From: Craig Christensen <2644@mn3.lawson.lawson.com>
Subject: (urth) Suzanne Delange
Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 12:42:00 

Peter,
>The Hamlet, at least, is easy:
>
>"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
>    Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
>
>(Taken from the first copy of the text that came to hand, at
><http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/teaching/052/projects/project03/hamlet.t  
xt>).
>It's a very well-known quote (no offense!), hence "Hamlet's hackneyed   
precept".

None taken.  Yes, it is a very well-known quote, even to me.  But, aren't   
there many familiar quotes from Hamlet? I haven't read the play for a   
couple of years and didn't make the effort to check it myself.  I guess   
because I was so taken with the notion that forgetting was central to the   
story, I was trying to recall a quote about memory.  Just for fun I   
searched hamlet.txt for "memory" and came upon this quote,

    Remember thee?
    Yea, from the table of my memory
    I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
    All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past...

There were other hits on "memory", but not quotes by Hamlet.  It is taken   
out of context, and I don't know if it is familiar enough to be   
"hackneyed".  Kind of interesting though, huh?  I should search for   
"forget", too.

>I wondered about the quilts too. Misdirection? Some very subtle clue?
>They connect with the late eighteenth century, but I don't know what
>to make of that, if anything.

This was exactly what I was thinking.  I sometimes think Wolfe is like a   
stage magician, drawing your eye away from the truth in a scene with   
interesting, but less essential action and dialogue.

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/