backhand.gif (112 bytes) Pioneer Valley Folklore Society Anthology


HAMLET'S LAST SOLILOQUY (with sources)
by Ted Melnechuk
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20		 Westward the course of empire takes its way;
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown;
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day;
I hate to see that evenin’ sun go down.

Welcome the coming, speed the departing guest
When that Aprille with his shoures soot’
And flights of angels sing thee, to thy rest,
Of Man’s first disobedience and the forbidden fruit

Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here
The undiscovered country from whose bourne
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer.

Lo, the poor Indian! Whose untutored mind,
A thing of beauty, is a joy forever.
I must be cruel only to be kind:
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.

Sweet are the uses of adversity;
As dreams are made on, we are such stuff.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
And damned be him that first cries, "Hold, enough."
Line Source
1 George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, On the prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America
2 William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2
3 Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
4 W. C. Handy, Saint Louis Blues
5 Alexander Pope, The Odyssey of Homer
6 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
7 William Shakespeare, Hamlet
8 John Milton, Paradise Lost
9 John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale
10 Dante Alighieri, Inferno
11 William Shakespeare, Hamlet
12 Alexander Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
13 Alexander Pope, Essay on Man
14 John Keats, Endymion
15 William Shakespeare, Hamlet
16 Charles Kingsley, A Farewell
17 William Shakespeare, As You Like It
18 William Shakespeare, The Tempest
19 William Shakespeare, Hamlet
20 William Shakespeare, Macbeth