To love, or not to love? What a question!
‘Tis nobler in the heart to put aside
Outrageous questions, which should not be asked!
And by not asking, end them, answerless.
In loving dreams such silly questions come
No more; and by a dream to say we end
The headaches of a thousand stupid doubts.
‘Tis a consummation devoutly felt.
To live, to love. To love, perchance to dream.
For in these dreams of love, what life may come?
Fardels, quietus, or a bare bodkin?
Send these to an undiscovered country!
Fair girl! Sweet thing, in thy supplications
Be all my pure love of you remembered.
Sonnetic Challenge:
I used the following famous soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Hamlet to create the preceding blank verse sonnet, a parody. My challenge to you: use this, or any other soliloquy as the base for building a sonnet.
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, act three, scene one:
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 wished. 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 undiscovered 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 pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.