Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=532671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Epitaphs For Two Players</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I. EDWIN BOOTH</div><div style="margin:10px 0">An old actor at the Player's Club told me that Edwin Booth first impersonated Hamlet when a barnstormer in California. There were few theatres, but the hotels were provided with crude assembly rooms for strolling players.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The youth played in the blear hotel.<br>The rafters gleamed with glories strange.<br>And winds of mourning Elsinore<br>Howling at chance and fate and change;<br>Voices of old Europe's dead<br>Disturbed the new-built cattle-shed,<br>The street, the high and solemn range.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The while the coyote barked afar<br>All shadowy was the battlement.<br>The ranch-boys huddled and grew pale,<br>Youths who had come on riot bent.<br>Forgot were pranks well-planned to sting.<br>Behold there rose a ghostly king,<br>And veils of smoking Hell were rent.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When Edwin Booth played Hamlet, then<br>The camp-drab's tears could not but flow.<br>Then Romance lived and breathed and burned.<br>She felt the frail queen-mother's woe,<br>Thrilled for Ophelia, fond and blind,<br>And Hamlet, cruel, yet so kind,<br>And moaned, his proud words hurt her so.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A haunted place, though new and harsh!<br>The Indian and the Chinaman<br>And Mexican were fain to learn<br>What had subdued the Saxon clan.<br>Why did they mumble, brood, and stare<br>When the court-players curtsied fair<br>And the Gonzago scene began?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And ah, the duel scene at last!<br>They cheered their prince with stamping feet.<br>A death-fight in a palace! Yea,<br>With velvet hangings incomplete,<br>A pasteboard throne, a pasteboard crown,<br>And yet a monarch tumbled down,<br>A brave lad fought in splendor meet.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Was it a palace or a barn?<br>Immortal as the gods he flamed.<br>There in his last great hour of rage<br>His foil avenged a mother shamed.<br>In duty stern, in purpose deep<br>He drove that king to his black sleep<br>And died, all godlike and untamed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I was not born in that far day.<br>I hear the tale from heads grown white.<br>And then I walk that earlier street,<br>The mining camp at candle-light.<br>I meet him wrapped in musings fine<br>Upon some whispering silvery line<br>He yet resolves to speak aright.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>II. EPITAPH FOR JOHN BUNNY, MOTION PICTURE COMEDIAN</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In which he is remembered in similitude, by reference to Yorick, the king's jester, who died when Hamlet and Ophelia were children.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yorick is dead. Boy Hamlet walks forlorn<br>Beneath the battlements of Elsinore.<br>Where are those oddities and capers now<br>That used to &quot;set the table on a roar&quot;?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And do his bauble-bells beyond the clouds<br>Ring out, and shake with mirth the planets bright?<br>No doubt he brings the blessed dead good cheer,<br>But silence broods on Elsinore tonight.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That little elf, Ophelia, eight years old,<br>Upon her battered doll's staunch bosom weeps.<br>(&quot;O best of men, that wove glad fairy-tales.&quot;)<br>With tear-burned face, at last the darling sleeps.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hamlet himself could not give cheer or help,<br>Though firm and brave, with his boy-face controlled.<br>For every game they started out to play<br>Yorick invented, in the days of old.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The times are out of joint! O cursed spite!<br>The noble jester Yorick comes no more.<br>And Hamlet hides his tears in boyish pride<br>By some lone turret-stair of Elsinore.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Vachel+Lindsay">Vachel Lindsay</a><div class=q>
<img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share">
<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=532671" data-title="Epitaphs For Two Players de Vachel Lindsay" data-description="I. EDWIN BOOTH

An old actor at the Player's Club told me that Edwin Booth first impersonated Hamlet when a barnstormer in California. There were few theatres, but the hotels were provided with crude assembly rooms for strolling players.


The you..."></div>
</div>
</div>