In a few weeks I will be in my beloved England. It gives me a little bit of relief to think of it. Whenever I return, I feel newly at home and it gives me a kind of peace. “Ah, this!” My system says. Something in me relaxes. It’s like I breathe more deeply somehow.
Author: erainbowd
I see a cherub that sees them.
I kind of love the idea that there are little angelic children hanging around the Danish Court, seeing into people’s ulterior motives and such. It might be an interesting production to have them actually visible – not just in THIS moment but at other moments when someone is delivering a lie. We’d call it the Cherubic Hamlet and it’s just chock full of little chunky children with wings, checking out the scene.
The other thought I had was; What if cherubs are freshly born angels? That is – are they the newly dead? When a person dies and they go to heaven, what if they came in as angel babies? In which case, that cherub would be Polonius who would very likely in fact know what Claudius’ actual purposes might be.
So is it, if thou knewest our purposes.
What IS he trying to say here? I mean…he’s trying to imply that the purposes underneath are in Hamlet’s interests and altruistic. But we know (and Hamlet probably knows too) that his purposes are in no way in Hamlet’s interest. So it’s funny to bring up the underlying motives – given how dark those motives actually are. But I guess this is a standard practice in lies…you try to deflect from the lie by stating the direct opposite of the lie…which has a funny way of pointing at the lie. It is tricky business being a villain.
Good.
News can be good. It is good to remember that sometimes surprises are good. One can get used to surprises that disappoint or upset but some of them, some of them are good.
Ay, Hamlet.
It is amazing how much this play runs through the culture. There are references to it all throughout literature, through film. It pops up everywhere. I’m reading Ulysses now – and hardly a page goes by without a reference to Hamlet. I can’t imagine what it would be like to read that novel without my Hamlet goggles on. Surely many people DO read it without Hamlet goggles on but because the lines are so familiar to me, I cannot miss how threaded through it all is. If I had a penny for every reference to Hamlet I caught, I’d have a pretty good piggy bank of pennies by the end.
Ulysses references many other things as well. The Odyssey, for example. Or Walt Whitman – but I don’t catch all of them. And with the Odyssey – because there’s a difference in languages of origin, there aren’t quite so many direct text references. There couldn’t be.
For England?
For England I have love, like love for a member of a family – deep and complicated. I understand that it is not perfect but I feel at home there.
I don’t have the life there that I do in NYC, where I live now. It can be lonely, it can alien – but I’d drop everything in a heartbeat – For England.
The bark is ready and the wind at help, Th’associates tend, and everything is bent For England.
I haven’t had a band in a while but if I were to start one I’d call them Th’associates. I mean. Wow. Who are th’associates? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? The sailors? It’s a very formal and weird way to say, “We’ve got some people to go with you.
Th’associates.”
I would NOT like to be The Associates. Partly because there has surely previously BEEN a band called The Associates and partly because it sounds CORPORATE in this day and age. But – Th’associates? So good. I mean. Not so good for people knowing how to say it – because I have seen many a person flummoxed by contractions like this. But…if we didn’t care…
Ladies and Gentlemen – Please Welcome to the Stage, Th’associates.
Therefore prepare thyself.
I don’t know why but 9 out of 10 of my anxiety dreams feature preparing myself to leave. In the dreams, I am trying to catch a train or a plane or a bus and somehow cannot gather my things into my suitcase fast enough. Sometimes I have to pack a whole apartment or room in a hurry and I know I will not make the plane or the train…but I cannot stop because I am not finished sorting my stuff. The drawers are all askew or there’s clothing everywhere or I’m trying to decide which book I can leave. But all all all in a hurry.
I had one of those dreams this morning, though it was a slightly different from than usual. I was on a bus…and somehow my things had come out of my bags and were under the floor mat, tucked into the seat…and still we were trying to make a train connection but my bag wouldn’t let me.
Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety, Which we do tender as we dearly grieve For that which thou hast done, must send thee hence With fiery quickness.
What a good show the king is putting on!
And for who? Some attendants? Hamlet himself?
The king tendering Hamlet’s safety is laughable and at this point both of them know it, I suspect. Maybe it’s a game…just play as nice as possible til you murder someone.
‘A will stay till you come.
I love the joking Hamlet. I do not understand the guys who play the super serious morose depressive romantic Hamlets. He has jokes! This one, for example, is a beautiful dark funny thing. It just begs to be played with a nice wry flavor. You could play it in a humorless way but why would you?
The Hamlet Project 