The Trip to Italy: A deceptively genius road-trip romp

Aug 17, 2014 821

by Andrew O'Hehir

When British comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon find themselves in the catacombs of the Fontanelle Cemetery in Naples, an ancient underground ossuary visited by Ingrid Bergman in the Rossellini film "Journey to Italy," they can't help trivializing the whole experience. "This place reminds me of one of your shows," Coogan says to Brydon, gazing around at the piles of skulls and human bones. "It's full.

I'll give you that." A few minutes later, Coogan calls an abrupt halt to the banter and one-upmanship to deliver an impromptu reading of Hamlet's famous graveyard speech to the skull of a jester he once knew: "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! ... Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?"

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Source: http://www.salon.com/

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