I would like to have a bit of this song prepared for every time someone asks me what anything in Shakespeare means. I feel like, if I sang this every time I was asked for a meaning, if I sang this song that Ophelia’s about to sing, students would work out pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to tell them what anything means.
If I were an English teacher, I would absolutely do this. It’d be exactly the kind of crazy behavior that would make an English teacher memorable and beloved. (Not that that’s why I’d do it…I’m just saying these are the kinds of stories people always report when discussing previous beloved teachers.) I’d sing it and sing it every time someone asked me what it means and eventually some bright bulb would look it up and work out what I was doing and pass that information throughout the class and then eventually, they’d all be singing every time someone asked what it means.