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Let me give another example of credulity. The following paragraph appeared this week in a New York Post review by Adam Buckman of the season premiere of “Heroes.”
This show, which was once so thrilling and fun, has become full of itself, its characters spouting crazy nonsense. Here’s one I wish someone would translate for me: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends—rough hew them how we will,” spouts the enigmatic industrialist Linderman played by Malcolm McDowell, who should win an Emmy for keeping a straight face while reciting these lines.Perhaps McDowell kept a straight face because he knew he was quoting one of the most famous speeches in Hamlet. I don’t expect everyone to have read Hamlet, but I would hope a New York critic might have run across it once or twice. Still, we all have our blind spots. After I once quoted Dr. Johnson, I had an editor who asked me who the doctor was, and whether he practiced at a Chicago hospital. So let’s assume Buckman knew Hamlet by heart, but had forgotten that one sentence.
