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This started out as a bit of self-talk during a difficult time, when I thought about Hamlet's dilemma. It developed from there into a light-heated piece for fun.
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Lessons from Shakespeare
Here’s a song of tragedies
Four plays from bygone times
Shakespeare did the penmanship
For these heroic crimes.
Hamlet was a stately prince
King Lear a royal dad
Othello was a noble man
Macbeth was just plain bad.
From these stories we can learn
That great men can have flaws
And even in this century
We all can crash and burn.
Come on now and pull your socks up
Pull yourself together,
Think of your Ophelia
who needs you to get better.
Will you be or won’t you be -
Just make your mind up quick,
Before the others bring you down
With sword of poison trick.
Alas too late revenge is nigh
And not the one you thought
For old Polonius is dead
And you’re the one who’s sought.
(Is there comfort in the thought
That Hamlet came to know
That nothing’s either good or bad
But thinking makes it so.)
My love and I are just one flesh
My Desdemona true
The very thought of losing her
Just make me feel plain blue
They say I have a jealous mind
My one and only flaw
I think the fault entirely hers
Perhaps I should make sure.
My first mate says it’s really so
So what should I believe?
He saw her with his own good eyes
Give him her handkerchief.
(Iago’s plot to bring him down
Succeeded to a T
Perhaps Othello’s not so great
A captain of the seas.)
I love my wife she wants to put
A crown upon my head.
She tells me that it is my fate
There must be some blood shed.
And so I tried, upon my life
I did what I have done
But the dagger that I slew him with
Returns to haunt my mind.
Yet now I’m king, my wife is queen
What more is there to do?
My wife appears to lose her wits
I’m sure that she’ll pull through.
(So it seemed to both of them
The way was clearly shown
But by snuffing out another’s life
Macbeth destroyed his own.)
Hamlet was a stately prince
King Lear a royal dad
Othello was a noble man
Macbeth was just plain bad.
And through these stories we can see
Some universal themes
But more importantly than that
A world of poetry.
Copyright © Justine Fraser | Year Posted 2025
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