Monday, July 11, 2011

With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemas?

Shakespeare, "Hamlet"
HAMLET - ...What's the news?

ROSENCRANTZ - None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.

HAMLET - Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true. Let me question more in particular: what have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?

GUILDENSTERN - Prison, my lord!

HAMLET - Denmark's a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ - Then is the world one.

HAMLET - A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.

ROSENCRANTZ - We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET - Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ - Why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too narrow for your mind.

HAMLET - O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN - Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

HAMLET - A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ - Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.

HAMLET - Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.

ROSENCRANTZ GUILDENSTERN - We'll wait upon you.HAMLET - No such matter: I will not sort you with the rest of my servants, for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?

ROSENCRANTZ - To visit you, my lord; no other occasion.

HAMLET - Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak.

GUILDENSTERN - What should we say, my lord?

HAMLET - Why, any thing, but to the purpose. You were sent for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks which your modesties have not craft enough to colour: I know the good king and queen have sent for you.

ROSENCRANTZ - To what end, my lord?

HAMLET - That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for, or no?

ROSENCRANTZ - [Aside to GUILDENSTERN] What say you?

HAMLET - [Aside] Nay, then, I have an eye of you.--If you love me, hold not off.

GUILDENSTERN - My lord, we were sent for...

9 comments:

  1. Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"

    ANTONY - Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest-- For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men-- Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious;
    And Brutus is an honourable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
    And, sure, he is an honourable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him? O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me.

    First Citizen - Methinks there is much reason in his sayings.

    Second Citizen - If thou consider rightly of the matter, Caesar has had great wrong.

    Third Citizen - Has he, masters? I fear there will a worse come in his place.

    Fourth Citizen - Mark'd ye his words? He would not take the crown; Therefore 'tis certain he was not ambitious.

    First Citizen - If it be found so, some will dear abide it.

    Second Citizen - Poor soul! his eyes are red as fire with weeping.

    Third Citizen - There's not a nobler man in Rome than Antony.

    Fourth Citizen - Now mark him, he begins again to speak.

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  2. ...and Brutus is an honorable man. lol.

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  3. Fidus Achates

    ...as you quite likely know, the phrase is often used ironically now. One example being: Was that Mulligan cad with him? His fidus Achates! (Ulysses. Joyce.)

    ...to continue with the quote: That Mulligan is a contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts. His name stinks all over Dublin.
    But with the help of God and His blessed mother I’ll make it my business to write a letter one of those days to his mother or his aunt or whatever she is that will open her eye as wide as a gate. I’ll tickle his catastrophe, believe you me.


    ...The text in bold is from Henry IV, part 2 and spoken by falstaff - another case in point. :)

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  4. "Obedience,/Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,/Makes slaves of men" - Percy Bysshe Shelley

    ...but unlike Achates, I'm more of a fustilarian (ala Thersites). ;)

    For is not Thersites the exact opposite of Achates/Falstaff and bane of Ajax?

    "for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

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  5. ...Indeed. Russians believed he was good.

    Thersites was venerated by Marxist literature in Soviet times. (Wiki) ;)

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  6. You should expect no less from a son of Agree-us... ;)

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