2 txt r nt 2 txt d Bard? That is the question ...

I DARE text all that may become a man, who dares text more is none.

Well, if the Bard is not spinning like a lathe in his grave, he very soon will be.

Some of the greatest literary moments in the vast Shakespearean treasure trove have been passed through the idiom of the mobile text to come out the other end as garrulous gibberish and gobbledygook.

Scottish exam chiefs are the centre of a Hamlet-like upheaval having decided that English paper answers written in text message language will be acceptable as long as they are correct.

For instance, exam papers have been submitted with - 2 b, r nt 2 b dat iz d Q wthr ts noblr n d mnd 2 sufr d slngs & arowz of outrAjs fortn r 2 tAk armz agnst a C f trblz, & by oposn nd em?

That is, b leve it r nt, the oft quoted lines from Hamlet, act three, scene one: “To be, or not to be: that is the question...”

And if you believe “it is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden” to subject Shakespeare to such literary evisceration, look what’s been done to Romeo and Juliet.

“bt, sft! wot lIt thru yndr wndo brAkz? Ts d Est, & Juliet iz d sn. ArIs, fair sn, & kil d envios m%n, hu iz alredi sk & pAl w grEf, dat thou hr mAd art fr mo fair thn she”.

Yes, it’s the lines beginning “but, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?/It is the east, and Juliet is the sun/Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon/Who is already sick and pale with grief/That thou her maid art far more fair than she.”

This too has been reduced to a putrid pile of alphabetical chitterlings.

Recent studies have shown that excessive use of mobile phones can cause impotence. But this is hardly punishment enough for those who would reduce Henry V, act four, scene three to: “& gntlmn n Englnd, nw a-bed shl fnk thmslvs acrsd dey wr not hr, & hld thr mnh%dz chEp whl NE spk dat fort w us on St Crspns dA.”

In case the attempt at translation is too much to bear, that was: “and gentlemen in England now abed/Shall think themselves accursed they were not here /And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks/That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”

If you feel your literary sensitivities have already been hung and drawn, well, here’s a quartering for them.

When writing Hamlet, Shakespeare could very well have foreseen such wanton dilution of his heady literary brews when he wrote: “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”