Hello everyone! Sorry for not posting sooner, but I’ve been busy with scholarships and things. Today, I’d thought I’d post my rewrite of Hamlet’s “To Be” soliloquy. As a backstory, I have been working on a play about a girl who is trying to decide whether or not to go on a date. In one of the first few scenes she begins a recitation of this rewritten soliloquy. This soliloquy may or may not reflect my current views on the subject, but that is for me to know, sooo… Read and enjoy!
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To date or not to date—that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of dating drama, Or to take arms against a sea of social norms And, by opposing, be ridiculed. To date—to be single No more; and by dating to say we end The loneliness and the thousand judgmental looks That singles are heir to: ‘tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To date, no longer alone; To date, perchance to be hugged—ay, there’s the rub: For in that hug of awkwardness what discomfort may come, When we are trying to determine if this thing will work, Must give us pause—there’s the weirdness That makes being single so much better. For who would bear the laughs and scorns of others, Th’populars judgement, the proud student’s contumely, The pangs of loneliness, the curse of nerdiness, The insolence of couples, and the spurns That patient merit of the nerd takes, When she herself might her soulmate find By going out? Who would fardels bear, To hide and read under a lonely life, But that the dread of PDA while dating, The awkward moments, from whose weirdness Discomfort comes, strikes fear in the heart, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus PDA does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of happiness Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises to have a meeting of minds With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action.