Post by mikef6 on Oct 13, 2023 0:53:44 GMT
“Cowards die a thousand times before their deaths but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death – a necessary end – will come when it will come.”
Shakespeare put these words into the mouth of the title character of his play “Julius Caesar.” Caesar says that death in inevitable and when it comes it cannot be stopped. No controversy over that. But he also says death is “necessary.” What could that mean? As in current political rhetoric, the old have to make room for the up-and-coming generations?
BTW, there are perils in attributing quotes like this to Shakespeare himself. He has Hamlet express and almost complete opposite viewpoint when, in the “To be or not to be” speech, the Danish Prince says that people will live out a dreary life because “the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of.”
Your opinion of a necessary death.
Shakespeare put these words into the mouth of the title character of his play “Julius Caesar.” Caesar says that death in inevitable and when it comes it cannot be stopped. No controversy over that. But he also says death is “necessary.” What could that mean? As in current political rhetoric, the old have to make room for the up-and-coming generations?
BTW, there are perils in attributing quotes like this to Shakespeare himself. He has Hamlet express and almost complete opposite viewpoint when, in the “To be or not to be” speech, the Danish Prince says that people will live out a dreary life because “the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of.”
Your opinion of a necessary death.
