Shakespeare says: "Suck on THAT, woos!"

[onager]

Whenever a thread starts up about PsYkiK powers, some knob is sure to drop this Shakespeare quote:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (Hamlet, I.5)

If you enjoy being a wet-blanket anal-retentive ol' sourpuss skeptic as much as I do...and frankly, most of you grumps seem to...well, rejoice!

According to some heavyweight Shakespeare scholars, that quote is not an endorsement of woo. In fact, it's closer to an endorsement of... science. GASP!

I read this same explanation years ago in Tom Burnam's Dictionary of Misinformation, and wondered if I could find it on the Web. I did, in about 5 seconds:

An apparently straightforward line, said by Hamlet to his old friend Horatio, but Frank Kermode has suggested in his book "Shakespeare’s Language" that the use of “your” has been misunderstood.

Rather than “your” referring to Horatio, Kermode argues that its meaning may be closer to “the”.

Hamlet is thus not criticising Horatio’s earthbound world-view, but saying that philosophy itself does not encompass all that mankind may come across.

In fact this sense of “your” still appears in modern speech, though it is often contracted to sound more like “yer” or “yuh” – in for example, the phrase “You see, the problem with your Russians is...”

Read more: "Misunderstood Shakespeare: Famous But Frequently Misapplied Quotations from The Bard"

http://shakespeareantheatre.suite101.com/article.cfm/misunderstood_shakespeare

[Orrex]

1. I was thinking about this just the other day, in fact!

Here's a more recent quote (1927) from J. B. S. Haldane:

Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

Some people might take that as carte blanche to declare as proven all manner of mystical exotica, on the grounds that these phenomena represent the queer part of the universe that we can't suppose. But that's the wrong reading; it simply means that the universe holds surprises that we haven't yet imagined, and it most certainly does not mean that it contains all things that we can imagine.

In The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins makes a similar observation, though I don't have the exact quote. In essence, he points out that we can't imagine the odds against such-and-such a remarkable event occurring, but we can calculate those odds. He then performs the calculation, thereby demonstrates that, in many ways, calculation is superior to imagination, at least in terms of explaining the universe in concrete terms.

The universe is a remarkable place. So remarkable, in fact, that we needn't populate it with sprites and fairies. It's plenty amazing on its own terms!

[bluedawg12]

2. Mistranslation, correct version:

Shakespeare says: "Suck thee,on THAT, thou knavish woos! Lest the light of reason shineth up your thinking canal, that princely place, thin arse."

[Jim__]

3. In Act I Scene V of Hamlet, the point is that mankind may come across: a ghost.

Act I Scene V begins with: enter Ghost and Hamlet. Shortly after the ghost leaves, Horatio and Marcellus enter. Horatio asks Hamlet, "What news my Lord?" Hamlet asks them to swear an oath of secrecy. Eventually:

Hamlet:
Swear by my sword
Never to speak of this that you have heard.


Ghost:
Swear by his sword.


Hamlet:
Well said, old mole, canst work i' th' earth so fast?
A worthy pioneer! Once more remove, good friends.


Horatio:
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!


Hamlet:
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
...

"O day and night, but this is wondrous strange". The voice of the ghost comes from below, the speaker unseen. What the hell do you think they're talking about? Is this discussion about the voice of a ghost, the voice all of them apparently heard, an endorsement of science?

[bluedawg12]

4. I have never heard the voice of a ghost. Ever. Nor seen one.

So, I recognize that the ghost is a literary device and not proof of ghosts.

One the other hand, the general statement is true: there is more in the universe than we know of.

Studying what is actually out there is the subject of science.

The Lost Works of Shakespear:

Hamlet:
Swear by my periodic table
Never to speak of this that you have heard.


Hydrogen:
Swear by his nucleus.


Hamlet:
Well said, old element, canst work i' th' universe so fast?
A worthy pioneer! Once more remove, good friends.


Horatio:
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange theory!


Hamlet:
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, like quantum physics, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.


