Montaigne’s Heiress

Dear Hamlet,

I watched Derek Jacobi doing your speech tonight. You know… the one that everyone knows the first line of. “To be, or not to be…” etc. I.e. my least favorite soliloquy in the entire play. And I just wanted to sit down and have a little chat with you about some of the things that you mention in there. Let’s take it from the top.

Hamlet, Hamlet, Hamlet… You start off so well. I mean “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” is great. It might even be true. I mean, sure. You’re a prince, your family is rich, you’re going to be king of Denmark, you’ve been able to stay at university for an abnormally long time and do sweet fuck all (I mean, c’mon, dude, you’re fucking 30!) and your girlfriend is both beautiful and virtuous… and that’s some pretty outrageous fortune. What a craptastic life you’ve led. Yeah, your daddy is dead, but if what you say about death (“to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to…”) is true, then maybe that’s better for him! O, but of course he’s told you in a previous scene that he’s in purgatory being roasted alive. Ooooo…. sorry.

And that’s sort of the point you come to in the next bit (“for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause.”) Yeah… so nobody knows what is going to happen to him after death. If what’s going to happen to him in death is more craptastic than what’s happening to him in life, you’re quite right – he might be pretty glad that God has “fixed his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter.” Just by the bye, can I give you a piece of advice? Your mentioning your suicidality the first time we meet you and then your continuing to harp on it throughout the entire play is a little bit anticlimactic when you actually do get killed. Just sayin’.

Anywho, this is the problem that I have:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The 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 the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’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?

So… let’s talk about this, shall we?

Just to reiterate, you’re a prince. You’re also only 30. So what do you know about “the whips and scorns of time”? I’m sure that you don’t have a single wrinkle on your well-preserved face, or a strand of white in your well-groomed hair. Or, take the next bit: “the oppressor’s wrong.” Uh… YOU are the oppressor. You’re a prince. Who rules over you? Your “uncle-father and aunt-mother” – but… really, is there anything you’re debarred from doing? What the heck do you know about “the oppressor’s wrong”?

Moving on, you talk about “the proud man’s contumely” and “the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes.” Who has ever spurned you in your entire life? Who has ever looked down on you or spat at you in your entire life? “The pangs of dispriz’d love.” Well… Ophelia loves you so deeply that she runs mad after you kill her daddy. Your mother dotes on you so much that she’ll do whatever you say, even though she thinks you’re mad. You talk about Yorick and your dad loving you. You have an excellent and faithful friend in Horatio. Admittedly, your uncle is a bit of a fucking bastard. Even he, however, won’t do or say anything to your face. Whom have you ever loved who has not loved you back?

“The law’s delay, the insolence of office.”

So you have to do… what? You’re 30 and still at uni. What office have you ever held? And I’m sure that the officeholders of the court have never dared be insolent to you – except Young Osric, who is evidently a fucktard anyway… and you’ve not even met him yet. And… the law’s delay. You’re saying, seriously, that your cases are not the first to be considered? You, the prince? Liek srsly, Hamlet. Come off it.

Then, we have the big one: “death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns.”

Uh, HELLO?! Who was it that comes back from beyond the grave to tell you to kill your uncle? O, right! Your father. His tomb “op’d its ponderous and marble jaws to cast [him] up again.” You know… that guy? The one who told you he was in purgatory and that really craptastic things were happening to him that would “freeze thy young blood” if you were to hear the “lightest word” of his torture? I mean, just sayin’.

At least, however, you’re slightly more honest here:

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 away,
And lose the name of action.

So you’re saying, basically, that you’re afraid to kill your uncle because you know you’ll die and be sent to purgatory to get tortured and you’re just a bit… not kewl with that. I mean, fair enough. I’m not sure exactly that you have a “native hue of resolution” – since you don’t really seem to be an action-oriented kind of a guy. But, you know, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here.

Still, my dear man, you may want to reconsider the better part of your speech. You go back on yourself, my lad… and really? I like you just a little bit better when you get so bloodthirsty (and try completely to delude yourself) when you see what that idiot Fortinbras is doing with his “shark’d up… list of lawless resolutes.”

If you need some help in re-drafting this one, I’d be happy to help. You can email me your edits.

Cheers,

Charlotte