I just found this apt quote from the Jefferson lecture given by Helen Vendler:
Hamlet is a very specific figure--a Danish prince who has been to school in Germany--but when Prufrock says, "I am not Prince Hamlet," he is in a way testifying to the fact that Hamlet means something to every one who knows about the play.
Here's a quite different poem by Dennis Greene:
Who’s There
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTThe play’s the thing.
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It starts with one – one life, one seat, one stage,
one man alone on stage in darkest Elsinore.BANNED POSTHe has
his face, a way to be, his name, his place in history
assured simply by being there; his ups and downs, his
family tree, he has his own fair share of family squabbles;
a common man, he plays his Hamlet on the streets,
against the backdrop of the playwright’s preferences:BANNED POST
he knows his place and for a moment there before
the others come he is the sum and total of humanity.
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‘Enter to him Bernardo’. Now they are two. Two men
who, each in his own way will put the question,
and want to know who’s there. We answer them
with silence. And so it starts with misdirection,
and men are born, grow old and die, each drawn to life
to be a passing moment, light’s movement in the eye,
each with a dream they’ve whispered in a father’s ear;
two Hamlets while the third waits in the wings,
and in the process makes of us an audience.
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So we begin. We have our role in this. To cough, to stir,
to make our presence felt, to be the whole completed
spectrum of the universe; to be the one, the now, the I,
the many-headed hydra of his mind: his father’s death,
his uncle’s smile, his mother’s slide from tears to bed
to where the power fills the barrel of her womb, his uncle’s
theft of what is his— to be a thing too small, too soon
to stir his consciousness; and so he vacillates and waits
and plays his Hamlet in dark corners of the room.
Until we come most carefully upon the hour, and call him home.
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[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited February 09, 2005).]
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