When we talk about unities, Aristotelian unities of time, place, and action usually spring to mind. Classical unities. A sort of unified dramatic field theory. And yet.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
Shakespeare follows a different kind of unity than that of substantive happenstance. To be or not to be embraces both being and not being on the pinhead’s reflection. A Schrödinger’s cat of a line with being and unbeing embracing each other in a single moment of consideration. In a second, we could be either. Neither. Nāgārjuna’s fourfold negation that one 1. cannot say that it is, 2. cannot say that it isn’t, 3. cannot say that it both is and is not, and 4. cannot say that it neither is nor is not. Our proper being is or isn’t empty.
Methought I was–there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had–but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. Here is being and having, and both of those states offer no definable human value.
That is the question again encompasses both–“the question”, and “that” which answers it. Subject and predicate fulfilling each other yet remain undecided. Yang becoming yin becoming yang again. Thou talk’st of nothing.
Except perhaps in theatre, where nothing may become everything dependent on only a little light and even less imagination. Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France? How much does theatre echo human life? Is everything in both? I am that I am. Or should that be that I am not what I am? An equivocator, that could swear in both scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God’s sake, but could not equivocate to heaven. Literature defending itself against Plato for eternity. Poetry. Theatre. Lies. Lives.
Best perhaps to settle down for a drink, albeit drinking has its problems too, couched again in curious dualism, the Tao gives rise to one, which gives rise to two, which gives rise to three, which gives rise to the ten thousand things. Two balanced between one and three, between the pangs of despised love and quietus. Between a fardel and a bare bodkin.
Was I what methought I was? Had I what methought I had? Are we, do we ever? Let it go.
Sigh not so, but let them go, and be you blithe and bonny, converting all your sounds of woe into hey, nonny, nonny. If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations and addict themselves to sack. Of course, drinking, fine as it may be for passing the time, encompasses its own potentially problematic duality.
Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery; it makes him and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t. Damn.