Icons: Hamlet
(A bit of character assassination)
Given that the play has moments of obscurity,
even before it tumbles into awkwardness,
and admitting further that a character
who has to face a bungled plot
cannot be held responsible for all his failures,
Hamlet truly is pathetic:
seeing ghosts and playing hard to get,
fleeing to England and then back again,
suddenly deciding madness is its own protection;
stabbing curtains, staring at skulls,
shouting wildly, jumping into graves -
and then, of course, his contemplating suicide…
Well let me fill you in, you clown:
people that go on and on about it seldom do the deed.
(‘And more’s the pity’, says a captive audience
of education’s fodder underneath its breath.)