You've heard of the nice lady who loved Hamlet because it has so many famous sayings. I've been re-reading it and came today to a passage that the nice lady may have forgotten about. It's in the third scene of the fourth act. Hamlet, having killed Polonius, is called before the king, who asks, a little plaintively, "Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?" Hamlet answers, "At supper." That Hamlet! He doesn't mean that Polonius is eating supper. It's the worms who are eating. The king really wants to know where the body is but Hamlet riffs on how a beggar may fish with a worm that has supped upon a king, in which case royalty is obliged to make its way through the beggar's digestive tract.
It's not all famous soliloquies, "To be or not to be" perfectly enunciated and accompanied by graceful gestures. Speaking of that, however: what exactly is going on? Hamlet's problem is whether or not to believe the ghost, whether or not to take revenge upon the new king, his uncle, right? But then, pretty much without warning, he assumes a position alone on the stage and declares that the question is not why he doesn't kill his uncle but why he doesn't kill himself. He's got death on his mind. It's possible he wasn't altogether healthy back in the days before the play began and his dad the king was taking those daily constitutionals in the orchard.
