IF SHAKESPEARE PLAYED PAINTBALL . . .

A scene from:
"Much Ado About Paintball”
Act 3, Scene 4

The play so far: Horatio, the captain of Team Hamlet, has had yet another argument with his wife, the fair Ophelia. As in Act 2, Scene 1, Ophelia has been complaining that Horatio is spending more time with his team mates than his children, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. She argues with him and delivers an ultimatum, choose between the family and the team. Left alone in the basement, with all his paintball stuff, Horatio delivers this poignant soliloquy

"To play or not to play. That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of my outraged partner in life, or by not playing, end them. For in fair Ophelia’s eyes it is a foolish endeavour. She understandeth not my love for the Noble Game.

"How do I love paintball? Let me count the ways: I love it as the gentle robin loves the coming of spring. It taketh my heart and soul and causeth them to soar on high. The quality of paintball is not strained. It falleth like the gentle paintball from the loader into the marker below. "Forsooth (and FIVE- sooth, even), I have spent many a coin that rightly should provide my family with warmth and nourishments. My obsession is deep and not easily comprehended by those non-afflicted. I am a man possed. Paintballs where are they sting? I cannot helpeth but to purchase paraphernalia that I do not require! My visions are of paintball trapping.

[He begins to hallucinate.]

"Is this a marker I see before me? Hand grip towards my hand? Come, let me clutch the. I see the, yet I have the not. Are thee a marker of the mind? Come to torment me in my hour of deepest woe? Get the behind me, foul apparition! What light from yon window breaks, It is paintball and Ophelia is the moon. Both are the lights of my exitance. "Obsession, thy name is paintball. But what an obsession, for is not paintball a reflection of the Daily Turmoil we but call life?

"All the world’s a paintball field, and we merely players in it.”

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