John Bunny, Motion Picture Comedian
In which he is remembered in similitude, by reference to Yorick,
the king’s jester, who died when Hamlet and Ophelia were children.
Yorick is dead. Boy Hamlet walks forlorn
Beneath the battlements of Elsinore.
Where are those oddities and capers now
That used to “set the table on a roar”?
And do his bauble-bells beyond the clouds
Ring out, and shake with mirth the planets bright?
No doubt he brings the blessed dead good cheer,
But silence broods on Elsinore tonight.
That little elf, Ophelia, eight years old,
Upon her battered doll’s staunch bosom weeps.
(”O best of men, that wove glad fairy-tales.”)
With tear-burned face, at last the darling sleeps.
Hamlet himself could not give cheer or help,
Though firm and brave, with his boy-face controlled.
For every game they started out to play
Yorick invented, in the days of old.
The times are out of joint! O cursed spite!
The noble jester Yorick comes no more.
And Hamlet hides his tears in boyish pride
By some lone turret-stair of Elsinore.
poem by Vachel Lindsay
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Epitaphs For Two Players
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 youth played in the blear hotel.
The rafters gleamed with glories strange.
And winds of mourning Elsinore
Howling at chance and fate and change;
Voices of old Europe's dead
Disturbed the new-built cattle-shed,
The street, the high and solemn range.
The while the coyote barked afar
All shadowy was the battlement.
The ranch-boys huddled and grew pale,
Youths who had come on riot bent.
Forgot were pranks well-planned to sting.
Behold there rose a ghostly king,
And veils of smoking Hell were rent.
When Edwin Booth played Hamlet, then
The camp-drab's tears could not but flow.
Then Romance lived and breathed and burned.
She felt the frail queen-mother's woe,
Thrilled for Ophelia, fond and blind,
And Hamlet, cruel, yet so kind,
And moaned, his proud words hurt her so.
A haunted place, though new and harsh!
The Indian and the Chinaman
And Mexican were fain to learn
What had subdued the Saxon clan.
Why did they mumble, brood, and stare
When the court-players curtsied fair
And the Gonzago scene began?
And ah, the duel scene at last!
They cheered their prince with stamping feet.
A death-fight in a palace! Yea,
With velvet hangings incomplete,
A pasteboard throne, a pasteboard crown,
And yet a monarch tumbled down,
A brave lad fought in splendor meet.
Was it a palace or a barn?
Immortal as the gods he flamed.
There in his last great hour of rage
His foil avenged a mother shamed.
In duty stern, in purpose deep
He drove that king to his black sleep
And died, all godlike and untamed.
I was not born in that far day.
I hear the tale from heads grown white.
And then I walk that earlier street,
The mining camp at candle-light.
I meet him wrapped in musings fine
Upon some whispering silvery line
He yet resolves to speak aright.
II. EPITAPH FOR JOHN BUNNY, MOTION PICTURE COMEDIAN
In which he is remembered in similitude, by reference to Yorick, the king's jester, who died when Hamlet and Ophelia were children.
Yorick is dead. Boy Hamlet walks forlorn
Beneath the battlements of Elsinore.
Where are those oddities and capers now
That used to "set the table on a roar"?
And do his bauble-bells beyond the clouds
Ring out, and shake with mirth the planets bright?
No doubt he brings the blessed dead good cheer,
But silence broods on Elsinore tonight.
That little elf, Ophelia, eight years old,
Upon her battered doll's staunch bosom weeps.
("O best of men, that wove glad fairy-tales.")
With tear-burned face, at last the darling sleeps.
Hamlet himself could not give cheer or help,
Though firm and brave, with his boy-face controlled.
For every game they started out to play
Yorick invented, in the days of old.
The times are out of joint! O cursed spite!
The noble jester Yorick comes no more.
And Hamlet hides his tears in boyish pride
By some lone turret-stair of Elsinore.
poem by Vachel Lindsay
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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First Clown: A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a' poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester.
line from Hamlet, Act V, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
line from Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: The time is out of joint. O, cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!
line from Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
line from Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Queen Gertrude: And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
That your good beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,
To both your honours.
line from Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.
line from Hamlet, Act V, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Doobie or not Doobie
Doobie or not Doobie-
What was Prospero smoking?
