Tall Grass

To create, or not to create: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The bizzare and bawdy of outrageous novelty,
Or to take ladders onto a tower of history,
And by climbing, copy them? To make: to do;
No assist; and by a pen to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural imitation
That art is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To paraphrase, to borrow;
To borrow: perchance to quote: ay, there's the rub;
For in that theft of art what cracks may show
When we have shuffled off this novel spark,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so difficult project;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of art,
The director's wrong, the actor's contumely,
The pangs of despised audience, the profit's delay,
The insolence of critics and the spurns
That patient merit of the masses takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare xerox? who would fardels bear,
To script and scrawl under a weary task,
But that the dread of something after publishing,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No writer returns, puzzles the pen
And makes us rather bear those characters we have
Than fly to others that we must make anew?
Thus creativity does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of daring
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of popularity,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of newness. - Soft you now!
The bewildered Shepherd! Muse, in thy orisons
Be all my conundrums remember'd.