003: Memorize a poem

In my salad days I was known to tread the boards. I even had the chance to play the role of Hamlet. Not the full version, sadly, but the brutally truncated version known as Dogg's Hamlet or 15-Minute Hamlet. The play takes just 15 minutes to perform, and is then followed by a 2-minute version in which character deliver lines on the run.
All this meant that while I was familiar with the broad strokes of Hamlet's soliliquys, I had never been required to learn one in its entirety.
 

Every performance of Hamlet I have seen—only in film thus far—reveals new meaning and depth to this soliliquy. Laurence Olivier's delivery is very good; even the unfamiliar words ('bodkin'?) are rendered understandable by his phrasing and timing.

Here is the text I memorized.

"To be, 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 take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep—
To sleep—perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all."

The great thing about having these words in my head is that can be unpacked and puzzled over at any time. While waiting in a restaurant I might think of "the proud man's contumely" (CON-tume-a-lee: scorn) and the other things that can make life unbearable, and wonder if these things piled on top of each other, make a case for suicide. And whether the chef preparing my fugu puffer fish is drunk or sober. And order another sake.