To Be Or Not To Be Poem by gershon hepner

If to be or not to be is not
the question, what are the alternatives?
The answer is that there are not a lot
for those who suffer in the mind that lives
obsessed by such dilemmas, but there’s one
that Hamlet found that made it go away.
It’s theater, and we can make life fun
by seeing it as poem or a play
in a posture that won’t mend but mute
the menace coming fom memento mori,
like Don Giovanni playing on the lute,
to stall and silence the Commendatore.

Inspired by a review of a production of “Hamlet, ” starring Jude Law, review by John Lahr in the New Yorker, October 19,2009:

His Hamlet is essentially heroic: for him there is no issue between being and seeming. “To be or not to be” is never the question; he just is. Law’s Hamlet is too self-contained to get lost in his role of strategic role playing. He never goes over the edge—or even up to it. All protestations to the contrary, he is on top of everything, a posture that mutes the play’s dark humor.

10/21/09