The Soliloquy
July 13th, 2020
Starring: Hamlet, Nurse
A doctor’s office exam room. Hamlet sits on the table, awaiting a checkup.
HAMLET
To vax, or not to vax-that is the injection.
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to muster
The coughs and sputters of contagious misfortune
Or to shirk arms against a sea of syringes,
And by opposing contend them. To lie-to cheat-
Oh my; and by cheat to say we end
The immunity, and the thousand natural antibodies
That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a disorientation
Devoutly to be wished. To try-to treat
To treat-perchance hygiene: ay, our hands we’ll rub!
For if we treat with soap what hygiene comes
When we have shuffled off this immoral spoil,
Must give us cause. There’s the respect
That makes humanity of childrens’ lives.
For who would bear the pinches and burns of needles,
Th’ professors wrongs, the doctors assuming,
The sting of liberal hate, the progressives unswayed,
The insolence of science, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy Tweets,
When I myself might healthiest be
Without a booster? How must our faith bear,
To search and summon for a safer life,
But with the poke of dreadful shots to arms,
The undiscover’d consequences, from whose administer’d
No T-cell recovers, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear the meningitis we have
Than get an autism we know not of?
This conscience does make a coward of us,
And thus our pale hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with a rosy rash of measles,
And sicknesses of tetanus, rubella, and mumps
With this regard their treatments turn awry,
And lose the name of vaccination.
A nurse enters, holding a syringe.
NURSE
Art thou ready?
HAMLET
…
Nay.
…
Get thee to a nunnery.
Hamlet broodingly slides off the table and exits.