Hamlet calls the Poetry Crisis Line part 3

Find part 1 here

and part 2 here

 

COUNSELOR #3: Poetry Crisis Line, Unrequited Love Division. Do you want Boy-Girl, Boy-Boy, Girl-Girl, May-December, Rich-Poor, Families Each Alike in Dignity…

CALLER: That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

COUNSELOR #3: Ex is seeing a freeloader. Got it. Transferring you now.

—

COUNSELOR #4: Poetry Crisis Line, Unrequited Love Division. Moocher Desk. How may I help you?

CALLER: When he himself might his quietus make / With a bare bodkin?

COUNSELOR #4: Isn’t that how most people make it? Unless they’re in a hurry.

CALLER: who would fardels bear,

COUNSELOR #4 [frantically paging through dictionary]: Uh….that’s a good question. Who would fardels bear?

CALLER: To grunt and sweat under—

COUNSELOR #4: Hang on–were you watching them do it?

CALLER:  a weary life,

COUNSELOR #4: Now wait. Whatever you’re feeling now, it’s not worth dying–

CALLER: But that the dread of something after death,

COUNSELOR #4: What, like a bad epitaph?

CALLER: The undiscover’d country

COUNSELOR #4: A bad Star Trek movie?

CALLER:  from whose bourn

COUNSELOR #4: I haven’t seen the Bourne movies yet, but–

CALLER: No traveller returns,

COUNSELOR#4: Wait, don’t give away the ending.

CALLER:  puzzles the will

COUNSELOR #4: So it’s one of those movies where he has to solve a puzzle before he can inherit? Wait, why are we talking about movies?

CALLER: And makes us rather bear those ills we have / Than fly to others that we know not of?

COUNSELOR #4: So if you frame it in movies, you don’t have to face your issues directly?

CALLER: Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

COUNSELOR #4: You’re right. Everyone does it sometimes.

CALLER: And thus the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

COUNSELOR #4: But then if everyone does, it,  maybe it isn’t so cowardly as you say.

CALLER:  And enterprises of great pith and moment / With this regard their currents turn awry,

COUNSELOR #4: Well, it’s better to face things obliquely than not at all.

CALLER: And lose the name of action.

COUNSELOR #4: I understand. You don’t want to call it “action” if you’re not facing it directly. But even Perseus used a mirror when he slew Medusa.

CALLER: –Soft you now!

COUNSELOR #4: What? Did you just shush me?

CALLER: The fair Ophelia! [CALLER sets down phone and wanders off]

COUNSELOR #4: Hello?

CALLER:  Nymph, in thy orisons / Be all my sins remember’d.

COUNSELOR #4: Hello? Are you still there?