QUOTATIONS

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 136, 5 March 1927, Page 28

QUOTATIONS

A little time ago a writer —I believe Air. Leonard Woolt—drew our attention to the curious abuse of quotations from Shakespeare which prevails not only among the ignorant, but also among those who should, and very likely do, know better (writes Mr. Middleton Murry in the “Adelphi"). For one instance, "the play’s tlio thing,’’ whereas in fact the play was only "the thing wherein” Hamlet would “catch the conscience of the king.” And for another. perhaps more remarkable, there is the sentimental interpretation of “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” which is really a very cynical observation, for the one touch of nature is "That all with one consent praise newborn gauds, Though they are made and moulded of things past, And give to dust that is a little gilt More laud than gilt o’erdusted." A. truth which has singularly little to do with the sympathetic concentration of a whole railway carriage upon a new baby. More striking even than this strange phenomenon is the invincible misinterpretation of one of the famous and hackneved passages in Shakespeare. T suppose that the most familiar speech in all Shakespeare is Hamlet’s soliloquy: “To be or not to be.” One might say that everybody knows it, and that everybody knows what it means; and everybody knows wrong. Of course, that "everybody” is an exaggeration; it must be. But it is the fact that I have never discussed the speech with any person, however educated, however familiar with Shakespeare, without finding that he was convinced that “To tie or not to be” means "To live or not to live,” and that the whole soliloquy is a debate upon the pros and cons of suicide. Yet the fact is plain. “To bo or not to be” cannot mean "To live or not to live.” The words which follow make such an interpretation quite impossible. “To bo 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 fake arms against a sep of troubles And by opposing' end them. What is "to be cr not to be” is not Hamlet, but Hamlet’s attempt upon the king’s life. Which is nobler? Io suffer in patient silence his evil fortunes or to take arms and act against them? To endure his troubles, or to make an end of them, not by suicide, but by opposing them? Mr. Middleton Murry develops his theme at length.