Star Trek/Shakespeare experts?

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

I'd like to know the sources for the lines that Christopher Plummer's character is using as he bombs away at the Enterprise.

[DSYoungEsq]

Hamlet, for the most part, ifn' I recalls correctly. I ain't gonna rent the movie just to remember which lines, though. The title of the movie is from Hamlet's famous soliloquy about facing death.

[TheIncredibleHolg]

Which is ironic. Those Star Trek guys love to use Shakespeare, and usually that's quite enjoyable. But in that film they screwed up big time. Just think of the scene where humans and Klingons all toast "the undiscovered country", meaning the future, when in Hamlet, that phrase clearly refers to death: "... the thought of something after death -- the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns -- puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of."

[Keeves]

http://us.imdb.com/Trivia?0102975

[Bluepony]

As he bombs away at the Enterprise, Kang is repeating a line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Act III- Scene 1. Marc Anthony's line, "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war..."

The famous soliloquy from Hamlet is used in the formal dinner at the beginning of the movie and the title of Star Trek VI. From Hamlet, Act III, Scene I:

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveler returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear the ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?


The same act and scene is used when by General Kang when his ship is facing destruction, and that is the famous first line-- "To be, or not to be..."

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"...send lawyers, guns, and money..."

Warren Zevon

[handy]

Yep, there is very little true originality left anymore. Even Playboy magazine uses the same jokes from the 70's today & just changes the words.

Are you guys sure Mjollnir isn't referring to the 'let loose the dogs of war' line? I haven't read Hamlet lately, and while I'm fairly certain the line is from Shakespeare (maybe one of the 'Henry' plays?), I don't recall it in Hamlet's soliloquy. I'm thinking of the play with "Once more into the breech, dear friends, once more!"

Damn -- Bluepony's stomped my ass into the ground . . .

[neuro-trash grrrl]

TheIncredibleHolg-

Uh, you'll notice that after Chancellor Gorkon proposes his toast, there is a distinct pause, sort of an unspoken "Huh?" going around the table. Then he clarifies: "The future", and everyone relaxes. I'm pretty sure they knew fully well what the line meant, and were perhaps taking the opportunity to foreshadow the drama to come...

Or maybe they weren't, and I need to get a life.

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Modest? You bet I'm modest! I am the queen of modesty!

John, along the same lines, I was in an annual meeting of the local theatre group, where we were voting on next season's bill. Someone had proposed Hedda Gabler, by Ibsen (of course). A member of the group (who also at the time was a prominent local judge and has subesequently gone on to be a Circuit Court judge) got up to endorse it, saying,"I think this is a great play! I think it's one of the great plays of the English language . . . "

I and the woman across the aisle from me had to beat a hasty exit to keep from bursting with laughter.

[Sofa King]

Certainly someone has taken the time to actually translate Shake into Klingon, haven't they? As a matter of fact, yes. You can send your hard-earned money to these guys, if you like:

"Klingon Shakespeare Restoration Project
Taking its cue from Star Trek VI, the KSRP has as its goal the restoration of the complete works of Shakespeare to the "original Klingon." One of the KLI's proudest accomplishments was the publication of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (The Restored Klingon Version) in March 1996, with a paperback version from Pocket Books anticipated in 1999. We hope to publish translations of Much Ado About Nothing and Macbeth in the future; these translations are already in progress. To find out how you can help others to experience the Bard in his native language send a SASE to:

Klingon Shakespeare Restoration Project
P.O. Pox 634
Flourtown, PA 19031-0634 USA
e-mail: lawrence@kli.org "

ripped from: http://www.kli.org/kli/projects.html#KSRP

[douglips]

Sofa King writes:
Certainly someone has taken the time to actually translate Shake into Klingon, haven't they? As a matter of fact, yes. You can send your hard-earned money to these guys, if you like...

There is an obvious tie in to a recent
Onion (http://www.theonion.com/) article Klingon Speakers Now Outnumber Navajo Speakers (http://www.theonion.com/onion3526/klingon_navajo.html).

Excerpts:
"Navajo, a 3,000-year-old Native American tonal language belonging to the Athabaskan/Na-Dené group of tongues, is clearly dying and will likely be extinct by 2010," MLA president Frederick Toback said. "Fortunately, though, the sad, steady decline of this once-proud Native American tongue has been more than offset by a rising interest in Klingon culture."
...
"The number of truly fluent Navajo speakers stands at less than a thousand," Littlefoot said. "And of these thousand, only a handful are less than 60 years old. Within a generation, our 4,000-year-old tongue will be dust."

