Poetry Friday: Hamlet Edition

I didn't intend to take a break from Poetry Friday, but here it is the end of the third week of school, and I see that I haven't posted since August 8th.  Those frenetic beginning days, when we're training and setting up routines and getting to know new names and faces, seemed to take all my energy.  It's been extremely warm, too, sapping my strength.

I wanted to share, though, about the very cool experience we had here in Haiti last night.  We were privileged to get to attend a wonderful production of Hamlet that was put on by the cast of Hamlet Globe to Globe.

Over two years, this troupe will be visiting every country in the world and performing Hamlet.  Last night they were in Haiti, country #39 of the adventure.  The audience was filled with our students, and we English teachers have been doing a lot of Q and A sessions about the plot and the language.

In honor of our visit to the theater, here's Hamlet's most famous speech.  To be or not to be, isn't that always the question?  We can choose to participate in life or stand aside.  We can choose to feel the pain of our lives and of the world, or we can numb ourselves.  We can "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," or we can sleep.  I know Hamlet is talking about choosing to die, and there has been so much discussion lately about suicide and how some people feel driven to make that terrible choice.  I'm thinking more, though, of the choice we sometimes make to say no to life and experience, so that even while we are still alive, we are asleep, avoiding "the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to."

I want to choose, every day, to be.

Speech: “To be, or not to be, that is the question”

By William Shakespeare

(from Hamlet, spoken by 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,

Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th'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 undiscovere'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.

Today's Poetry Friday roundup is here.