Shakespeare for Our Time

There are similarities, but not with our leader, who isn't heading the surge and wouldn't understand the quotation.

Each blogger, so far as I know, has a theme or driving force written at the top of his or her blog. Mine, which appears at the top of my blog, is from the turning point of Hamlet. I learned it in high school and, with a lapse or two, have never forgotten it. In honor of my 85th!!! Birthday next week, I have decided to quote the entire passage from my memory, such as it is. It is from Act IV, Scene iv.

What is a man if the chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed?
A beast, no more!
Sure, He that made us, looking before and after,
Gave us not that capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unus'd.

Witness this army of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that death and danger dare,
Fight for a plot whereon the numbers
Cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain.

How stand I, then, that have a father killed,
A mother stained,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
Whilst to my shame I see the imminent
Death of twenty thousand men
That for a fantasy and trick of fame
Go to their graves like beds?

Oh, from this time forth
My thoughts be bloody
Or be nothing worth!