Shakespeare and Huck Finn

Collaborating with The Erratic Muse (http://theerraticmuse.blogspot.com/) for Shakespeare celebrations, and studying Mark Twain in class this week, I take this opportunity to quote them both. Oh, Mark Twain, you crack me up.

"To Be or Not To Be" (from Shakespeare's Hamlet 3/1)

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.

"To Be or Not To Be." (from Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Ch 21)

   "To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin
  That makes calamity of so long life;
  For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do
    come to Dunsinane,
  But that the fear of something after death
  Murders the innocent sleep,
  Great nature's second course,
  And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune
  Than fly to others that we know not of.
  There's the respect must give us pause:
  Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst;
  For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
  The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
  The law's delay, and the quietus which his
    pangs might take,
  In the dead waste and middle of the night,
    when churchyards yawn
  In customary suits of solemn black,
  But that the undiscovered country from whose
    bourne no traveler returns,
  Breathes forth contagion on the world,
  And thus the native hue of resolution, like
    the poor cat i' the adage,
  Is sicklied o'er with care,
  And all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops,
  With this regard their currents turn awry,
  And lose the name of action.
  'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
    But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
  Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
  But get thee to a nunnery -- go!"