Up on the ramparts of Elsinore
What was our Hamlet toking?
Did fair Ophelia steal his stash
and roll herself a Doobie?
Did she go off the deep end then
because she was a newbie?
Cannabis was to Shakespeare known
as a potent source of Hemp.
It may have made a dancing fool
out of old Will Kemp.
But please do not disturb his bones,
beware the potent curse.
The Bard of Avon had wit enough
without inhaling first.
poem by John F. McCullagh
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Polonius: Good madam, stay awhile; I will be faithful. [Reads.]
‘Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
‘O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers;
I have not art to reckon my groans: but that
I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu.
‘Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him,
HAMLET.’
line from Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Ophelia: You are keen my lord, you are keen.
Hamlet: It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge.
line from Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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King Claudius: How fares our cousin Hamlet?
Hamlet: Excellent, i' faith, of the chameleon's dish. I eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so.
line from Hamlet, Act III, Scene 2 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Laertes: Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well
What I have said to you.
Ophelia: ‘Tis in my memory lock’d,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.
line from Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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I started to realise that it wasn't for me. Perhaps I didn't have to give my Hamlet before I died, that the world might be an OK place without my Hamlet, in fact.
quote by Eric McCormack
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Rosencrantz: I understand you not, my lord.
Hamlet: I am glad of it. A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.
line from Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 2 by William Shakespeare (1599)
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I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. . . But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming-- and a little mad.
quote by Alfred North Whitehead
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Queen Gertrude: O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
Hamlet: Oh, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
line from Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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A final house stands at this hamlet's site (In diesem Dorfe steht das letzte Haus)
A final house stands at this hamlet's site,
as lonesome as the final house on earth.
The road, unhindered by the hamlet's girth
keeps walking slowly out into the night.
The hamlet is but a transition side
of two expanses, anxious, terrified;
its walk along the houses mere relay.
And those that leave the hamlet wander wide
and many die perhaps along the way.
poem by Rainer Maria Rilke (19 September 1901), translated by Walter Aue
Submitted by anonym
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To an Old Danish Song-Book
Welcome, my old friend,
Welcome to a foreign fireside,
While the sullen gales of autumn
Shake the windows.
The ungrateful world
Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee,
Since, beneath the skies of Denmark,
First I met thee.
There are marks of age,
There are thumb-marks on thy margin,
Made by hands that clasped thee rudely,
At the alehouse.
Soiled and dull thou art;
Yellow are thy time-worn pages,
As the russet, rain-molested
Leaves of autumn.
Thou art stained with wine
Scattered from hilarious goblets,
As the leaves with the libations
Of Olympus.
Yet dost thou recall
Days departed, half-forgotten,
When in dreamy youth I wandered
By the Baltic,--
When I paused to hear
The old ballad of King Christian
Shouted from suburban taverns
In the twilight.
Thou recallest bards,
Who in solitary chambers,
And with hearts by passion wasted,
Wrote thy pages.
Thou recallest homes
Where thy songs of love and friendship
Made the gloomy Northern winter
Bright as summer.
Once some ancient Scald,
In his bleak, ancestral Iceland,
Chanted staves of these old ballads
To the Vikings.
Once in Elsinore,
At the court of old King Hamlet
Yorick and his boon companions
Sang these ditties.
Once Prince Frederick's Guard
Sang them in their smoky barracks;--
Suddenly the English cannon
Joined the chorus!
Peasants in the field,
Sailors on the roaring ocean,
Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics,
All have sung them.
Thou hast been their friend;
They, alas! have left thee friendless!
Yet at least by one warm fireside
Art thou welcome.
And, as swallows build
In these wide, old-fashioned chimneys,
So thy twittering songs shall nestle
In my bosom,--
Quiet, close, and warm,
Sheltered from all molestation,
And recalling by their voices
Youth and travel.
poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Rosencrantz: What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?
Hamlet: Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin.
line from Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 2 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet is a remarkably easy role. Physically it's hard because it tends to be about three hours long and you're talking the whole time. But it's a simple role and it adapts itself very well, because the thing about Hamlet is, we all are Hamlet.
quote by Liev Schreiber
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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