"We have people from all walks of life here," said Jennifer "pekaQ" Proehl, a member of the Klingon Language Institute's High Council. "Students, computer programmers, salespeople--all of them banding
together in the proud Klingon tradition."

If you don't laugh, you'll cry.

[lvick]

Once more into the breach dear friends is from Henry V, as far as there being more Kingon speakers than Navajo, get a life

[tanstaafl]

How does the number of Klingon speakers compare to the number of Espranto speakers?

[andros]

Hey, I speak Esperanto like a native . . .

-andros-

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"Listen Children Eternal Father Eternally One!" Exceptions? None!
-Doc Bronner

[Keeves]

To me, the best line in that movie was when Worf said --- no, scratch that, the IMDB says that it was Spock's line, I remembered it as Worf quoting a Klingon saying --- anyway, when Spock said: "There is the old Vulcan proverb: Only Nixon could go to China."

[Tengu]

I just have to say that the line following the quoting of Shakespear at the table about hearing it in the original Klingon is one of the funniest frikkin' things I've seen on the big screen.

...

Ok, I have an odd sense of humour...



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'They couldn't hit an Elephant from this dist...!'

Last words of General John Sedgwick

[John W. Kennedy]

That kind of thing really happens. The Hungarian Consul in NYC told a friend of mine that Kalmann's Die Czardasfuerstin had a "really good German translation."

And Germans have spoken for years of "unserer [our] Shakespeare".

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John W. Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays."
-- Charles Williams

[TheIncredibleHolg]

neuro-trash grrrl -- I wasn't aware of that. But it still doesn't seem right to me. I mean, it makes sense as an in-joke, but they chose the phrase as the title of the film itself! Nah, I don't quite buy it.

Sofa King:We hope to publish translations of Much Ado About Nothing and Macbeth in the future; these translations are already in progress.Okay, Hamlet and Macbeth I understand. But Much Ado About Nothing just doesn't seem very Klingon-like to me...

[Doobieous]

The KLI (Klingon Language Institute) is involved in the process to translate both the bible and the works of Shakespeare. They have a website at: www.kli.org. (http://www.kli.org.) Theres even a mailing list for language afficionados. Oh and according to an article done on that "The Onion" article at www.langmaker.com, (http://www.langmaker.com,) there are perhaps dozens of fluent speakers of Klingon compared to 100,000 native speakers of Navajo.

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'The beginning calls for courage; the end demands care'

[TheIncredibleHolg]

The Bible?! So Jesus is supposed to be Klingon, too? And maybe Kahless (sp?) is God, and he created the Earth after he left the Klingon home planet? That would explain why Klingons are humanoid -- or rather, why humans are Klingonoid.

[DSYoungEsq]

Getting back to the 'Undiscovered Country', the use of this metaphor was very appropos for the context of the movie. They are not talking about 'the future' but rather the uncertainty of making a choice to face a terrifying future. Hamlet isn't talking about 'death' in his soliloquy; he is talking about the fact men don't choose to die to escape a bad life because they don't know what the future holds if they die. In the movie, the Klingons, AND the Federation, face a most uncertain future if they give up their unhappy, but at least comfortable war. For the reactionary elements, they view that uncertain future as a death, and desire to avoid it, fearing exactly the choice Hamlet took.

Mind you, I ain't sayin' that Star Trek movies are exactly deep, but at least the metaphor was reasonable. :)

And I had forgotten the "dogs of war" quote, etc., which proved once again that old Bill did write some pretty good stuff...

[TheIncredibleHolg]

DSYoundEsq:Hamlet isn't talking about 'death' in his soliloquy;Not in the entire soliloquy, but definitely in the phrase in question:

... who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Bluepony's excerpt gave the false impression that "the undiscover'd country ... puzzles the will" without mentioning what "country" was meant. But "the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns" is just a description of death or what comes after it.

neuro-trash grrrl is still closest to an explanation, but as I said, I don't quite buy it.

[tracer]

andros wrote:

Hey, I speak Esperanto like a native . . .

Don't laugh, there really ARE such things as native Esperanto speakers!

Consider this scenario: Man from the U.S., woman from Sweden, meet and fall madly in love at an Esperanto convention. He speaks no Swedish, she speaks no English, but they both speak Esperanto, so when they get married and move in together they end up speaking Esperanto around the house. When they have a baby and their baby later learns to speak, guess which language it's going to be speaking first!


And regards number of Esperanto speakers in the world, estimates range anywhere from 100,000 to 2 million, depending on how you define "Esperanto speaker". This still outnumbers Klingon speakers.

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Quick-N-Dirty Aviation: Trading altitude for airspeed since 1992.

