Intro To Dance Of Death

[Mario88]

Well, today at school, we where covering Hamlet in my English Literature Class. At act I scene V, when Hamlet is trying to convince Horatio and Marcellus to not to say anything about Hamlet's intentions about killing his uncle, Hamlet says "there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophie".

As soon as I heard that line, my Maiden light bulb went on and I remembered that the same line was used on Dance of Death (the song) on Death on the Road. At first I was trying to make a connection between Hamlet and Dance of Death, but I couldn't relate them. My teacher then explained that quote. In his play, Shakespeare uses Hamlet as an ideal Renaissance man who looks for reason behind everything, and uses other characters such as Laertes as ideal medievel men who are quick to action and don't care much about reason. Anyhow, Marcellus and Horatio wanted a full explanation from Hamlet about his encounter with his father's ghost, which is when Hamlet says "there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophie". My teacher said that Hamlet was basically saying "there are many things in this Earth that you don't understand".

So I'm guessing that the reason the quote from Hamlet was used for Dance of Death is because people who look for reason behind everything would not be able to understand the story of an encounter with dead spirits and dancing with them.

Anyways, I just thought this was interesting and figured that I should share this with you guys.

 

[Raven]

I never realised the significance of the quote until one of my friends pointed out it was from Hamlet (it was MSN message for a while), and I explained I had got it from a Maiden song (she was quite surprised-too many people stereotype Maiden as noise today!. On the other hand, I thought that it was just a quote that the band (or whoever among them chose it) deemed applicable, due to the supernatural nature of the song. After all, is there any concrete connection between 'The Evil That Men Do' and the quote from Julius Caesar used on the BNW tour? I know the line was used just to convey the idea that ummm...something about some sort of bad thing that certain people do lives on (or something like that :: ), but there is no real connection to the play, so maybe the quote was used just because they thought it was a good intro to DoD. After all, what does 'Arthur's Farewell' have to do with the Wicker Man? Or the intro from DotR and Wildest Dreams? Sometimes, we may see meanings in what the band members do where there are none. For example, just say every verse in NotB was composed of 666 letters, as an amazing coincidence. People would automatically assume that that was a purposeful selection in order to subtly stress the number, whereas maybe the totals of letters may have just equalled that number? Bad example, I know, but I think this is one of those times where we read too much into the band's choices. That's my opinion.