Translating Shakespeare

It is amazing how much of Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s soliloquy, “To be or not to be” is in our culture, as book and movie titles, requoted in essays, songs and stories hundreds of times. Shakespeare can be tricky, what with all the Iambic-pentameter and stuff... As a public service I will now translate this passage for all of you who have been plagued with sleepless nights over this issue:

To Be, Or Not To Be (Spoken by Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1)

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
I have run out of Prozac and this cliff is tempting…
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
Do I put up with the person in the express line who clearly
has more than 10 objects or just pull out my verifiably
registered handgun?And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
I cannot stand another minute of this store’s wretched
Muzak. Having to listen to Mambo #5 is bad enough,
but to have to listen to it performed by
the canned, sleep-inducing, rhythmically impaired
anonymous white people, is more than I can bear.
 I plan to end it all in the produce aisle,
possibly with a very sharp pineapple!To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
But what if it is a failed attempt? Talk about the friggin’
hospital bills, they’d be a nightmare!
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
But then again, if I succeed, there goes my cruise
tickets for Cancun next month! Dang it!
I happen to know they are non-refundable,
AND non-transferrable. Plus, I would miss
the “all you can eat shrimp” buffet, and
the special “party like a Rock Star with
Rick Astley” night!
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,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
What to do???? All I want is to lie down in the
parking lot with a big box of Malomars. It’s
like this freaking day will never end!!!
First, I get busted at work for playing FreeCell and
sending out dirty emails, and then I step in gum!!!!The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
And the humiliation of my work-crush
pointing out that I had my dress tucked
 into the back of my panty hose when I came out of
the bathroom was just too much!!!
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
 Talk about wanting to DIE! With my bare
bodkin hanging out and everything?
It didn’t help that I had that burrito for lunch either.
What a time for a case of the fardles!To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd 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?
I dunno though, suicide... it’s pretty permanent.
What if I get up there and my bare bodkin’s still hanging out?
I could NOT take the eternal mortification!Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
Oh well, bite me co-workers, and you too
Stanley the copy boy! I know for a fact your
tie was sticking out of your zipper last week!
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
Who cares if Stanley likes Ophelia better than
me anyway! She is such a stinking nymph, and all
her little friends that hang around her, bunch of
La-di-da orisons! Oh dear lord,
They are never going to let me forget this!!!

Tonya Willman ©2010