Saturday, March 21, 2020

Act 3, Scene 1 Of Hamlet Essays - Characters In Hamlet,

Act 3, Scene 1 Of Hamlet Hamlet: Act 3, Scene 1 A room in the castle. Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN KING CLAUDIUS And can you, by no drift of circumstance, Get from him why he puts on this confusion, Grating so harshly all his days of quiet With turbulent and dangerous lunacy? ROSENCRANTZ He does confess he feels himself distracted; But from what cause he will by no means speak. GUILDENSTERN Nor do we find him forward to be sounded, But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof, When we would bring him on to some confession Of his true state. QUEEN GERTRUDE Did he receive you well? ROSENCRANTZ Most like a gentleman. GUILDENSTERN But with much forcing of his disposition. ROSENCRANTZ Niggard of question; but, of our demands, Most free in his reply. QUEEN GERTRUDE Did you assay him? To any pastime? ROSENCRANTZ Madam, it so fell out, that certain players We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him; And there did seem in him a kind of joy To hear of it: they are about the court, And, as I think, they have already order This night to play before him. LORD POLONIUS 'Tis most true: And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties To hear and see the matter. KING CLAUDIUS With all my heart; and it doth much content me To hear him so inclined. Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, And drive his purpose on to these delights. ROSENCRANTZ We shall, my lord. Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN KING CLAUDIUS Sweet Gertrude, leave us too; For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither, That he, as 'twere by accident, may here Affront Ophelia: Her father and myself, lawful espials, Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen, We may of their encounter frankly judge, And gather by him, as he is behaved, If 't be the affliction of his love or no That thus he suffers for. QUEEN GERTRUDE I shall obey you. And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish That your good beauties be the happy cause Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues Will bring him to his wonted way again, To both your honours. OPHELIA Madam, I wish it may. Exit QUEEN GERTRUDE LORD POLONIUS Ophelia, walk you here. Gracious, so please you, We will bestow ourselves. To OPHELIA Read on this book; That show of such an exercise may colour Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this, 'Tis too much provedthat with devotion's visage And pious action we do sugar o'er The devil himself. KING CLAUDIUS [Aside] O, 'tis too true! How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience! The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art, Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it Than is my deed to my most painted word: O heavy burthen! LORD POLONIUS I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord. Exeunt KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS Enter HAMLET HAMLET To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd. OPHELIA Good my lord, How does your honour for this many a day? HAMLET I humbly thank you; well, well, well. OPHELIA My lord, I have remembrances of yours, That I have longed long to re-deliver; I pray you, now

Thursday, March 5, 2020

The Process For Firing a Government Employee

The Process For Firing a Government Employee The federal government’s disciplinary personnel process have become so cumbersome that only about 4,000 employees a year 0.2 % of the total workforce of 2.1 million are fired, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In 2013, the federal agencies dismissed around 3,500 employees for performance or a combination of performance and conduct. In its report to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the GAO stated, â€Å"The time and resource commitment needed to remove a poor performing permanent employee can be substantial.† In fact, found the GAO, firing a federal employee often takes from six months to over a year. â€Å"According to selected experts and GAO’s literature review, concerns over internal support, lack of performance management training, and legal issues can also reduce a supervisor’s willingness to address poor performance,† wrote the GAO. Remember, it actually took an act of Congress to give the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs the power to outright fire senior VA executives who failed to meet performance standards. As the GAO noted, the in 2014 annual survey of all federal employees, only 28% said the agencies they worked for had any formal procedure for dealing with chronically poorly performing workers. The Probationary Period Problem After being hired, most federal employees serve a one-year probationary period, during which the lack the same rights to appeal disciplinary actions – like firing – as employees who have completed probation. It is during that probationary period, advised the GAO when the agencies should try their hardest to identify and carve out the â€Å"bad word† employees before they gain the full right to appeal. According to the GAO, about 70% of the 3,489 federal employees fired in 2013 were fired during their probationary period. While the exact number is not known, some employees facing disciplinary actions during their probationary period choose to resign rather than have a firing on their record, noted the GAO. However, reported the GAO, work unit managers â€Å"often do not use this time to make performance-related decisions about an employee’s performance because they may not know that the probationary period is ending or they have not had time to observe performance in all critical areas.† As a result, many new employees fly â€Å"under the radar† during their probationary periods. ‘Unacceptable,’ Says Senator The GAO was asked to investigate the government firing process by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In a statement on the report, Sen. Johnson found it â€Å"unacceptable that some agencies let the first year slip by without conducting performance reviews, never aware that the probationary period had expired. The probationary period is one of the best tools the federal government has to weed out poor-performing employees. Agencies must do more to evaluate the employee during that time period and decide whether she or he can do the job.† Among other corrective actions, the GAO recommended the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) the government’s HR department extend the mandatory probationary period beyond 1-year and include at least one full employee evaluation cycle. However, the OPM said extending the probationary period would probably require, you guessed it, â€Å"legislative action† on the part of Congress.