of things lost and recreated...sort of
Ever since Halloween, Will had been melancholy. Melancholy, of course, was an understatement, but it was the only word he could come up with that fit his mood currently.
It was a fitting thing then that the bookshelf when he encountered it, consisted of only texts of various versions of Hamlet. Will set his fingers on one that claimed to have been published in 1603, needing something that reminded him of home to soothe his nerves. He didn't take note of the publisher or the company that had the playing of it. Instead he flipped straight to Act III scene i, to Hamlet's to be or not to be speech and was thusly disgusted by what he found.
"To be, or not to be; ay there's the point.
To die, to sleep: is that all? Ay all.
No, to sleep, to dream; ay marry, there it goes.
For in that dream of death, when we awake
and borne before an everlasting judge
From whence no passenger ever returned,
The undiscovered country at whose sight
The happy smile and the accursed damned --
But for this, the joyful hope of this,
Who'd bear the scorns and flattery of the world,
Scorned by the right rich, the rich cursed of the poor,
The widow being oppressed, the orphan wronged,
The taste of hunger or a tyrant's reign,
And thousand more calamities besides,
To grunt and sweat under this weary life,
When that he may his full quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would this endure,
But for a hope of something after death,
Which puzzles the brain and doth confound the sense,
Which makes us rather bear those evils we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Ay, that. O, this conscience makes cowards of us all.
Lady, in the orisons be all my sins remembered," he recited, most confused by what he was reading.
"What villainous knave transcribed my words thus? This...this were not my Hamlet. This...is an outrage, a piece of filth that I'll've nothing to do with."
Will tossed the manuscript aside and glared daggers at it. "A pox on whosoever hath done me this wrong," he grumbled.
[ooc: Will has just found the First Quarto of Hamlet, a piece remembered wrongly by a traveling player and sold into publication as essentially a bad pirated copy. Open to any and all. St/LT welcome.]
It was a fitting thing then that the bookshelf when he encountered it, consisted of only texts of various versions of Hamlet. Will set his fingers on one that claimed to have been published in 1603, needing something that reminded him of home to soothe his nerves. He didn't take note of the publisher or the company that had the playing of it. Instead he flipped straight to Act III scene i, to Hamlet's to be or not to be speech and was thusly disgusted by what he found.
"To be, or not to be; ay there's the point.
To die, to sleep: is that all? Ay all.
No, to sleep, to dream; ay marry, there it goes.
For in that dream of death, when we awake
and borne before an everlasting judge
From whence no passenger ever returned,
The undiscovered country at whose sight
The happy smile and the accursed damned --
But for this, the joyful hope of this,
Who'd bear the scorns and flattery of the world,
Scorned by the right rich, the rich cursed of the poor,
The widow being oppressed, the orphan wronged,
The taste of hunger or a tyrant's reign,
And thousand more calamities besides,
To grunt and sweat under this weary life,
When that he may his full quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would this endure,
But for a hope of something after death,
Which puzzles the brain and doth confound the sense,
Which makes us rather bear those evils we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Ay, that. O, this conscience makes cowards of us all.
Lady, in the orisons be all my sins remembered," he recited, most confused by what he was reading.
"What villainous knave transcribed my words thus? This...this were not my Hamlet. This...is an outrage, a piece of filth that I'll've nothing to do with."
Will tossed the manuscript aside and glared daggers at it. "A pox on whosoever hath done me this wrong," he grumbled.
[ooc: Will has just found the First Quarto of Hamlet, a piece remembered wrongly by a traveling player and sold into publication as essentially a bad pirated copy. Open to any and all. St/LT welcome.]