Saturday Night Live Transcripts
Season 35: Episode 17
Jude Law’s Monologue
…..Jude Law
Announcer: Ladies and gentleman, Jude Law!
[audience cheers]Jude Law: Thank you! Thank you very much! It’s great to be here! Thank you. It’s great to be back on the stage! You know, last summer I was here, my musical guest was Ashlee Simpson. Hey, and do you know what? I think [sarcastically] she was great.
I’ve actually spent a lot of time in New York lately because I was playing Hamlet on Broadway. [audience cheers] Thank you. I spent the last year of my life performing the role. You know, every actor does Hamlet differently and, uh, since I’m back on stage, I figured I’d share my impression of what it was like for me to play. So, uh, it can be four and half hours long, so I”m going to try to be quick.
Um… we begin in Elsinor Castle. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Hamlet, a troubled yet extremely handsome prince, is coping with his father’s death. Suddenly, his father’s ghost appears and tells him to avenge his murder. So, Hamlet rages against his mother for marrying his uncle, the killer. “Frailty, thy name is woman,” he says, plus many other lines that are less famous and harder to memorize. Then, there’s a long part where one guy in a hat shouts at another guy in a hat, and he’s also…uh, it’s a little bit boring. Anyway, then, everyone in the audience is like “Okay, here it comes. Hamlet’s going to do the famous ‘to be or not to be’ speech.” And I’m nervous, you know, but then I think, well, they paid all this money and they dressed up nice, and I don’t want to get into trouble like Piven. [audience laughs] So, I say “to be or not to be: that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them. Someone’s phone goes off. [there’s a sound of a phone ringing] [in his American accent] Hello? Yeah, I’m in the theater. Eh, he’s okay. [switches back to English accent] To die, to sleep, then more blah blah blah blah. Then, Hamlet kills one of the guys in the hat, and by mistake, he’s sent to England. Now, this is my favorite part of the play because I get to leave the stage and go to my dressing room. Check my e-mail, maybe play on Twitter, read the New York Post. Oh, I’m in it. Then, the stage manager knocks on the door. Three minutes, two. I ask for a biscuit, he brings me a biscuit, I eat the biscuit. And then, I come back out on stage and Ophelia’s dead. I don’t know what happened there; I’ve never watched act four. Then what? Uh….there’s a skull. Alas, poor Yorick. Gertrude dies, uh, Laertes stabs me, I stab him, I stab Claudius, they die, I die, the rest is silence. Then, applause! I bow, there’s more applause! I take another bow, more applause! I put up my arms pretending like, you know, I’m sick of bowing, but that, of course, leads to more applause! So, I give my biggest bow of all and I get into a cab and I go back to my apartment, drink a bottle of wine, turn on the TV, watch MTV Teen Cribs, which is pretty fun actually. It’s like regular Cribs, but with teens…so anyway, that’s my Hamlet!
[audience cheers]We have a great show, Pearl Jam is here! So stick around, we’ll be back! [audience cheers]
Submitted by: Matt W.
