A Quote by William Monahan

If you decide to do Hamlet in a funny hat staged in a ruined factory, it doesn't make you Shakespeare.

William Monahan

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Decide Factory Funny Hamlet Hat Make Ruined Shakespeare Staged

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William Monahan
American - Novelist
Born: November 3, 1960

Shakespeare - it's not funny. No matter how they try to make Shakespeare funny, when it's meant to be funny it's not funny.

Julie Walters

Shakespeare without Othello, Lear, Macbeth and Hamlet would be all too much like Hamlet without the prince.

Brand Blanshard

I think it's always funny when you see kids do Shakespeare. When I was at school, I was in Hamlet. I played Claudius, who's supposed to be a 60-year-old man, and I was like 18. It's inherently ridiculous seeing 18-year-old boys with gray beards. That's always funny.

Steve Coogan

I think Hamlet is a very funny play - Hamlet is riddled with wit.

Chukwudi Iwuji

And I just think that to introduce an unknown Shakespeare is thrilling, too - not to do Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, to do the richer Shakespeare. People will come to this and not know the story.

Julie Taymor

Most people don't know that I am an accomplished dramatic actor... But I've performed in several Shakespeare productions including Hamlet, except in this version, Hamlet lives in an apartment with two women, and has to pretend he's gay so that the landlord won't evict him.

John Ritter

I have an aunt who believed strongly that teaching kids that Shakespeare is 'hard' is wrong, so she handed me 'Hamlet' when I was in kindergarten to see what would happen. What happened was I did a book report on 'Hamlet' and caused quite a lot of trouble!

Seanan McGuire

The reason that I'm a writer today is because of Shakespeare and falling in love with Shakespeare when I was 8. That was through the movies, actually - through Olivier's 'Hamlet.' That was the first thing that got me to fall in love with Shakespeare and movies and everything in one big preadolescent rush.

John Logan

The stage can be defined as a place where Shakespeare murdered Hamlet and a great many Hamlets murdered Shakespeare.

Robert Morse

It was reading Hamlet that ruined the concept of authenticity for me, not because Hamlet lacked existentialist credentials himself - indeed, as an earlier discontented Dane, he could be said to have laid the ground for Kierkegaard - but because the line 'to thine own self be true' was spoken by that humourless old ninny, Polonius.

Howard Jacobson

Once an actor told me he went to the Shakespeare School of Acting, and I said, 'I went to the Shakespeare of Acting, too' and he said, 'Oh really?' And I said, 'I went to Shakespeare Elementary School in Chicago.' He didn't take the joke well, he didn't laugh and didn't think it was funny - I thought it was funny. It's all the same to me.

Michael Clarke Duncan

Judah Friedlander, I'm ok with you being the world champion for a few years more. That's a hook with legs. But I think he should make one more hat, that says 'there's a limit to how funny words on a hat can be'. And then move to a chapeau.

Andy Kindler

In Shakespeare's world, characters cannot trust their senses. Is the ghost in Hamlet true and truthful, or is it a demon, tempting young Hamlet into murderous sin? Is Juliet dead or merely sleeping? Does Lear really stand at the edge of a great cliff? Or has the Fool deceived him to save his life?

Virginia Postrel

Actors want to do Shakespeare again and again, or want to do Hamlet. When you hear one guy do Hamlet and another guy do it, it's going to be a whole different experience.

Joshua Bell

I don't make much distinction between being a stand-up comic and acting Shakespeare - in fact, unless you're a good comedian, you're never going to be able to play Hamlet properly.

Ian Mckellen

I saw Derek Jacobi play Hamlet when I was 17, and he directed me as Hamlet when I was 27, and I directed him as Claudius in 'Hamlet' when I was 35, and I'm hoping we meet again in some other production of Hamlet before we both toddle off.

Kenneth Branagh

A Quote by William Monahan

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