To Read Or Not To Read

Hi guys,

For some reason, I just took it into my head to share with you all my weirdest piece of writing ever. Let’s hope I’m not crazy. Shakespear lovers, please forgive me. The fact is, even though I’m not a huge fan of Shakespear, I still think he’s pretty good, despite what this piece may suggest. Basically, I just took his ‘to be or not to be’ and… made it attack itself. Here it goes:

To read, or not to read: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous literature,
Or to take arms against a sea of follies,
And by abstaining pass them by? To not read: to sleep;
No more Shakespeare; and by sleep to say we sleep soundly
No more the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That Shakespeare is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To not read, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to wake: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of peace what ignorance may come
When we have shuffled off the fragrant rest,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of such blissful sleep;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of teachers,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of ramen noodles, employment’s delay,
The insolence of know-it-alls and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quiet make
With a puffy pillow? who would assignments bear,
To grunt and sweat under a student’s life,
But that the dread of something after sleep,
The unrelenting scorn from whose assailment
No student survives, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills everlasting
Than drift to others we know too well of?
And thus do school grades make cowards of us all.