[Yankee Blue]

The developers of the Klingon language, just for spite (any of you who spent hours conjegating verbs can sympathize) decided to develope a language with no verb "to be" in it. When they were hit with the script for The Undiscovered Country they had some serious scrambling to do since Plummer, of course, quotes "To be or not to be..." at the dinner.

[Doobieous]

To go off topic from the OP since I know everyone loves that ;), the creator of the Klingon language, Marc Okrand, decided that when creating it, that if he had followed a rule in an earth language, he would go against another on purpose (so I hear). I like languages with no verb 'to be' in it, since it makes certain translations tricky (and it makes a person think hard about how they would say what might be pretty much idiomatic in languages with the verb to be).

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'The beginning calls for courage; the end demands care'

[dfahs]

Once more into the breach dear friends is from Henry V, as far as there being more Kingon speakers than Navajo, get a life
Ivick, [/URL=http://www.]The Onion[/URL] is a parody newspaper. All stories in it are humor, not factual news stories.

[dfahs]

Dang it, we need a preview page. That should The Onion (http://www.theonion.com).

[Doobieous]

Aiyaaa, toz vahos sorohu che apesperanto, yo feful. Kelo sahip yu tarir! Yo gahas demdono tahas fe tseipo!

That's what I think, to go way off topic here. Email me if you want to know what I said (hopefully my mailbox is receiveing outside messages now).

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'The beginning calls for courage; the end demands care'

[Fretful Porpentine]

Are you guys sure Mjollnir isn't referring to the 'let loose the dogs of war' line? I haven't read Hamlet lately, and while I'm fairly certain the line is from Shakespeare (maybe one of the 'Henry' plays?), I don't recall it in Hamlet's soliloquy. I'm thinking of the play with "Once more into the breech, dear friends, once more!"
Once more into the breach dear friends is from Henry V

"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war" is not from Henry V, though. I'm 99% sure it's from Julius Caesar, but I don't have Bartlett's handy, so don't take this as gospel...

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Let every student of nature take this as a rule -- that whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion.
- Francis Bacon

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

How about "Wrong us, do we not. . ."

(Sorry, I don't remember the exact line.)

[neuro-trash grrrl]

"Prick us, do we not bleed? Tickle us, do we not laugh? Wrong us, do we not seek revenge?" is from the Merchant of Venice. It is spoken by the Jewish moneylender Shylock, during the trial in which he contests his right to the "pound of flesh" from Antonio, as per their contract. Essentially, what the line boils down to is "Hey, Jews are people too...", to render it somewhat less eloquently. This line often pops up in racial-equality contexts, with or without the "revenge" part, depending upon the mood of the speaker.

P.S. Feel free to correct any mistakes in the above. It's been a long time since I read "Merchant".

[JBENZ]

It's Marcus Antonius whining about the bad guys whacking Caesar:

Julius Caesar Act III, Scene 1

And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.



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JB
Lex Non Favet Delictorum Votis

[JBENZ]

Merchant of Venice Act III, Scene 1

...I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

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JB
Lex Non Favet Delictorum Votis

[JBENZ]

Merchant of Venice Act III, Scene 1

...I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

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JB
Lex Non Favet Delictorum Votis

[matt_mcl]

Re Esperanto: Actually, I personally know two native Esperanto speakers. Their Croatian mother and French-Canadian father met at an Esperanto congress (in Finland, I believe) and eventually got married. They raised the children in all three languages.

Re the number of Esperanto speakers, the canonical figure is 2 million, but figures range from the high hundred thousands to 6 million (in the Guinness Book of Records).

[matt_mcl]

Incidentally, if you're wondering:

Chu esti au ne esti; tiel staras
Jen la demando...

-Zamenhof's translation of Hamlet

[AWB]

tracer: Don't laugh, there really ARE such things as native Esperanto speakers!

Consider this scenario: Man from the U.S., woman from Sweden, meet and fall madly in love at an Esperanto convention. He speaks no Swedish, she speaks no English, but they both speak Esperanto, so when they get married and move in together they end up speaking Esperanto around the house. When they have a baby and their baby later learns to speak, guess which language it's going to be speaking first!
<hr width="2">
Since there is no Esperantoland, nobody can be a native. They could be EFL - Esperanto as a First Language.

[Doobieous]

AWB: However much I tire of the overly hopeful and zealous nature of many e-oists (which is why as a conlanger, I am an artlanger), i have to say that "nnative speaker" and "first Language" are used interchangeably, so even though I grudgingly say this, yes there can be "native Esperanto (e-o) speakers"

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'The beginning calls for courage; the end demands care'