"Here comes the prince"
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"Shakespearean focus" featured a 2016 skit in which different actors promoted different focus choices in Hamlet's famous line:
PAAPA ESSIEDU: «To be or not to be that is the question»…
TIM MINCHIN: Right sorry, sorry. I mean – y-yes… I’m – yes – but if you don’t mind a note: O-OR: «To be OR not to be.»
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: Try this: «To be or NOT to be, that is the question.»
DAVID TENNANT: Calm down, right. It’s simple. Don’t lose focus: «To be or not to be, THAT is the question.»
RORY KINNEAR: No, no, no, no, no. Idiots! «To be or not to be, that IS the question.»
SIR IAN MCKELLEN: Lend me your ears: «To be or not to be, that is THE question.»
DAME JUDI DENCH: «To be or not TO be.»
PRINCE CHARLES: «To be or not to be, that is the QUESTION.»
David Z. commented:
This reminds one (i.e., me) of the scene in WC Fields's film The Old Fashioned Way, about a troupe of actors, where benefactor Cleopatra Pepperday is promised a role, reciting the line "Here comes the prince." She practices the line many times, emphasizing different words, although she never actually gets to deliver it on stage.
Here's the scene:
And just the audio:
Olaf Zimmermann said,
April 8, 2025 @ 8:55 am
re: To do or let it be –
Here's an earlier demonstration: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-11380973
As for the presumptive origins of that famous phrase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwbB6B0cQs4
PS I shall add this (DC Fields) movie to the many ones I haven't seen before …
RF said,
April 8, 2025 @ 9:28 am
The transcript is missing Harriet Walter’s “To BE, or not to BE.”
Gregory Kusnick said,
April 8, 2025 @ 10:10 am
There's a scene in John Sayles' Passion Fish in which several actresses are swapping war stories, and one tells of reading for a part in a cheesy alien-abduction film and being asked for several different interpretations of her line:
"I never asked for the anal probe."
"I never asked for the anal probe."
"I never asked for the anal probe."
Mark Liberman said,
April 8, 2025 @ 10:55 am
@RF: The transcript is missing Harriet Walter’s “To BE, or not to BE.”
True — I just cut and pasted from the YouTube description…
Y said,
April 8, 2025 @ 2:12 pm
P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Mulliners:
bukwyrm said,
April 9, 2025 @ 7:58 am
I get the meaning that is inserted by the focus of most of these versions, what but does the Denchian one signify? 'To be or not TO be' – can someone put that into more words?
Amy de Buitléir said,
April 9, 2025 @ 10:00 am
Took some digging to find it, but here's the Monty Python skit with "to BE or not to BEEEE".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVhxOxwnVVY
Randy Hudson said,
April 9, 2025 @ 12:49 pm
@bukwyrm The most appropriate words, I believe, are "reductio ad absurdum". The only way 'to' can reasonably take focus is in something meta like "We say 'to BE', not 'TO be'."
Rick Rubenstein said,
April 9, 2025 @ 4:35 pm
I had to stop and get a drink. These pretzels are making me thirsty!
Olaf Zimmermann said,
April 10, 2025 @ 1:13 am
@Rick Rubinstein: There is no question that after the third pint that bilabial stop is unvoiced, and you no longer think about suprasegmental phonology.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
April 10, 2025 @ 7:21 am
@RF I use that one, and in fact Minchin's OR, to demonstrate to my students that some of the choices don't really makes sense. The speaker has a lot of freedom in choosing the focus, but not 100% freedom.
JPL said,
April 10, 2025 @ 3:54 pm
@bukwyrm:
"TO be or having BEEN (or, "being"), that is the question."
"To be or, not TO be, but having BEEN, that is the question."
"To be or not to be, that is the question."
Every segmental element of the sentence can be focused (highlighted) as a point of contrast, while keeping the constituent expressions constant, except "to". "To" is the only "grammatical morph"; it can be the focus of a contrast, as in the first two examples, but to express it explicitly requires changes in the "wording", i.e., paradigmatically the alternatives at that position involve syntactic differences. Without expressing the alternative explicitly, the interpretation of "not TO be" is not straightforward, as well as being a weird thing to say.