If Henny Youngman Had Played Hamlet

Act I, scene ii.
A room of state at Elsinore.

HORATIO: My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.

HAMLET: I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.

HORATIO: Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.

HAMLET: She’s been married so many times she has rice marks on her face.

Act I, scene v.
A platform before the castle.

Enter GHOST and HAMLET.

GHOST: My hour is almost come,
When I to sulf’rous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.

HAMLET: If you get a ringing in your ears,
don’t answer it.

Act II, scene ii.
A room in the castle.

Enter HAMLET, reading.

POLONIUS: How does my good Lord Hamlet?

HAMLET: If I had blood, I’d blush.

POLONIUS: Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET: You’re the only man I ever met with a seersucker face.

POLONIUS: Not I, my lord.

HAMLET: You are frank and earnest with women. In Fresno you’re Frank, and in Chicago you’re Ernest.

Act III, scene ii. A hall in the castle.

Enter HAMLET and OPHELIA.

OPHELIA: You are merry, my lord.

HAMLET: Merry? I’d commit suicide if it didn’t involve killing myself.

Act V, scene i.
A churchyard.

Enter two CLOWNS, with spades, etc.

FIRST CLOWN: Here’s a skull now. This skull has lain in the earth three and twenty years.

HAMLET: Whose was it?

FIRST CLOWN: This same skull, sir, was Yorick’s skull, the king’s jester.

HAMLET: Let me see. (Takes the skull.) Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him. He had a defect that to a jester might be fatal. He wasn’t funny.

Act V, scene i.
The same churchyard.

LAERTES: Lay her i’ th’ earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring!

HAMLET: What, the fair Ophelia? She must have had Egyptian blood. Every time I tried to kiss her, she said, “Tut! Tut!”

Act V, scene ii.
A hall in the castle.

LAERTES: Hamlet, thou art slain;
No med’cine in the world can do thee good.
In thee there is not half an hour’s life.

HAMLET: Want to know the secret of longevity? Keep breathing.