TO BE OR NOT TO BE...WHATEVER

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Bob Dole said the word frequently, though he was not the first prominent official to use it. A few years ago, George Bush praised the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel for "living or dying, whatever, for freedom." Nothing that memorable was said last year. The candidates talked about a "bridge" to here and there. The President's most quoted remark concerned his observation of an archaeological find, that it was "a good-looking mummy. I'd like to date that mummy."

Honor was not mentioned in public. Presidential adviser Dick Morris resigned his post when his life among the prostitutes surfaced. Shortly afterward, so did his literary life. Random House advanced him $2.5 million to write a book about the Clinton White House, but Morris forgot to tell the President about the contract; thus in effect he was paid to eavesdrop on the Oval Office, not unlike Richard Nixon. He was rewarded with a breakfast at the New Yorker magazine, where journalists, ad salespeople and academicians convened to certify his good fortune, popularity, newsworthiness, bankability, celebrity, whatever.

"To be or not to be." Whatever.

It was a very good year for Broadway to revive Chicago--the musical about people who get away with murder.

A young man came to trial for shooting another young man to death after a taping of the Jenny Jones Show. The topic of the show was secret admirers, and the guest, misled to assume that his admirer was a woman, discovered in front of the live audience that it was not. Humiliated and apparently deranged, he later shot the admirer. On the witness stand the opaque Ms. Jones told the jury that she had no idea how her show was produced but was certain they had done nothing wrong.

Elsewhere in television the question was raised as to whether linear structure itself mattered. A much sought-after consultant, Douglas Rushkoff, advised television executives that the programming of the future would consist of "predeconstructed" shows like Beavis and Butt-head, in which the principals are intentionally distanced from their own programs. The ideal would be to remove oneself from experience while engaging in experience and to make experience deliberately fleeting. The structure of the sitcom Seinfeld continued to depend on dozens of fast-moving, bite-size scenes that simulate the effect of surfing while remaining within a single coherent situation, thus pre-empting the viewer's urge to switch channels. Attention spans remained brief. Control remained remote.

"For in the fatness of these pursy times/ Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg," says Hamlet to Gertrude. Pursy means short-winded, in poor condition.

The key to understanding Hamlet is that he could not and did not wish to feel part of "this harsh world," yet he had to operate in it. He retreated to soliloquies in which he could talk honestly to no one near him and speak his mind into space.