With Apologies to WS

By Barry Howze

To speak, or not to speak,--that is the question:--
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The frustration and passiveness of remaining silent,
Or to take arms against a sea of blocks
And by speaking reveal them?--To repeat,--To prolong,--
And more; and by a struggle to say and endure-
The heart-ache, and the thousand unnatural shocks
That the ego is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be avoided. To postpone,--to sustitute;--
To substitute! perchance to deceive: ay, there's the rub;
For in that deception of fluency what responses may come,
When we have showed off this mental contortion
Must give us pause: there's the disrespect
That makes calamity of so long a pause;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of impatience,
The laugher's wrong, the word guesser's folly
The pangs of despised shame, the jaw's tremor,
The insolence of the caller, and the spurns
That rejection makes from the unworthy talker,
When he himself might his faults's take
With a bare conscience? who would fools bear,
To judge and choose by a wavering voice,
But that the dread of something in them,--
The undiscover'd country, from deep within
No discovery has been made,--puzzles the will,
And makes them unable to bear those of the
constricted throat in others to others?
Thus weakness does make bullies of us all;
And thus the native hue of manners
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of insecurity;
And conversations of great wit and humor,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.