"The Play's the Thing"
My adorable little brother Tyler auditioned for the play Hamlet at his school. He got the part of Horatio, Hamlet's close friend. Way to go, Tyler! Tyler told me he's glad that he got the part of Horatio, because "there's a moderate amount of lines to memorize," because Horatio is one of the few characters that doesn't die, and because he gets to say the last line in the play.
Ophelia is one of my favorite characters in Hamlet. And here's one of my favorite passages from the play (there are too many to mention!) regarding Ophelia's tragic death:
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
