The following memory of Charlie Chaplin performing Hamlet's soliloquy is recorded by Helen Hayes in her autobiography -- My Life in Three Acts.
"Chaplin mimicked an actor doing Hamlet's soliloquy. The actor suffering from a hangover absentmindedly picked his nose and was unable to remove from his finger what he had brought forth. Chaplin delivered the soliloquy as beautifully as I've ever heard it read, which made even more comical the actor's predicament."
** "Playing Shakespeare is so tiring. You never get to sit down unless you're a king."
Josephine Hull, quoted in Time (November16,1953)
**
SHAKESPEARE & CHRIST ?
"Shakespeare hit the nail on the head about every situation in life. And some of the most beautiful poetry comes from his terrible comedies. They're like German comedies. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, now don't say this because it'll sound sacrilegious, but Shakespeare was the reincarnation of Christ."
TALLULAH BANKHEAD, quoted in Tallulah,Darling by Denis Brian (New York: MacMillan Company, ** THE BEST WAY TO LEARN HOW TO SPEAK SHAKESPEARE
"I always said to students that if you really want to know how to speak Shakespeare, Sir John (Gielgud) and Frank Sinatra will teach you. Because one used to present the whole arc of a speech, and the other presented the whole arc of a song, without any intrusive extreme emphases."
Judi Dench. And Furthermore (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2010)
** WALTER MATTHAU AT AGE 7
" He became a voracious reader, and when he was young as seven years old he began reciting Shakespeare. He may not have comprehended what he was saying but was transfixed by the by the beauty and fluidity of the language and its contrast to the Lower East Side dreariness. Often, he recited out loud for hours at a stretch, in the privacy of the bathroom. 'There'd be one for four families,' he recalled, 'and I'd be in there until someone threw me out.'"
Rob Edelman and Audrey Kupferberg. Matthau: a Life (New York: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2002)
** ** From light-verse writer BRUCE NEWLING
Because I was so young when my father died, I have only fragmentary memories of him; and almost all I know of him was derived from accounts provided primarily by my mother but also by a few family members. Michael Kirke, a first cousin fully a generation older than 1, for example, told me that my father had a fine singing voice and therefore he was often cast as the clown in such Shakespeare plays as "Twelfth Night," singing, as called for, during the course of the play. My niece Sian (Welsh for Jane) has a framed photograph of my father dressed as the clown or fool in cap and bells, sitting cross-legged and holding a lyre.
Coincidentally, in 1947, as part of the quatercentenary celebrations of the founding of the school I attended, Queen Elizabeth's School in Crediton, Devon, a non-speaking part was created for me in a production of "Twelfth Night." I was cast as the page to Malvolio, the steward to Olivia. My costume in black was the same as that worn by Malvolio, and we each wore a ruff; I carried a staff, as he did; and my role required that I mimic every gesture of Malvolio, as if I were a living shadow of him, you might say. I had to strictly confine my attention to Malvolio—no side glances at the audience—and the whole effect was to point up the vanity and insecurity of my master, complementing the cruel practical jokes played on him by Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.
The play was performed on an openair stage backed with a tall yew hedge on the grounds of the girls' school next to mine. Malvolio was played by the town physician, Dr. Jackson, and it was he who proposed that Malvolio should have a page, having seen a London production of the play many years before in which Malvolio had not one page but six. Sir Toby Belch was played by the physics master Gordon Vasey, who produced all the school plays while I was there; and there might have been one teacher from the girls' high school in the cast. Otherwise, the roles were played by boys and girls from the two schools.
I have a photograph of the entire cast, 32 in number, standing side by side in a line across the entire width of the stage. I pose kneeling on one knee, with Malvolio standing behind me.
Orsino, duke of Illyria, was played by a senior boy named Peter Bagi, and his delivery of the lines with which the play opens remains with me still. "If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die." And very soon thereafter: "Enough, no more. 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before." Oh, my. \\
** SHAKESPEARE IN TOMBSTONE
The day of the movie-singing Cowboy has long passed. At 8 A.M. morning light, Like an ace-high straight. Is clear,bright,
But Tombstone is not as much fun As it used to be: Shot glasses smashed against mirrors, All that broken glass, gun-
Slinger after gunslinger coughing Out lungs Into what is left of their brains. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Wyatt Earp’s youngest brother, Plugged in his back, Has been discovered face-down In a driving rain. Another
Curtain lowered, his soliloquy Left unfinished, Crossing the bourn from which No traveler returns.
He was,Like his brother, A mess of personal problems. Wild Bill? Not a lot of heroes left.
Clementine loved Tombstone. Its desert flowers Smelled like shaving lotion. But her calicos are long gone.
Good guys galloping pell-mell Out of this place. Actors on a buckboard Play out a final scene:
PhillipsMiscellany 
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