Être ou ne pas être—O mystère!
Mourir-dormir! rêver peut-être!
——:o:——
Shakespeare Amended.
Punch for 30 April, 1881, contained the following—
“Mr. Furnivall is of opinion that the text of Hamlet known to commentators as ‘The First Quarto,’ furnishes a far better and more compact acting play than the modern stage-version. He, and ‘a strong body of amateurs,’ essayed, on the afternoon of Saturday, the 16th April, at St. George’s Hall, to convert the public and the critics to their view of the case—apparently with indifferent success. Mr. Furnivall has sent to the Daily News, what he calls ‘a hasty try to set right’ the celebrated soliloquy, ‘To be or not to be,’ in the Quarto No. 1. Mr. Furnivall’s version is, of course, a thing of beauty; yet is it hardly so jerky, creaky, spasmodic, incoherent, scansion-proof,—in short, so Utter, as in the interests of the Bard might be desired. Here, therefore, is ‘a hasty try to set right’ Mr. Furnivall himself.”
To be or not to be? There you are, don’tcherknow!
To die, to sleep! is that all? Forty winks?
To sleep, to dream! Ah, that’s about the size of it!
For from that forty winks when we awake