:rofl:

[onager]

5. IMO, it still fits with the original explanation.

The characters are pretty calm for people who just heard a walking dead man--a trick that, in Xian theology, only Jesus ever managed to pull off.

My translation into modern speech isn't as good as BD's. But I see it as something like this:

"What the hell was THAT?"

"The voice of my dead father. I dunno why we heard it, but there's probably a rational explanation. Since there are more things in heaven and earth than we can find in our philosophy books at the present time."

[bluedawg12]

6. That's a good one.

BTW - This is one of my favorite quotes.

My other fav is:

Wisdom is the principle thing;
Therefore, get wisdom,
And with all thy getting,
Get understanding.
----- Proverbs 4:7 -----

:hi:

[cosmik debris]

7. Quoting Shakespeare is worse than quoting Einstein.

Shakespeare wrote fiction. He created fictional characters. Some of them were tricksters, imps, con men, villains, and jesters. Very few of his characters were wise and educated men, and even they gave bad advice sometimes.

Consider "To thine own self be true...". Is that an endorsement of capitalism? A rebuke of Christian charity? Or just a prescription for becoming a lonely bitter old man? Even Shakespeare's philosophers were somewhat equivocal sometimes.

FWIW, my favorite quote is from the jester in King Lear: "Thou shouldest not have been old before thou hadst been wise." And Shakespeare put those words in a clown's mouth.

[onager]

8. The funny thing about "to thy own self..."

Well, two funny things:

1. I've seen Xians quote that, and other advice from Polonius in Hamlet, as Bible verses. ("Neither a borrower nor a lender be.") That always cracks me up.

2. All of this good advice about Personal Development comes from a tiresome old windbag and busybody. He ignores every bit of his own good advice and gets himself killed while snooping around behind a curtain. One of the most richly ironical characters in Shakespeare, IMO.

Another load of irony is in my favorite Shakespeare play, Richard III. We see him seducing the widow of a man he just killed, plotting the murder of two kids and his own brother--among other fun-filled nastiness. But Shakespeare still makes us feel sympathy for him. He's so ugly that "dogs bark at me when I pass" and his own Mom calls him a "poisonous toad."

That's an incredibly good job of characterization. But it's Shakespeare, so...duh, I guess.

(I'm aware that the real RIII was the victim of Tudor propaganda, which makes him even more fascinating as a real historical character. When critics write that he "caused great upheaval in England," we can only reply: "WTF? And that good Tudor king Henry VIII DIDN'T?")

Richard's musings about knocking off his brother remind me of a good day in the R&T forum:

Simple plain Clarence, I do love thee so
That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven,
If heaven will take the present at our hands.

:rofl:

Bonus Irrelevancy: I have to mention the fart joke in Comedy of Errors. Just because:

A man may break a word with you, sir, and words are but wind,
Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind.

I found a Shakespeare forum where someone mentioned a (modern) actor who always got a cheap laugh. He VERY CAREFULLY enunciated the end of the first line as "BUTT-wind."

Oh, and Hamlet also contains a famous fart joke which morphed into common English usage "...hoist on his own petard." The "petard" was what we would nowadays call a "land mine." A big explosive thingamajig that military engineers used to knock down the walls of a castle. In Shakespeare's day it was also slang for a fart, and his audiences would have understood it that way.

[cosmik debris]

9. Fart jokes are eternal!

But you made me wonder if they knew about lighting farts 400 yrs ago.

Just when was fart lighting invented/discovered? And by whom?

A great topic for Sunday morning curiosity.

[dropkickpa]

11. About 5 minutes after fire

His name was Thog, and Urg and Dorg watched and laughed. Dorg tried to do it too, but he just burned his nards.

[progressoid]

10. Neither a borrower nor a lender be

I heard a TV preacher use that once! While he didn't specifically say it was a biblical verse, he used it as if it had come from the bible.

Not unlike the way the Bible gets sole credit for the Golden Rule.