The Dick Van Dyke Show Provides a Quote that Hamlet Never Said

“Will You Two Be My Wife?” By Carl Reiner. Perf. Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Rose Marie, and Morey Amsterdam. Dir. John Rich. The Dick Van Dyke Show. Season 2, episode 17. CBS. 16 January 1963. DVD. Allied Vaughn, 2023.

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Yes, it seems like I'm becoming a completist when it comes to Shakespeare in The Dick Van Dyke Show, but I promise that I'm including only those references to Shakespeare about which I have something to say. You'll notice I didn't mention the time Buddy said, "Well, that concludes our little series of Shakespearean plays" in "The Sleeping Brother" (Season 1, episode 27). But when the Shakespeare is a bit less incidental than that, I say, "Bring it on."

Allow me to set the stage for this moment. Sally and Buddy, Rob's fellow writers, have discovered what appears to be a memoir relating how Rob and Laura got engaged and went on a honeymoon. Rob, serving in the Army at the time, has only one three-day pass, and he needs to decide whether he should use it to take a honeymoon with Laura or to go back to his hometown to break it to a woman with whom he has if not an engagement at least an understanding.

It's an opportunity for the show to give us a flashback episode. This clip takes us from reading the memoir back to the events the memoir presents:

Rob Petrie's narration is intriguing:

And, as Hamlet once said, "Hark! Here comes Dorothy, and I wish I was dead."

It's not the words Hamlet is purported to have said that's interesting; it's the easy introduction to the quote that fascinates. It flows so trippingly off the tongue that it seems like a cliché—the kind of thing people are saying all the time, whether seriously or in fun. It's a filler phrase—a marker of a transition into other matters. Shakespeare is so pervasive in the culture that one of his characters can easily, unquestioningly serve this function. Indeed, I could see that becoming a running gag.

Let's see where we go next.

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A Bit of the Balcony Scene in The Dick Van Dyke Show

“The Foul Weather Girl.” By Carl Reiner. Perf. Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, and Joan O'Brien. Dir. John Rich. The Dick Van Dyke Show. Season 2, episode 16. CBS. 9 January 1963. DVD. Allied Vaughn, 2023.

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In our journey through The Dick Van Dyke Show, we now come to a brief exchange drawn directly from Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene ii: The Balcony Scene.

An old high school friend of Rob's has come to the Petrie household to see if Rob will help her make it in entertainment in New York City.

Rob's a nice guy, so he agrees to arrange an audition for her on the show he helps write—The Alan Brady Show.

As she starts leaving, she and Rob reminisce about having played the eponymous roles in Romeo and Juliet in high school. That brings on the quote:

Unfortunately, it also brings on the jealousy. Did no one teach these people back in high school that jealousy is the green-eyed monster that doth mock the meat it feeds on?

The Shakespeare in this episode is more incidental than deeply integrated. Indeed, I'm more interested in the meta-theatrical moment where Rob says that Laura is behaving just like "one of those wives in a situation comedy." That's a very Shakespearean thing to do, quote or no quote.

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Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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Mixed Shakespeare in The Dick Van Dyke Show

“Somebody Has to Play Cleopatra.” By Frank Tarloff. Perf. Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. Dir. John Rich. The Dick Van Dyke Show. Season 2, episode 14. CBS. 26 December 1962. DVD. Allied Vaughn, 2023.

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It's looks like we've started a "Shakespeare in the Dick Van Dyke show" category here on Bardfilm, so let's keep going with it.

The episode "Somebody Has to Play Cleopatra" alludes to (but fails to quote directly from) Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet.

The plot involves an amateur variety show that is being put on as a fundraiser for the PTA. Most of the episode is a flashback to the previous year's production and Rob Petrie's anxiety that he'll be chosen to direct the upcoming show—and how difficult it was for him to direct last year's.

During rehearsals, we are presented with Laura Petrie's big number: A mock-calypso (calypso appropriation?) number written by Moray Amsterdam and titled "True, Mon, True." 

First, we have to acknowledge the phony Caribbean accent. It's not fair to dismiss it as insignificant or harmless, but my own inclination is to see it as a misguided homage to Harry Belafonte. With that in the foreground, we can take a look at the lyrics. This is my attempt (it doesn't seem to have made its way into any of the large internet-based lyric collections): 

"True, Mon, True"

Cleopatra was gal so beautiful,
And she had certain spark.
All famous men she swayed
When love's game she played.
Beauty never paid,
So Cleo made her Mark . . . Antony! 

Everybody! 

True, mon, true—that is the actual fact.
True, mon, true—that is the actual fact.

Romeo and Juliet, when they say, "Let's wed," 
They choose balcony scene.
Today, same thing you see
In the balcony
Of each movie show,
Guess you know what I mean. . . . Ask any usher!

In my suburbia housewife-urbia,
I’m busy as a bee's:
I drive the kids to school,
Dig a swimming pool,
Work just like a fool.
Husband—what a help he's!
He play the golf. . . . And I’m teed off!

Note: There's no need to [sic] "bee's" and "he's" in that last verse. They are semi-awkward contractions, not attempted possessives or mis-apostrophized plurals. 

