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To: BioForce1
Shakespeare also had a healthy distrust of the motivations of "statesmen" who send our soldiers to die in futile wars. The conservative Wilsonians who supported the Iraq crusade would do well to read this closely:

"Therefore, my Harry,

Be it thy course to busy giddy minds

With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,

May waste the memory of former days."

Henry IV, Part II: Act 4

3 posted on 11/04/2003 2:05:24 PM PST by Austin Willard Wright
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To: Austin Willard Wright
Shakespeare also had a healthy distrust of the motivations of "statesmen" who send our soldiers to die in futile wars.

But peruse the following from Hamlet: (great thing about Sheakespeare, you can find whatever you want. Or make it up; remember the fake "Shakespeare" Barbra Streisand quoted a couple of years ago?)

HAMLET

Good sir, whose powers are these?

Captain

They are of Norway, sir.

HAMLET

How purposed, sir, I pray you?

Captain

Against some part of Poland.

HAMLET

Who commands them, sir?

Captain

The nephews to old Norway, Fortinbras.

HAMLET

Goes it against the main of Poland, sir, Or for some frontier?

Captain

Truly to speak, and with no addition, We go to gain a little patch of ground That hath in it no profit but the name. To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it; Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.

HAMLET

Why, then the Polack never will defend it.

Captain

Yes, it is already garrison'd.

HAMLET

Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats Will not debate the question of this straw: This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace, That inward breaks, and shows no cause without Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.

Captain

God be wi' you, sir.

Exit

ROSENCRANTZ

Wilt please you go, my lord?

HAMLET

I'll be with you straight go a little before.

Exeunt all except HAMLET

How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-like reason To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on the event, A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward, I do not know Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;' Sith I have cause and will and strength and means To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me: Witness this army of such mass and charge Led by a delicate and tender prince, Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd Makes mouths at the invisible event, Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death and danger dare, Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour's at the stake. How stand I then, That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men, That, for a fantasy and trick of fame, Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, Which is not tomb enough and continent To hide the slain? O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

Exit

5 posted on 11/04/2003 4:02:09 PM PST by Martin Tell
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