VeoVeo Article
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15.12.2009 |
King of Denmark dead. Murder? |
The King of Denmark died suddenly in his castle in Helsingör at the Danish coast, supposedly bitten by a venomous snake. Now his son, the Prince of Denmark, is convinced that his father was murdered. He suspects his mother and his uncle because allegedly the ghost of the dead king had said so. "To be or not to be: that is the question," the Prince of Denmark told the press. A thorough investigation is under way.  Of course, you guessed it: Hamlet is the name of the Prince of Denmark, and his father indeed had been murdered by his wife, the queen. William Shakespeare is the author of this drama. It was probably performed for the first time in July 1602 in the Globe Theatre in London, and it is a fair assumption that is played today every night somewhere on earth. In the 12th century the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus told for the first time in his "History of the Danes" the story of a Prince Amleth. Thomas Kyd was the first to write a play about this drama at the end of the 16th century. Shakespeare must have liked it. He did not change the plot very much but created the strong characters we still venerate on stage. And here the famous monologue of Hamlet: 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 wish'd. 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 despised 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 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? 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 remember'd. Image by Chin tin tin |