Before we get to the commentary on the song, I'll relay an additional verse presented by this Facebook page:

Now you've all heard of the Lady Godiva
And horseback ride that she took.
Although she wore no clothes
From her head to toes,
Through the streets she goes,
And no man took a look . . . at her horse!

The song gives us its unique take on two famous pairs of lovers in Shakespeare in the first two verses. The first cleverly subverts our expectations about what appears to be the common noun "mark"—and then turns out to be the proper noun "Mark"—the first part of Mark Antony's name. The second is (perhaps) a bit racier, playing on the supposition that teenagers on dates in the 1960s also use balconies to declare their love for each other—but with the implication that that's where the make-out sessions are happening. The first is there because it connects to the main story; the second is just a bonus.

The main section of the plot has to do with rehearsing a mocked-up scene from Antony and Cleopatra. As far as I can tell, it doesn't correspond with any specific scene in Shakespeare's play—and it certainly doesn't quote from the play:

All of that was in flashback. When we return to the present-day question of Rob's determination to refuse the role of director for the current PTA fundraiser. And that's where we get one more Shakespeare reference:

That woman is clever. The thought of a first-time author and composer attempting a musical version of Hamlet with an entirely amateur cast does make the skeptical eyebrow raise, doesn't it?

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Links: The Episode at IMDB.

Click below to purchase the entire run of the show from amazon.com
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The Long-Awaited Direct (More or Less) Quotation from Shakespeare in The Dick Van Dyke Show

“What's in a Middle Name?” By Carl Reiner. Perf. Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, and Rose Marie. Dir. John Rich. The Dick Van Dyke Show. Season 2, episode 7. CBS. 7 November 1962. DVD. Allied Vaughn, 2023.

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Since I started paying serious attention to The Dick Van Dyke Show, I've found mention of a grade school production of Hamlet, a general Shakespeare joke, and a summary of Romeo and Juliet. And I predicted that it wouldn't be long before the show provided an actual Shakespeare quote.

In this episode, Laura Petrie (Mary Tylor Moore's character) has recently learned that she's pregnant. Sally Rogers (Rose Marie's character) suspects something and has to engage in desultory conversation because Laura is not being forthcoming.

That's where the Shakespeare comes in:

We start off strong with a genuine Shakespeare quote—but it deteriorates (or elevates, depending on your point of view) into a joke.

And that's it. Well, except that the title of the episode also quotes / alludes to Shakespeare.

[Note: As I write this, I've already watched further forward in the series, and there's more—and more substantial—Shakespeare to come.]

But I found something else interesting in the episode—something that may provide some understanding of Shakespeare.

Here's how Laura announces her pregnancy to Rob:

I didn't grow up in the 1960s, but I thought I was pretty culturally literate about many things in the era. After all, I know who Billy Sol was! Note: That's thanks to my early obsession with Allan Sherman—go try his song "Shticks Of One And Half A Dozen Of The Other" to learn more. But I had never run across the expression "The rabbit died" to mean "I'm pregnant."

The expression comes from a kind of pregnancy test of the time. You can read about The Rabbit Test here.

To someone who had never heard that before, it seems like a very bizarre way to tell someone about a new baby on the way. There's a very deep paradox at work there—usually, no one is happy that a rabbit died (with the exception of rabbit hunters, people who are hungry for Lapin à la Moutarde, and Elmer Fudd). But Rob Petrie's reaction to the news that the rabbit died is to jump for joy. 

And that's where the Shakespearean understanding might come in. To people in the 1960s, "the rabbit died" was a perfectly normal and perfectly comprehensible expression. To me, it seems utterly strange. Likewise, there are many expressions in Shakespeare that made perfect sense to him and his contemporaries but that give readers pause. This speech of Beatrice's could serve as a case in point: "I will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-ward, and lead his apes into hell."

The conclusion is this: As with The Dick Van Dyke Show, so with Shakespeare. It's not incomprensible; it make perfect sense to its contemporaries. We just need to do a little bit of work to understand some expressions that have fallen out of use. And, honestly, those are fewer and farther between than you might expect!

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Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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Book Note: Boy

Galland, Nicole. Boy. William Morrow, 2025.

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It took me a long time to make it through this historical novel—even though it's set in Shakespeare’s day. If it draws the reader in, it only does so in fits and starts—not quickly or consistently.

But it's admittedly a good novel. The history is sound, the characters are interesting, and the writing is good. I (eventually) enjoyed making my way through the plot, though I did not like the romance elements (read “Harlequin Romance” there) very much. They seemed out of place—only there to give the novel some spice or to attempt to bring two genres together.

The historical setting, more specifically, is around the time of the Essex Rebellion and that famous staging of Richard II. The politics there are fairly interesting, and it's also interesting that we see them through the eyes of a player (Sander) and his precocious lover (Joan), who has disguised herself as a man (is that Shakespearean enough?) frequently throughout the novel to receive tutelage from Sir Francis Bacon.

Let me give you a sample from late in the novel. Here, Sander, who has been playing the women's roles for Shakespeare's company, seizes on an opportunity to move up in the company (since he's getting too old to play the women's roles convincingly). It is he who has been chosen to play Richard II in that infamous production:

I'm not sure it will make its way onto the syllabus of a future Modern Shakespearean Fiction course, but it tells an interesting story in an interesting way. 

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