Whither Doubt?

(This image is from a website with an article called How To Manage Doubt.)

In the fall of 1988 (I'm guessing) I took one of the several Shakespeare classes I would take (or have to take) at the University Of Texas At Austin.  Being a pretentious precocious kid, I had already read a few of Shakespeare's plays & had a favorite: Hamlet.

We read Hamlet in that class, & when it came time to write the inevitable paper, I told the instructor I wanted to write it about doubt.  As a centerpiece, I included the poem that Hamlet wrote to Ophelia, read by snoopy-ass Polonious to Hamlet's mom when the latter was worried about her boy's weird behavior:

Doubt thou the stars are fire;

Doubt that the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar;

But never doubt I love.

How many years has it been?  Thirty-one?  I no longer have that paper, & I don't recall what grade I got on it, though I did get an A in that class, so it wasn't like I bombed or anything.

Many years later I included that poem in an email to a girl I was playing at courting, & she didn't know it was from Hamlet, which was fine.  Not everyone could be as pretentious precocious as me.

Is Hamlet the reason for this show?  Is Hamlet the reason for anything, except maybe launching the careers of hundreds of actors?  Here are forty-five of them who have played the doomed Prince of Denmark.

Seriously, though, I doubt I was thinking about Hamlet when this theme popped into my head.  You should too.  You should doubt everything I say on this blog, on the show, in conversation with me.  It's a pretty wise thing to do.

But don't doubt that Self Help Radio will explore doubt tomorrow at noon at Self Help Radio dot net!

No, wait, doubt that, too.