Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription
Document Title: The Next New Hamlet's Soliloquy (final fair copy manuscript)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1874
Type of Manuscript: holograph fair copy
Scribe: DGR
The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.
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- To be or not to be (that is the question!)
- A Hamlet far from Shakespere's first suggestion:
- Whether 'tis nobler in a chap to suffer
- New parts, or be a Great Shakesperian Duffer,
- And so endure, perchance, like Arthur Orton,
- The rotten-egg-showers of outrageous fortune,
- The critics spurn, the verdict “No Great Shakes”
- Which conscious merit of the unworthy takes:—
- Aye, to take arms against this sea of troubles,—
- 10Become the lust of Hamlet's myraid doubles,—
- And tempt Fame's unknown country, from whose bourne
- Comes no one at whom some one has not sworn.
- Should a chap play the parts that suit a cove,
- Or fly to others that he knows not of?
- Ah! Shakespere might make cowards of us all,
- From Edmund Kean to Mr. Howard Paul;
- But I'll be blowed if he makes me sing small!
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File:
35-1871.blms.rad.xml
Copyright: By permission of the British Library