Shakespeare’s thoughts on Budget 2012
For a little light relief before the brutal cuts, a reader emailed us with an amusing re-write of one of the most famous speeches in Hamlet. “Shakespeare can be a fruitful source for reflection, even on budgetry issues, as my above adaptation offers,” she wrote. Here it is in full:
Hamlet’s Pre-budget reflection:
To spend or not to spend, that is the question
Whether its prudent in hindsight to accept the
Guarantees from Bankers for outrageous fortune;
Or to take cash, avoiding dodgy credit troubles,
And by debiting, end them. To spend to save
No more, and by that saving, say we end
The headache and the thousand fiscal shocks
That cash is heir to. Is it a consumerism
Devoutly to be wished? To spend, to save
To save, nay, e’er give alms – Ay there’s the rub!
For in that act of faith what value may accrue
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause. There’s one aspect
That makes calamity of an inner life.
For who would hear insider tips- a source of crime:
The investors wronged, the profit margin’s increase;
The pain of repossession, the Creditor’s repay,
The insolence of office of one who earns
More than is merit yet unworthily takes,
While another might his fortunes make?
With a mere mouse click!
Who would such bad faith bear,
To grind an sweat under a weary life;
But that dread of something beyond debt;
The pre-determined debt-ratio, from whose burden
No Government dares retrieve, sweetens the pill,
And makes us rather pay those debts we have
Than buy in others that we know not of.
Thus indebtedness makes vassals of us all.
And thus the natural mode of self-determination
Is ensnared o’er with the dark clouds of debt.
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With interest their currency turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
