QUOTES FROM THE BARD

PLAY: Hamlet ACT/SCENE: 1.4 SPEAKER: Hamlet CONTEXT: It is a custom
More honoured in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations. DUTCH: Het is een gebruik, meer eervol voor die het schendt, dan voor die het volgt /
Is ‘t een zede, Meer eerbiedwaard, als men haar schendt, dan volgt. /
Is het een zede Eervoller om te laten dan te volgen.
MORE: Misquoted in that the meaning has moved nowadays to regretting the falling out of use of a custom or tradition, i.e. a custom more often ignored and observed; whereas Hamlet meant the opposite: if his uncle’s drinking and making promises is a tradition, it is one they can well do without.
CITED IN US LAW –
The above point is made by Judge Posner, who wrote that a reader frequently thinks that this means custom that is not observed, which is what the expression viewed in isolation seems plainly to mean. “But if you go back to the passage in Hamlet from which the expression comes (Act I, Sc. iv, lines 8-20), you will see that the custom referred to is that of getting drunk on festive occasions. The point is general: context, in the broadest sense, is the key to understanding language”. (Alliance to End Repression v United States Department of Justice, 742 F 2d 1007, 1013 (7th Cir. 1983)(Posner, J);
U.S. v. Smith, 812 F.2d 161, 167 (4th Cir. 1987);
Calley v. Callaway, 382 F.Supp. 650, 666 (M.D.Ga. 1974);
Arthur v. Nyquist, 415 F.Supp. 904, 959 (W.D.N.Y. 1976);
State v. Griffin, 347 So.2d 692, 694 (Fla. Ct. App. 1977).
Topics: language, still in use, cited in law, proverbs and idioms