Jan. 23rd, 2010

fiat_knox: silhouette of myself taken at sunrise (Default)
I've just thrown a challenge to the KLI's mailing list. The topic of Okrand's translation of Hamlet's "To Be Or Not To Be" soliloquy cropped up, as it occasionally does. And this is my reply. Mister Cat, meet the pigeons:-

'Ne'er mind Hamlet. Has anybody translated anything from Macbeth?

'"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
Til the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays light fools the way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle, life is but a walking shadow,
A poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage
Then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot,
Full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

- Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5

'Or indeed Prospero's lines from The Tempest:-

'"Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

- The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1'

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