"get Thee To A Nunnery!"

[southern california guy]

Stephen King said that a writer is a person with a misbehaving mind. Back when I was in High School I liked goofing around in my creative writing class. I once attempted to write a story using almost nothing but abbreviations and acronyms (It was about a guy in the military filing paperwork). Another time I wrote a story about a terrified guy -- visited in the middle of a stormy night by two horribly grotesque space aliens -- who turn out to be girl scouts from another planet selling cookies.

One day, in my creative writing class, we were reading "Othello" outloud, when I started jumping ahead and imagining the crazy direction I would take the story if I wrote it. And then the story actually went that direction and I burst out laughing! Nobody else in the class seemed to get the joke and they all looked at me like: [i]It's not that funny...[/i]

Shakespeare supposedly wrote The King James Version of the Bible. But did he? Did "Shakespeare" write the plays? I've read that there is evidence that the 17th Earl of Oxford wrote the plays under the hyphenated pseudonym "William Shake-speare." And people tend to write about what they know best.

Anyway getting back to the quote: "Get thee to a nunnery!" It's from the famous play "Hamlet". And it doesn't surprise me that the same person who wrote "Romeo and Juliet" wrote "Hamlet". But I seem to view the story differently than many Shakespeare fans.

My basic thought is that Hamlet is telling Ophelia that the only way to definitely maintain a perfect reputation is to become a nun ("Get thee to a nunnery!")


Anyway below is some of "Hamlet" with my thoughts. I got the modern english version from a Shakespeare website.


-----


In the famous play "Hamlet" the king and queen decide Hamlets problem must be that he's in love with Ophelia. Of course Ophelia really was in love with him, but her father, Polonius (The king's councilor), forbid her from seeing Hamlet -- because he thought she would lose her virginity to Hamlet and get a bad reputation.

So the king and queen hide and have Ophelia feel him out.

Hamlet comes walking in and begins talking outloud to himself. He begins with the famous almost flippant line "To be or not to be? That is the question --" And he goes on and on... like a compulsive obsessive self-centered single guy agonizing about life and death -- because he's single and only got himself to think about..

Ophelia approaches Hamlet and explains that she'd like to return some of the gifts he gave her -- the love letters and the presents. (Which has to feel bad to Hamlet)

(Translated into modern english)

[b]OPHELIA[/b]
Nice gifts lose their value when the givers turn out not to be so nice. (Expressing her fathers viewpoint that Hamlet's bad).

[b]HAMLET[/b]
Ha ha, so you think you're good?

[b]OPHELIA[/b]
Excuse me?

[b]HAMLET[/b]
So you think you're beautiful?

[b]OPHELIA[/b]
What are you talking about?

[b]HAMLET[/b]
I’m just saying that if you’re good and beautiful, your goodness should have nothing to do with your beauty.

[b]OPHELIA[/b]
Could beauty be related to anything more easily than goodness?

[b]HAMLET[/b]
Sure, it's easier for beauty to change a good girl into a whore, than for goodness to change a beautiful girl into a virgin. This used to be a great puzzle... but now I've solved it!

I used to love you...

[b]OPHELIA[/b]
You made me believe that you loved me. (But was it just a ruse so you could have sex with me?)

[b]HAMLET[/b]
Well....You shouldn't have believed me! We're all basically rotten, no matter how hard we try to be virtuous. I didn't really love you!

[b]OPHELIA[/b]
Then I guess I was misled..

[b]HAMLET[/b] (Untranslated)
Get thee to a nunnery! (Go become a nun!). Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. 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. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?

[b]OPHELIA[/b]
He's at home.

[b]HAMLET[/b]
Lock him in! He can play the fool alone at home. Good-bye.

[b]OPHELIA[/b]
Oh, dear God, please help him!

[b]HAMLET[/b]
If you marry, I’ll give you this curse as your wedding present: Be as clean as ice, as pure as the driven snow -- and you’ll still get a bad reputation!

Get yourself to a convent -- at once! Good-bye. Or if you have to get married, marry a fool, since a wise men would know that you'd cheat on him.

[b]OPHELIA[/b]
Dear God, please make him normal again!

[b]HAMLET[/b]
I've heard all about you woman and your makeup. God gives you one face, but you paint another on top of it. You dance and prance and lisp: you call God's creations by pet names, and you excuse your slutty ploys by pleading ignorance. Cut it out. It's driving me crazy. I hereby declare that there will be no more marriages. Whoever is already married -- except one person I know -- will stay married. Everyone else will have to stay single. Get yourself to a convent. GO!

------------

Any Shakespeare fans here? Do you agree with me? Disagree? Did "Shakespeare" really write the King James Version of the bible? And if he didn't than who did? And who was "Shakespeare"?

[Thy Geekdom Come]

Since when did Shakespeare allegedly write the KJV?

