Barney & Clyde by Gene Weingarten; Dan Weingarten & David Clark for July 13, 2022

HORATIO: Tush, tush, ’twill not appear.

Unlike A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which shows us a lot of Bottom.

that was a movie with bette davis, right? tush, tush, sweet charlotte…

Clyde is our most erudite companion!

alas, poor Horace

Won’t find that one in Bob Hope’s card-file.

Macbeth was the dirty play. The Lady had to keep washing her hands.

Hamlet has a coarse, cunning pun during the Mouse Trap play

“‘The Tragedy of Hamlet’ is a coarse and barbarous piece of work that would not be accepted by the basest rabble in France or Italy. One would think it the fruit of the imagination of a drunken savage.” – Voltaire

There you have it, folks. According to Voltaire, the true author of “Hamlet” is Caliban.

“‘You taught me language; and my profit on’t is, I know how to curse!”

(I can do obscure, too.)

Horatio is…an interesting character. We’re given just enough of his backstory to realize how much is missing. He was Hamlet’s fellow-student at Wittenberg, but he also apparently fought for Hamlet’s father against Norway (Fortinbras Sr.), and old Norway was killed the day Hamlet Jr. was born. He’s a gentleman but not a Lord, and he apparently has little to no private income (“Nay, do not think I flatter, For what advancement may I hope from thee, that no revenue hast but thy good spirits to feed and clothe thee?”. He’s Hamlet’s closest friend and confidant, but the guards on the watch knew he’d returned to Elsinore well before Hamlet himself did. Gertrude and Claudius know him mainly as Hamlet’s friend, yet when Hamlet is sent to England Horatio remains in the castle and is given private audience with the King and Queen.

It’s often said that Horatio, for all his prominence throughout the play, never really does anything to advance the plot; he’s an expository character, there to explain things and have things explained to him. However, my own theory is that he’s largely responsible for Ophelia’s death. When Ophelia goes mad, after her first appearance Claudius tells Horatio “Give her good watch, I pray you.” When Ophelia enters the second time there’s no explicit stage note that Horatio enters with her, but the stage directions weren’t written by Shakespeare himself and, as Horatio has no lines in that exchange, he may simply have been omitted. In the next scene we see Horatio getting word that Hamlet is back in England so he rushes off to meet him, and in the scene after that we learn that Ophelia has drowned. Who SHOULD have been keeping an eye on Ophelia? Horatio. The King himself told him to.

Tush will not appear? Well, ZZ Top wouldn’t go downtown to see THAT play…

“Full frontal nudity, but tush will not appear.”

Tushes are not “dirty” the joke would die outside of the US.

Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool,

Rather than open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.