From yesterday's New York Times, an article about the cats of the Algonquin Hotel:

Matilda is the latest in a long line of Algonquin cats going back to the 1930s. The first, a stray who wandered in off West 44th Street with as much elan as a famous guest, was known as Rusty or Hamlet. Since then, each cat has been succeeded by another with the same name, Hamlet for the males, Matilda for the females.

Some of the current Matilda's predecessors had real responsibilities. Consider what happened in the 1970s, when the playwright Mary Chase, who lived in Denver, checked in. At the time, her granddaughter was a student at Columbia University's School of General Studies. Ms. Chase, who was famous for the Broadway play Harvey, invited her granddaughter and her granddaughter's roommate to come by for tea.

They were deep in conversation when a mouse appeared in Ms. Chase's room.

She called room service and was told something like: "Just open the door. We'll send the cat right up on the elevator."

Moments later, the elevator doors parted. The cat padded out. It was one of the Hamlets. In Ms. Chase's room, he enjoyed his afternoon snack, and she and her guests went back to enjoying their tea.

And Melena Ryzek interviews Christopher Plummer:

Dying with a sense of joy or breakthrough is easier [to act], he added -- a trick he learned from a mentor, Michael Langham, an early director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, who advised him to play Hamlet with a sense of scholarly wonder. "So you put the words, 'Isn't it extraordinary?' in front of everything," Mr. Plummer said. Then even something brooding like, "the rest is silence" -- Hamlet's last words -- becomes a discovery.