CHW wrote:
After much searching, I found that the “to be” topic is a currently a matter of
great debate: eg here
http://www.shaksper.net/archives/2003/0802.html.
The
idea that Hamlet’s apparently suicidal thoughts are deliberately deceptive fits
pleasingly with what I’ve already said, and is attractive.
Nabokov
in Bend Sinister( ch. 2) mentioned philistinism and Descartes'
"Cogito Ergo Sum". An unintentional twist allowed me to
create a deformed association with thoughtful Hamlet's lines:
"He
remembered other imbeciles he and she had studied... Men who got drunk on beer
in sloppy bars, the process of thought satisfactorily replaced by swine-toned
radio music. Murderers. The respect a business magnate evokes in his home town.
Literary critics praising the books of their friends or partisans. Flaubertian
farceurs. Fraternities, mystic orders. People who are amused by trained animals.
The members of reading clubs. All those who are because they do not
think, thus refuting Cartesianism. The thrifty peasant. The booming
politician..."
( the
Flaubertian farceurs, also present in the
above paragraph, led me to Homais, Hamlet and Homelette
au lard...)