“CONSOLATION” POSTSCRIPT

This is a postscript to my earlier entry “…’Tis A Consolation Devoutly To Be Wished” (posted on June 17^th, 2013). On second thought, it ought to have been included with the entry itself. But on “first thought,” at the time, I was so delighted by my clever play on words (substituting Hamlet’s radical solution to the problem of life, “consummation,” by Nietzsche’s “thoughtful” solution, his “powerful comfort,” that is, consolation), that I felt that any explanation of my substitution would spoil the splendid challenge to the reader, to figure it all out.

However, having reread the entry posted on my blog, I thought that perhaps I may have been too clever for this entry’s own good. What if some reader, well-versed in “To be or not to be,” should attribute the title to my misquotation of Shakespeare, rather than to a deliberate wordplay, mating Shakespeare with Nietzsche, and thus lose the original intent of the misquotation altogether?..

For the sake of avoiding a confusion of this nature, and to allow a better appreciation of the cleverness of my entry’s title, I am presently providing this prosaic, but probably necessary elucidation.