Eric's Beijing Diary

Star helped me get a ticket to "A Mid Summer Night's Dream" tonight at Peking University. A British theater company is touring China with a light hearted rendition of Shakespeare's classic.

I have never been much enamored with Shakespeare's plots. But his characters are always intense. During the years I lived on the road, I used to listen to books on tape. Most of them were books that were read by actors. I would rent them at a truck stop, and then turn them in a few days later at another truck stop that was in the network. But the Shakespeare works I listened to were BBC dramatizations that I purchased and listened to several times. If you ever try to study Shakespeare, you will find that his work is much easier to follow in dramatization. To help me keep track of who was talking, I would also pick up a cheap paperback copy of the play in question, and have it handy so I could take a glance once in awhile while I was driving and listening. I wasn't actually reading it, just trying to keep track of which character was speaking. But herding an 80,000 pound truck down the road with Shakespeare in one hand and the steering wheel in the other was just a little too much, so I had to give it up. Trucking, I mean.

The performance this evening was in English (of course) with Chinese subtitles. Seemed to work pretty well, as students who are learning English like to be able to listen to English and get a little help along the way. Actually, I have found that most serious students of English actually prefer English subtitles. But with Shakespeare, that might be a bit a little too much of a challenge, I don't know.

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 heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. 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,
The 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 the 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 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?
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,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.