“To be or not to be——that is the question.”

Henry knew the words well. He knew this. So why was it so hard?

“Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to—to suf-to suffer the-“

Why was this so hard? Why did the lights in the room feel so bright? It was just an audition, there were no spotlights.

It wasn’t a performance. It wasn’t a real one anyway.

He clears his throat. Maybe Hamlet wasn’t the right choice.

“Whether ‘tis nobler to in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune—“

He started that line over, why did he do that? It didn’t matter. He wasn’t getting the part anyway. Why was he doing this? He should have chosen Macbeth.

“—Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing——end them.”

He hated this. He wanted this to be over.

“To die, to sleep—no more.”

He’s not looking at anyone in the audience. Should he be? He doesn’t think so. This is a soliloquy—he’s talking to himself. It’s just him in this room.

“To sleep—“ No wait he already said that he’s confusing the line. He knows this.

“And by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”

The words fumble out of his mouth. None of it feels right. Iambic pentameter has a rhythm of its own that he can’t seem to reign in. He should just give up now, his feeble attempts to tame this horse of a poem——monologue, soliloquy, whatever.

“Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die. To sleep—to sleep perchance to dream.”

Fuck the bard. He was overrated. This whole thing was overrated. No one knows what he’s talking about.

“Aye! There’s the rub. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come—may come—when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us——pause.”

To die, to sleep, to speak. He wants to choose the first option currently, to lay down and never have to recite something like this ever again, to never be a public demonstration again.

Theres a dark joke here somewhere.

“For who would bear the whips and scorns—of time.”

He’s approaching the hardest part here, the part he always fumbles on.

“The proud man’s contumely,” he isn’t acting anymore.

“The pangs of dispriz’d love,” he’s just reciting the words now, trying to remember them.

“The insolence of office,” he can hear the lack of confidence in what he’s reciting but he stopped caring a while ago.

“And the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin. Who would fardels bare, to grunt and sweat under a weary life,” he says all that as a long string of words, taking a long inhaling breath after all of that.

Why was he doing this?

“But that the dread of something after death,” he says more slowly, more purposefully.

“The undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveler returns,” he hasn’t been thinking about the words.

“Makes us rather bare those ills we have than—“ He hasn’t been thinking about them until now.

“Than fly to others that we know not of.”

He’s sure he’s forgetting the words, that he’s forgot a lot of them. It doesn’t matter. It’s the purpose behind them.

“Thus conscious doth make cowards of us all.”

Okay he’s forgotten again. How timely.

“And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”

Okay maybe he hasn’t.

“And enterprises with great pith and moment—“

All the Shakespeare he’s ever read is getting jumbled together. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.

“With this regard their currents turn awry.”

A tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.

“And lose the name of action.”

He should have chosen Macbeth.