[Chris O'Carroll]

Nice work on Hamlet's soliloquy, Roger. Your second line is more cool in one's head than mine. But isn't your third line a foot short?

[Roger Slater]

Yeah, I may need to put "and slings" into it. In moving to monosyllables, I figured I shouldn't just automatically take the monosyllables that Shakespeare used in the original but modernize the language just a bit so long as I was messing with it. (But it doesn't really matter, since it will never appear anywhere outside this thread).

[John Whitworth]

What you could do, Roger, is to suggest it to Lucy as a subject for a competition and then enter it. It works for some folks.

[Graham King]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

What you could do, Roger, is to suggest it to Lucy as a subject for a competition and then enter it. It works for some folks.

I have suggested it to Lucy myself. We shall see what comes of the suggestion

[Graham King]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

Writing in monosyllables is harder in some languages than others. According to Wikepedia, "the phonetic rules of Thai language permits 23,638 possible syllables, compared to, for example, Hawaiian language's 162." I have not yet found how many monosyllabic words there are in English but I suspect that the answer lies somewhere in between.

I wonder how hard it would be to write poems or prose that avoid all monosyllabic words. I suppose the lack of articles and pronouns would slow things down considerably.

Roger, that's an intriguing idea. I suppose one might go for a terse (but paradoxically also longwinded!) telegraphic style, simply omitting those commonplace short words.
If your idea too draws interest, may we best begin a separate thread - 'Polysyllabic' (and, as has been suggested, not restrict it to re-writes but invite also fresh material) ?

Meanwhile, you've got me thinking:

Future alternatives: being, non-being? Myself, pondering:
Nobler, perhaps, mindfully suffering
Slingsful - quiversful! - comprising outrageous misfortunes?
Otherwise, maybe arming oneself against selfsame oceanic troubles -
Opposing militantly, thereby ending aforesaid hardships? Dying: sleeping;
Ceasing! Sleeping, supposedly ending
Heartache - also (conceivably) ending thousand shocking natural hazards
Mortal bodies inherit? Consummation
Devoutly desirable! ...