[Resurrexi]

[quote name='Raphael' date='29 November 2009 - 01:13 AM' timestamp='1259475228' post='2010979']
Since when did Shakespeare allegedly write the KJV?
[/quote]

Since when did Shakespeare know Hebrew?

[KnightofChrist]

[quote name='Raphael' date='29 November 2009 - 01:13 AM' timestamp='1259475228' post='2010979']
Since when did Shakespeare allegedly write the KJV?
[/quote]

I have heard this before, he only helped a little with the translating. He also knew King James personally.

[zunshynn]

Ummm... He wasn't telling her to become a nun. He was telling her to go to a whorehouse.

[Hassan]

[quote name='zunshynn' date='29 November 2009 - 01:34 AM' timestamp='1259476452' post='2010992']
Ummm... He wasn't telling her to become a nun. He was telling her to go to a whorehouse.
[/quote]



bingo

[Marie-Therese]

right now Shakespeare is crying.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='zunshynn' date='29 November 2009 - 01:34 AM' timestamp='1259476452' post='2010992']
Ummm... He wasn't telling her to become a nun. He was telling her to go to a whorehouse.
[/quote]
http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/get-thee-nunn-ry

It would seem that the whorehouse argument is an inconclusive interpretation.

[Resurrexi]

Apparently "nunnery" was a slangy word for a brothel because prostitutes were subjected to similar controls as those placed on nuns and also because brothels were under the supervision of a manager who was called an abbess or abbot.

Edited November 29, 2009 by Resurrexi

[Era Might]

[quote name='KnightofChrist' date='29 November 2009 - 01:17 AM' timestamp='1259475435' post='2010983']
I have heard this before, he only helped a little with the translating. He also knew King James personally.
[/quote]
In one of my classes earlier this semester we were discussing Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds") and how the sonnet may have been addressing the Catholic/Protestant controversy over whether to use the word "Love" or the word "Charity" in translations of 1Corinthians 13.

[southern california guy]

[quote name='zunshynn' date='28 November 2009 - 11:34 PM' timestamp='1259476452' post='2010992']
Ummm... He wasn't telling her to become a nun. He was telling her to go to a whorehouse.
[/quote]

Apparently a "nunnery" could mean either a brothel or a convent back in Victorian times. But I lean towards the convent interpretation, because it seems to me that Hamlets telling her that the only way she could have a perfect reputation would be to become a nun. Remember what he said in his wedding "curse" (plague for thy dowry).

(Translated) If you marry, I’ll give you this curse as your wedding present. Be as clean as ice, as pure as the driven snow -- and you’ll still get a bad reputation.

(Untranslated)If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry. Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.

It seems to me that Hamlet is angry and is being sarcastic. It's like he's saying, [i]Your fathers right I am a really bad guy. It's a good thing that your father saved you from me. You had better run and become a nun.[/i] So I think that Hamlet is referring to a convent rather than a brothel. Of course Shakespeare being Shakespeare it's also quite possible that he used the term "nunnery" on purpose knowing that it had multiple meanings and would increase the level of sarcasm in the conversation.

Edited November 29, 2009 by southern california guy

[Jaime]

[quote name='Marie-Therese' date='29 November 2009 - 03:20 AM' timestamp='1259482806' post='2011034']
right now Shakespeare is crying.
[/quote]

amen

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='southern california guy' date='29 November 2009 - 12:03 PM' timestamp='1259514202' post='2011076']
Apparently a "nunnery" could mean either a brothel or a convent back in Victorian times. But I lean towards the convent interpretation, because it seems to me that Hamlets telling her that the only way she could have a perfect reputation would be to become a nun. Remember what he said in his wedding "curse" (plague for thy dowry).

[/quote]

Please keep in mind that we're talking about Elizabethan England, not Victorian England.

[southern california guy]

[quote name='Raphael' date='29 November 2009 - 10:28 AM' timestamp='1259515736' post='2011090']
Please keep in mind that we're talking about Elizabethan England, not Victorian England.
[/quote]

Oops, you're right.

[mommas_boy]

[quote name='Raphael' date='29 November 2009 - 01:13 AM' timestamp='1259475228' post='2010979']
Since when did Shakespeare allegedly write the KJV?
[/quote]


[quote name='KnightofChrist' date='29 November 2009 - 01:17 AM' timestamp='1259475435' post='2010983']
I have heard this before, he only helped a little with the translating. He also knew King James personally.
[/quote]

My high school English teacher was of the opinion that King James was Shakespeare's ghost writer for all of his plays (or rather that Shakespeare was King James' nom de plume). The conspiracy theory goes that King James desperately wanted to write plays, but couldn't because of some political reason. So, King James found a playwright, and had Shakespeare publish and produce the King's plays for him.

If this were true, then "Shakespeare" was really King James, and so he did indeed write the KJV.

Edited November 29, 2009 by mommas_boy