This is the story of Hamlet,
William Shakespeare's most notable play,
a magnificent,
dignified work of art.
But for you,
Tom,
I guess I ought to tell it this way.
But this time, it's gonna be a little different.
Hamlet was a prince of a spot called Denmark.
They called it Elsinore.
You never saw such a frantic man either before or since.
A great Dane.
He was a dream boy.
And like a hole in the head,
Denmark needed this prince.
We've been stuck with him since.
But then,
one night,
when the castle was dark and spooky,
there was a kooky commotion.
A ghost.
It was his father, dear.
His old pat.
It was his daddy.
He said, son, you're a sap.
You're getting it in the rear.
What's a boy to do?
So he bumped off his uncle and he Mickey-binned his mother
and he drove his girl to suicide and stabbed her big brother.
Because he didn't want nobody else but his belch-a-live.
Don't know what you live.
He was what you might call uncooperative.
Uncooperative.
Now, Hamlet had a lady friend named Ophelia.
And Miss Ophelia,
she was a cool put-together mouse that made men thrill.
But Hamlet, he thought, she was from Uglyville.
She was a real bow-wow.
So he chopped down her father just to teach the girl a lesson.
Yes,
he cut him up in slices like a pound of delicatessen.
Because murder was one thing Hamlet sure did enjoy.
Sure did enjoy.
He was,
how shall I say,
quite the mischievous boy.
Quite the mischievous boy.
Quite the mischievous boy.
Hamlet!
He's the lad who had a mob fixation.
Hamlet! He's the cat who wants to lead the nation.
Hamlet!
He is such a rude thing.
You gotta watch his temper when he's in his mood swing.
Poor Ophelia,
overcome with such grief and sorrow.
She went and flipped a lid.
She popped a cork.
She jumped the track.
Her analyst told her that her intelligent
mind developed a permanent crack.
Things went black.
Ophelia had a six and a half foot brother.
It was the fair-haired Laertes.
He thought that Hamlet had been a trifle too impolite.
You've got to treat a girl right.
So it was in the third act he challenged him to a fight.
What a night!
So
it was dog eat, dog eat, dog in Denmark.
Yes, it was dog eat, dog eat, dog in Denmark.
Until the king and the queen arrived on the scene.
It still might have been okay.
But when he started to chop,
he just couldn't stop.
He kind of got swept away.
To kill or not to kill.
Hamlet was quite the pill.
It gave him such a thrill.
But who's left to read the will?
The name of this omelet.
The name of this omelet.
You can call him Hamlet.
He's not worth a damn bit.
The serial killer Hamlet.
Thank you.
Oh,
don't you just know Frank Lesser is
rolling around in his grave right now.
Now
I know that I look like a sophisticated young
woman of the world up here before you tonight.
But to the truth be known,
I do come from a small east Texas town known as Livingston.
A hell hole not to be believed.
Livingston is the kind of town where
they think that Ruda Lee is a big,
big star.
Need I say more?
Ruda, are you here?
Hi, honey.
She uses my name for the same joke.
So anyway,
I come from this whole southern gothic family
situation from which I call many of my stories.
For example,
my grandfather's spinster sister was named Ethel.
But everybody in the family
called her Aunt Bubble.
Now when I was a kid,
I thought that was really neat,
but I didn't
have any idea why.
So I asked my granddaddy.
And he said, because she walks around in a
bubble.
And I'm like, you mean like Glinda the Good?
It's because
she never allows anything
to touch her.
And I was just a kid and I didn't get that.
But as I get older, I find myself
thinking about that all the time.
And I wonder what it must have been like to live her entire
life in a bubble.
And I think we all know somebody like that.