Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
I turned Hamlet down because it was going to take up too much of my drinking time.
Be patient, Ophelia. Love, Hamlet
I had written about a small hamlet upstate, and had been called into a meeting about my story, which, as it turned out, had upset a lot of people.
Hamlet: Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring? Ophelia: 'Tis brief, my lord. Hamlet: As woman's love.
Programmed by quanta, physics gave rise first to chemistry and then to life; programmed by mutations and recombination, life gave rise to Shakespeare; programmed by experience and imagination, Shakespeare gave rise to Hamlet.
Who is more real? Homer or Ulysses? Shakespeare or Hamlet? Burroughs or Tarzan?
You don't really audition for Hamlet; Hamlet is one of those roles that a director or producer decides you should do it.
Even in the tragedies, Shakespeare always put in parts for the comic actors because his audience was mixed. He puts in people who talk like aristocrats. He puts in idiots and fools. He puts in certain middle-range characters. And when you go to the Globe, you realize how that all works. The people who paid more sat in seats around the edge. Everybody else paid a penny. They put it into a tin box - that's why we call it the "box office. " They stood in the pit, but they were very close, so when Hamlet was doing his soliloquy, it was addressed to you, the audience - right there.
One of the things that makes Hamlet unique among Shakespeare's characters is his courage to face up to the darker elements of his personality.
The purpose of all opprobrious language is, not to describe, but to hurt - even when, like Hamlet, we make only the shadow-passes of a soliloquised combat. We call the enemy not what we think he is but what we think he would least like to be called.
A guy comes home from college to find his mother sleeping with his uncle, and there's a ghost running around. Write it good, it's Hamlet; write it bad, it's Gilligan's Island.
Twilight's soft dews steal o'er the village-green, With magic tints to harmonize the scene. Stilled is the hum that through the hamlet broke When round the ruins of their ancient oak The peasants flocked to hear the minstrel play, And games and carols closed the busy day.
You'd never play Hamlet if you started worrying about who's played it before you.
I was so scared of going back to the theatre after 'Hamlet. ' I didn't know if I'd do a play again because I was afraid of the power of it.
If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendency; if the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will.
Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn’t, because there aren’t enough skulls!
I took the role of Ophelia in Hamlet because she is so naive, loving, and innocent.
The thing that I had saved up for myself and wanted most to bring off was a fully fledged professional production of Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford.
I wrote my first play, Uncommon Women and Others, in the hopes of seeing an all-female curtain call in the basement of the Yale School of Drama. A man in the audience stood up during a post show discussion and announced, “I can't get into this, it's all about girls. ” I thought to myself, “Well, I've been getting in to Hamlet and Laurence of Arabia my whole life, so you better start trying. ”
