shakespearesmoking
Act III, Scene I
 
To ban, or not to ban – that is the question: 
 
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
 
The slings and arrows of unwanted cigarette smoke 
 
Or to take arms against a sea of those so addicted, 
 
And by opposing end them. To cough- to hack- 
 
No more; and by a hack to say we end
 
The heartache, and the thousand natural stalks
 
That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation 
 
Devoutly to be smoked. To cough- to hack. 
 
To smoke perchance a fine Cuban cigar: ay, there’s the rub! 
 
For in that smoking the good stuff is what dreams may come 
 
When we have huffed off this mortal coil, 
 
Must give us pause. There’s the respect 
 
That makes calamity of a ban so long life. 
 
For who would bear the whips and scorns of personal rights, 
 
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s cancer stick, 
 
The pangs of Medicare future, the law’s delay, 
 
The insolence of e-cigarettes, and the spurns 
 
That patient merit of the unworthy tokes, 
 
When he himself might his morning cough 
 
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear, 
 
To grunt and sweat under a short walk, 
 
But that the dread of something after death 
 
The undonatable lung, from whose bourn
 
No traveler returns- puzzles the will, 
 
And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
 
Than fly to hookahs we know not of? 
 
Thus conscience does make smokers of us all, 
 
And thus the native hue of nicotine 
 
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, 
 
And enterprises of great pith and moment 
 
With this regard their banishment turn awry 
 
And lose the name of action.  Smoke you now! 
 
The dead Marlborough Man!  Cowboy, in thy orisons 
 
Be all my cigs remembered.
 
For more columns and stories by Rick Robinson, click here.

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His contemporary novel Alligator Alley is a story of growing up in a small Kentucky town (dare we say Ludlow) and won the Grand Prize at the Great Southeast Book Festival in New Orleans. For more on this award-winning locally-inspired book, click here.

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