I have always been an avid fan of Alice in Wonderland, having read it along with its sequel, Through the Looking Glass over and over as a child. So to celebrate Tim Burton’s new take on the classic story, I uncovered this emulation of Hamlet’s “To Be or Not To Be” speech that I wrote in high school AP English for the Mad Hatter. Enjoy!
To drink, or not to drink: that is the riddle indeed!
Whether one should suffer of boredom
Wasting 364 perfectly good days on ONE birthday party per year?!
Or take matters into his own gloves
And have UNbirthday parties! To sleep
Like the dormouse, ending
His dread as
The cheshire cat’s prey
Having wished to dwell within the teapot. To sleep, to dream
(But of a complex wonderland) where life may come
When you have left your
State of Alice (into a state of mercury)
Must make you ponder. There’s the respect
For the Queen that makes the playing cards tremble;
For who else would designate the death sentences of time?
The Jabberwock’s oppression is wrong,
The Queen despises love
(Upsetting the law).
Alice the unworthy
Might make herself shy
With a bare hedgehog to the croquet, who Aces bare
Under the rule of hearts in a dark life.
But there is the dread of what comes after the execution,
The undiscovered Wonderland, more and even more curiouser,
From where neither they nor Alice will ever return. It puzzles her
And encourages us all to bear what madness we possess,
Rather than to fly with the civilized flamingos we do not know.
The forest path of conscience makes us desperate,
And thus the blue waters of the dodo
Are overturned in a weak storm cast with curious thoughts,
Intoxicating biscuits and a moment
Where the ocean’s currents turn away.
Then you will have lost your course for following the white rabbit down his hole.
Come join the tea party now! The Alice of logic, sweet in your dreams,
May our lack of all reason be remembered.
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