It Is Too Long

 I have tried to comfort my students with anecdotes about how I still get my papers graded ruthlessly by even the most benign supervisors. This kind of intervention is just fundamental to law practice, which, at its best, is always cooperative. Any written work prepared for public consumption by someone working in a law office will get edited. Sometimes the editing suggestions other lawyers provide are simply akin to what dogs do when out for a stroll. But often, having another smart person review one’s work saves the primary author from profound embarrassment or at least pushes a person to drill deep or to seek out a more graceful formulation—all of which is “devoutly to be wish’d.” (Hamlet, III.1)

So why do students and young associates seem peculiarly prickly about getting feedback on their writing these days? Is it more evidence of this generation’s “entitlement” issues? Or of a jarring generational gap between Millennials and their bosses that is creating all kinds of problematic workplace dynamics, but especially in law firms? Is it just that I am tired and thus resent being made to feel like the bad guy when I have taken a 75% pay cut to assume a service function vis-à-vis journeymen who do not yet have a clue about what is good for them?

Is it all of the above?

Who can say.

What I can say is that even William Shakespeare could have used a good editor. That’s right. Numerous passages from any given play can readily be discarded—not just to accommodate minuscule, modern attention spans, but because the material is not that great and weighs down the action. Here’s a “for instance” from the best-play-ever:

First Player

'Anon he finds him
Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command: unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for, lo! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' the air to stick:
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
And like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.
But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region, so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour forged for proof eterne
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.
Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod 'take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!'

Does Hamlet really require that we sit back while the First Player yammers on like this—just so Polonius can then comment “It is too long”? The joke is not worth the build-up.  Indeed, the whole scene (which I will not reproduce) exists only as a vehicle for Hamlet to deliver the wonderful “Hecuba” soliloquy. But all that soliloquy needs is one fleeting, prefatory moment, a mere glimpse of a rehearsal to establish the idea that actors are amazing in the way they can conjure up believable fake emotions better than normal people can express real emotions. Then Hamlet can say:

Hamlet

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her working all his visage wann'd,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!

For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,

Make mad the guilty and appal the free,

Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed

The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,

And can say nothing; no, not for a king,

Upon whose property and most dear life

A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?

Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?

Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?

Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,

As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?

Ha!

'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be

But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall

To make oppression bitter, or ere this

I should have fatted all the region kites

With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

O, vengeance!

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,

That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,

And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,

A scullion!

Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard

That guilty creatures sitting at a play

Have by the very cunning of the scene

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaim'd their malefactions;

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players

Play something like the murder of my father

Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;

I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,

I know my course. The spirit that I have seen

May be the devil: and the devil hath power

To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps

Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

As he is very potent with such spirits,

Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds

More relative than this: the play 's the thing

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

And truly, the “Hecuba” soliloquy itself goes on too long. Without a moment’s hesitation I would, for starters, cut this silly excess:

Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?

Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?

Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,

As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?

Ha!

'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be

But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall

To make oppression bitter, or ere this

I should have fatted all the region kites

With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

Go back and read the speech without it and see if I do not speak true. . . .