was fun. I’ll spam you guys with more quotes as soon as I find some good ones. I'm now trying to figure out what that discussion about Flava Flav and fried chicken had to do with the SAT. I guess I'll never know...