Primrose Road

Quite a few sites about the Law of Attraction and The Secret reference the following quote from our favorite Nice Danish Boy:

"For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

Talk about a contextotomy: the full line is "Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison" (Ham 2.2). Hamlet's arguing that "Denmark's a prison"; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the 'friends' who will eventually participate in an attempt on his life, tell Hamlet it's not.

I'm not sure that a line from a scene in which a man who is having "bad dreams" because his uncle may have murdered his father tries to convince his not-very-loyal friends that his country is a prison.

This is why I tell my students not to refer to quotes as "quotes" in their papers: it tells their readers that they're performing contextotomies and reflecting on 'sound bites' instead of plot and character points. (College comp teachers, you've all seen it: "This quote says Hamlet thinks Denmark's a prison." Major pet peeve on my part.)

Meanwhile, I'm going to go manifest a dissertation.