Friends, modelers, countrymen: lend me your ears;
I've come to bury the question mark, not to praise it.
The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.
So let it be with the question mark.
The noble 20-something hath told you that the question mark was ambitious;
If it were so, 'twas a grievous fault,
And grievously hath the question mark answer'd it.
Here, under leave of the 20-something and the rest-
For the 20-something is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men-
Come I to speak in question mark's funeral.
It was my friend, faithful and just to me;
But the 20-something says it was ambitious,
And the 20-something is an honourable man.
It hath brought many inquiries home to the page
Whose answers did the general curiosities fill.
Did this in the question mark seem ambitious?
When that the unlearned have inquired, the question mark hath been their punctuation.
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
Yet the 20-something says it was ambitious,
And the 20-something is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the message post,
I thrice presented it with boldface type,
Which it did thrice refuse; was this ambition?
Yet the 20-something says it was ambitious,
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what the 20-something spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love it once, not without cause;
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for it?
O judgement! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with question mark,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
Dave (liberally paraphrasing Shakespeare)