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William Shakespeare wrote quite a few memorable quotes about money and wealth in his works. Both for and against, for he knew of the power and corruption it could cause within men. He was no fool with money himself either, he owned the best house in Stratford-Upon-Avon, as well as part share of a London theatre and numerous other investments in commodities and such.

Think of him as wealthy and famous as any top writer/director of Hollywood is today.

In the last part of this article I have re-written the opening speech of Hamlet into a soliloquy about work and consumerism - don't forget to read it and the original is linked to in the title.

Shakespeare's baller house!

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"Foul cankering rust the hidden treasure frets, but gold that's put to use more gold begets."

Here he writes that if you hide your money away it will be slowly eaten away by the rust that is inflation. But if you put it to work, it will bring you back more of itself.

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"This yellow slave (gold) will knit and break religions, bless the accursed, Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves and give them title, knee and approbation with senators on the bench."

Even the religious priests and cardinals are corrupted by wealth. The sinners will be blessed if they have it, the corrupted to be loved, and thieves will become like royalty with the control over the senators. A very interesting quote once you let it simmer in your brain a while.

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"Neither a borrower, nor a lender be."

This quote comes from Hamlet and it references loaning money between friends. Shakespeare knew that loans between friends often ends in both the loss of the loan and the friendship. In another quote he states to loan money to your enemies, so you won't feel bad when you go to collect.

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"Whiles I am a beggar, I will rail and say there is no sin but to be rich; and being rich, my virtue then shall be to say there is no vice but beggary."

Here he shows that he understands that people adapt their views to their financial situation - and when their wealth changes, so do their thoughts.

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"Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate."

Money doesn't buy love.

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"If money go before, all ways do lie open."

If you have money it can make your life easier, all you have to do is spend it to get what you want.

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"Money is a good soldier, and will on."

Your money never stops fighting for your cause, it goes on and on. Interestingly, I wrote about this concept a few months back in this post.

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"Gold were as good as twenty orators."

Money convinces people better than words do.

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Apothecary: 'My poverty but not my will consents.'
Romeo: 'I pay thy poverty and not thy will.'
...
Romeo:'There is thy gold, worse poison to men’s souls, doing more murder in this loathsome world, than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell. I sell thee poison. Thou hast sold me none.'

In Romeo&Juliet the poison is purchased from a poor apothecary who doesn't want to sell it but does because he is in desperate need of the money. Romeo says that the gold he is giving has done more killing in the world than any poison - and in fact gold is indeed a poison. This shows that those in need of money will do things against their morals to obtain it.

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"All that glitters is not gold."

I will end with this quote that is easy to remember and so often heard. Not everything that looks expensive, precious, or true is actually what it appears to be.

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My adaptation of the opening soliloquy of Shakespeare's Hamlet

To buy, or not to buy: that is the question:
Is it better to follow the common crowds in
The buying of stuff that costs an outrageous fortune?
Or to resist against the mindless consumerism,
And by opposing it? To be free: to live;
Much more simply; and by a simple life to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand pinpricks of worries
That the mind creates when you spend
Beyond your means. To be free; to live;
To live: maybe to dream; ah, there it is;
For when we live a simple life what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mindless consumerism?
We must pause to think: There’s the understanding
That makes a tragedy of so long a life;
For who would bear the stress and grind of a job?
The abuse from your boss, the insults,
The pains of not doing what you love, the delay ‘til old age,
The rudeness of customers and the mistreatment
That good people must daily take from the bad?
When you could live simply and invest the rest;
To quit the grind much earlier by living off that bounty! After all,
Why would one choose to grunt and sweat through an exhausting job
Unless they feared they would perish without it?
The undiscovered world of earlier retirement,
Where no one who enters returns to the life of a working stiff.
The workers wonder about it without looking deeply for any answers
And so they stick to the evils of life they know
Rather than seek out a different way.
Fear of the unknown makes us all cowards,
And so our young and vibrant lives
Become grayed over as we spend our life in servitude.
Actions that would make us free should be undertaken at once,
But all too soon become lost in the day-to-day,
And then stop being done at all.

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Pictures: 1 2 3 4 5

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