Hamlet Rewritten

01/12/20

To love, or not to love, that is the question: whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous pain, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. To hate, to leave, no more; and by leaving to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that the heart is heir to: ‘tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d. To hate, to leave; to leave, perchance to be loved by another— ay, there’s the rub: For in that leave of hate what love may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause— there’s the respect that makes calamity of so long love. 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 attention merit of th’unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, to suffer and break under a weary love, but that the dread of something after leaving, the undiscovere’d country, from whose bourne no traveller returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear these ills we have than fly to others 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 away and lose the name of action.