Shakespeare References in My Lucky Stars

Shirley MacLaine's My Lucky Stars: A Hollywood Memoir contains a few Shakespeare references. The first two are to the same line from The First Part Of King Henry The Fourth, Falstaff's "The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life." MacLaine writes, "The better part of valor would be to have no opinion rather than risk disagreement, because disagreement meant time, and time was money, and it was therefore all so wearisome" (pages 10-11). And then she writes, "So the better part of valor for both is just to jump in and hope for the best" (pages 118-119). The book also mentions Kiss Me Kate, an adaptation of The Taming Of The Shrew: "But I remembered that Fosse had danced in a vignette with Carol Haney in Kiss Me Kate" (p. 157). MacLaine also mentions the sonnets: "Sometimes he would drink too much as he recited by heart sonnets of Shakespeare" (p. 295). And there is a reference to Hamlet: "There is an invisible harmony underlying my life and there always has been, as I believe there is in all lives. Our task is to sense it and be true to it. 'There is a divinity that shapes our ends - rough hew them how we will,' said Hamlet" (p. 367). Hamlet speaks those lines to Horatio in Act V Scene ii.

My Lucky Stars: A Hollywood Memoir was published in 1995. The paperback edition was published in December 1996.