To GST or not
Exeunt PRIME MINISTER and POLONIUS. Enter HAMLET.
HAMLET: To GST or not to GST — that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?
PRIME MINISTER [Entering]: How fares our cousin Hamlet?
HAMLET: Not now! I've yet to think a bit.
PRIME MINISTER: Oops. Sorry. [Exit PRIME MINISTER]
HAMLET: Now you've done it! I've lost my train of thought.
POLONIUS [Offstage]: I hide behind the arras. Then you say: "How now! A rat?".
HAMLET: No I don't. It's still the bit with the soliloquy. You're way ahead of yourself.
POLONIUS [Offstage]: No I'm not. You kill the rat.
PRIME MINISTER [Entering]: Act three, scene four: Polonius "falls and dies". That's what it says.
POLONIUS [Offstage]: O, I am slain!
PRIME MINISTER: There! Falls and dies! Falls and dies!
HAMLET: No. No. It's not like that at all. Hamlet first considers the GST.
POLONIUS [Offstage]: The what?
HAMLET: The goods and services tax. He ponders it.
PRIME MINISTER: But this is Denmark.
HAMLET: And "there's something rotten in the state thereof". Something rotten. Mark that!
POLONIUS [Offstage]: That explains the rat!
HAMLET: It's modern dress and Hamlet's in two minds about the GST.
POLONIUS [Offstage]: He's a wanker.
HAMLET: No. He's intellectually convoluted.
POLONIUS [Offstage]: Wanker.
HAMLET: Should he or shouldn't he? It's a metaphor.
PRIME MINISTER: All seems pretty simple to me. Either he's agin it or for it.
HAMLET: To you maybe. But Hamlet is a complex soul.
POLONIUS [Offstage]: So when does he get to kill the rat?
HAMLET: When he's finished with the GST.
PRIME MINISTER: Then he kills the rat in the arras.
POLONIUS [Offstage]: O, I am slain!
HAMLET: But first: To GST or not — that's the question.
By Dave Riley
<dhell@ozemail.com.au>