Dedicated to My Favorite Shakespearean Actor, Frank E

[queerbychoice]

"The scene's a poor bedchamber at Elsinore. Yorick and his lady lie fast asleep in their cot. In disarray upon a nearby chair: a cap, bells, motley, &c. Somewhere, a sleeping infant. Picture the boy Hamlet now, tiptoeing to the bedside; where he tenses, crouched; until at last he leaps! And now,
Yorick. (awakes) O, a! What whoreson Pelion's this, that, tumbling down from Ossa, so interrupts my spine? . . . I interrupt myself, for there occurs to me a discordant Note: would any man, awakened from deepest slumber by the arrival on his back of a seven-year-old princeling, truly retain such a command of metaphor and classical allusion as is indicated by the text? It may be that the vellum is not wholly to be relied upon in this regard; or it may be that Denmark's fools were most uncommon learned. Some things may never be known . . ."
—Salman Rushdie, "Yorick," from East, West: Stories (the "West" section), 1994