Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars’ shadows.
– William Shakespeare
Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Hamlet is talking with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are trying to get Hamlet to talk about ambition. Hamlet says that only the beggars are real, and heroes and monarchs figments of the beggars’ imaginations. He suggests status is merely illusion and "shadows." Here he questions the fitness of Claudius to rule as King.