Thursday, August 30, 2018

What Biden was paraphrasing

What Joe Biden was paraphrasing in his eulogy for John McCain:

’A was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.
That’s from Hamlet, I.2, Hamlet speaking of his father to Horatio. Biden’s paraphrase: “We shall not see his like again.”

[I don’t think there’s yet a transcript of the eulogy. Biden’s words about grief and mourning, reprised from 2012, are online and well worth reading.]

comments: 3

Chris said...

"We shall not see his like again" happens to be a verbatim quotation of a line from the lyrics of Peter Blegvad's song "Sven," although I think it fairly unlikely that Joe Biden is a Blegvad fan.

Michael Leddy said...

Biden did mention Shakespeare. Do you think Peter Blegvad is paraphrasing Shakespeare too?

Chris said...

I wouldn't put it past him, especially since one of his earlier albums was entitled The Naked Shakespeare.