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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 14.2443  Monday, 29 December 2003

From:           Clifford Stetner <cstetner@worldnet.att.net>
Date:           Sunday, 28 Dec 2003 02:27:01 -0500
Subject: 14.2390 Ophelia's Hamlet's True Love So It Seems
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.2390 Ophelia's Hamlet's True Love So It Seems

 >> Ophelia's Hamlet's true love so it seems
 >> Though love is doomed by ponderous demands
 >> "Obeyed" most swiftly in successive scenes
 >> Two summonses to seal two deadly hands
 >> We enter on love's after-death decreed
 >> By Denmark's principalities and powers
 >> But every utterance suggests love's seed
 >> Was sown before those om'nous opening hours
 >> Poor Howard was all wrong re: Hamlet's love
 >> He wondered if the Prince loved anyone
 >> Well if Horatio was not enough
 >> Add in Ophelia before Act One
 >> In any case this is my pleasant dream
 >> As I row down a star-crossed lovers stream
 >>
 >> -- Stephen C. Rose

If Hamlet love Ophelia in thy dreams,
She loves him all too wisely but not well,
And if a bit particular it seems,
He damn her with dissemblers to hell,
Or to a nunnery, 'tis not amiss.
All Elsinore's a stage and all its troop
Still bait his trap with each embrace and kiss
And only but to conquer to him stoop.
'Tis quite enough to drive a jester mad
Or make the very ink weep off the page
To look upon the friends we think we have
As unconvincing actors on a stage.
      Though, as a madman, he must play his role,
      A nunnery yet might have saved her soul.

Clifford Stetner
CUNY
http://phoenixandturtle.net

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