Anti-Fan: Perchance to scheme: Ay, there's the rub

Jim Gordon | The New Mexican

7/17/2008 - 7/18/08

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.
— Hamlet (also Brett Favre in retirement)


Ah, the aggrieved prince of Green Bay. His tragedy — like that of the prince of Denmark — is that he couldn't make up his mind. To play or not to play, that was the question.

And the answer was not to play. Then to play, maybe. Then not to play, maybe. Then not to play, definitely. Then: "Give me my helmet or give me my release."

Say what?

The royal court in Shakespeare's play couldn't have been any more confused by Hamlet's "antic disposition" than the Packers have been by Favre's erratic words and actions.

Green Bay has denied pressuring Favre for a stay-or-go decision in early March — a view Favre supported at his farewell press conference that same month — yet now the 38-year-old quarterback says the team is to blame for his "premature" retirement.

Favre says that while it's true he retired — remember all the tears shed, what Shakespeare called "the fruitful river of the eye"? — he claims his decision was made in part because the Packers didn't try hard enough to talk him out of it.

In other words, they did tell him they wanted him back — just not with enough ardor to please him.

Poor Brett. It seems as though after three offseasons of him holding the team hostage with his I-may-retire-I-may-not act, the Packers finally decided to embrace 24-year-old Aaron Rodgers, their top draft pick of 2005.

In an interview with Greta Van Susteren, Favre said how much he cares for his former teammates, yet he appears ready to undermine the entire franchise — those teammates included — to get his way. And if he doesn't get his way, he's considered showing up at training camp essentially to disrupt it. Hell hath no fury like an aging jock scorned.

Meanwhile, Green Bay released a timeline that indicates it gave Favre numerous opportunities to return to the team. And Wednesday it was reported the Packers had filed a tampering charge against Minnesota, claiming inappropriate contact between Favre and Vikings offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell.

According to a person said to be familiar with the complaint, the Packers "feel like Favre had something (in place), and that's why he was so anxious to get his release all of a sudden."

High-profile athletes and other celebrities are notorious for not letting go, for missing the rush and the adulation and trying to claw their way back into the limelight — on their own terms. When they do, are their versions of events to be trusted?

On this question, the last word belongs to Denmark's prince, Favre's doppelgänger:

"I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us."