HE WAS A MAN

PRIVATE FRANK HANKS

THE KING'S LIVERPOOL REGIMENT

4TH MAY 1917 AGE 20

BURIED: ETAPLES MILITARY CEMETERY, FRANCE


This simple but beautiful inscription is a quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Horatio says of Hamlet's father: "I saw him once; he was a goodly king." And Hamlet replies:
"He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again."
The implication of Hamlet's words being that he considers his father to have been the ideal example of a man, 'the sum and pattern of excellence'. And this, however modestly put, would have been the implication behind the inscription Mrs Hannah Hanks chose for her son.