To be or not to be

Shakespeare’s famous soliloquies through the Prince of Denmark will echo in the chambers of Mt. Carmel School Performance Hall this weekend as budding thespians perform in the original Elizabethan English one of Western Civilization’s highly valued and most popular tragedy, Hamlet.

Devotees of the King James Version of the English Bible will no doubt be delighted to relish the tongue of our nation’s New England forebears whose diction would not have been too far removed from the eloquence of the Elizabethan Court.

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…

Hardly common fare for our 6th-12th Grade level struggling readers, the archaic expressions might just spur the interest of the young ones should Mama and Papa bring them along to the performance. Sitting and listening through the five-Act play would make an invaluable exercise in discipline to a generation seemingly afflicted with uncontrollable verbal diarrhea. Might even nudge them beyond the Internet gamerooms to the various Shakespeare websites, and those of other notables in literature.

Shakespeare invaded the life of ordinary families in his plays, revealing anew to one and all what was already familiar. In Hamlet, he demonstrated the Renaissance notion that humans and their thought patterns are serious contenders at determining truth. Hamlet’s soliloquies are highly introspective, reflective, meditative, contemplative and profoundly inquisitive of the truth. Up to this point, the medieval mind depended upon the guidance of canonical wisdom proffered by the weight of authoritative certitude, something akin to being dependent continually to the expertise of the consultants with highly polished Beltway Bandit credentials!

French scientist René Descartes across the channel from the Bard of Stratford-on-Avon would contemporaneously articulate the foundations of the modern mind. Dubito ergo sum. I doubt; therefore, I am. Initiating the scientific method, he contended: Cogito ergo sum. I think (reason); therefore, I am. This confidence on human reason would blossom with the Enlightenment and would result in radical changes in politics, economics and culture, including the founding of the United States of America.

The confidence of the modern mind was shattered in the aftermath of World War II that saw the horrific, horrible happenstance of the Holocaust, the implementation of a public policy that sought the extermination of Jews, invalids, gypsies, the disabled and homosexuals. The children of Nietzsche would fall deeply into the nihilism of despair. Mainstream Germans might have reinvigorated the Ruhr valley but their zeitgeist remains frozen in guilt and immobilized by conscience.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despis’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?

Hamlet was all too modern in his sentiments. The Malite and Kaipat estates are all too familiar with the law’s delay. Anyone who has ever dealt in person with the faceless bureaucrats who are supposed to provide public service only know too well the instance of insolence of office. Hamlet however, found that certitude did not easy action make.

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.

Unfortunately, some of our young do not tarry long in the domain of thought before taking action after experiencing the pangs of despis’d love. The debris of inconsolable teen suicides inexplicably litters the shores of Micronesia. It is as if, with Hamlet, we have become only too clear in our time that the fanciful handiwork in our heads are naught, only prelude to the dust we will all become. Shakespeare had it pegged; the singers of the musical ‘Hair’ in the 60s concede. Hamlet exudes:

What piece of work is man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how ex-
press! how admirable in action! how like an angel in
apprehension! how like a god! the beauty of the world!
the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this
quintessence of dust?

Nevertheless, life’s mercy is endless. The flipside to the nihilism of despair is the affirmation of freedom. The existentialist’s decry: we are doomed to be free. I say, the future is radically open. We only need to decide. For indeed, freedom is another word for nothing else to lose.

From the ashes, the Phoenix will rise. Last week, Mayor Tudela engaged Saipan in the Days of Remembrance to honor the Holocaust. Teacher Rory Starkey’s Hopwood JHS students created stark images of our disposition to be inhuman to our own kind. From Auschwitz to Rwanda, the ghosts of the unjustly slain haunts human consciousness, making Hamlets of us all.

See the play. Might give you pause. Better yet, you may cause a deed!