Skount is debating whether to be or not in this adaptation of a hundred plus year old photo of Sarah Bernhardt, who holds the court jester Yorick’s skull in hand. A grave contemplation of suicide that leads the Hamlet character to contemplate the great leveling force of death on all stations and classes, this particular depicting of Shakespeare has had a profound effect on Skount.

Skount. Würzburg, Germany. July 2015. (photo © Skount)

“This photo has always been poetic for me since I first saw it,” he says, “I see in the photo a woman with a really special life that is intense, hard, full of difficulties and now finally a satisfactory life,” he says of the James Lafayette photograph that was possibly taken at the turn of the 20th century.

“To be or not to be,” is perhaps the most noted excerpt from the play and is

also the title of Skounts’ mural for Street Meet at Mainfranken Theater in Würzburg, Germany. See below the original photograph and the artists’ initial sketch for the wall.

Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet. (public domain, James Lafayette)

Skount. Würzburg, Germany. July 2015. (photo © Skount)

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 heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished.

To die, to sleep–To sleep–perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,

~Shakespeare

Skount. Würzburg, Germany. July 2015. (photo © Skount)

Skount’s original sketch for the mural (© Skount)

Skount. Würzburg, Germany. July 2015. (photo © Skount)

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