Thursday, 21 January 2016

How like angels and how like devils. A tragic both/and



There’s a beautifully expressed and biblical view of humanity in Hamlet if you just put two quotes side by side:

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! Act 2 Scene 2

I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all. Believe none of us. Act 3 Scene 1