My edition says “to attendants” for this line. Most productions I’ve seen or been a part of don’t really have enough actors for the king to just have extra attendants – so he will say it to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern but then you have a problem – because in just a few lines, he’s going to instruct someone to follow Hamlet. So if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern go look for the body, then you either have to have them come back or split them up – so Rosencrantz has to look for the body and Guildenstern has to follow Hamlet.
It all makes me wonder about the casts of Shakespeare’s shows. We have some sense of who was in them but the named players might not cover such roles as attendants and extras. The logistics of running a company in Shakespeare’s time are endlessly fascinating to me. I want to understand even the smallest roles and how they used them. I assume they’re apprentices. But then we have boys playing these attendant roles? That’s a little bit funny. In that case the king is followed around by a bunch of boys…which makes him slightly less powerful.
Author: erainbowd
But if indeed you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.
So where exactly has Hamlet stashed body? On a landing of the stairs? Seems an odd spot. Maybe in a nook by the stairs? Or a closet?
And I’m also interested in the architecture of this building. You go UP the stairs into the lobby? Why is there a lobby in this building? It is not a theatre or a hotel or an office building. Or is it? I find I need a lesson in the origins of lobbies. I think of a lobby as being a public open space that provides the introductory room to the rest of a building. The public aspect seeming to be the most significant part of that definition. And maybe this lobby is a public space.
And maybe it isn’t.
But it is definitely upstairs.
Which is unusual for most lobbies.
Lobby was, it turns out, previously a covered portico…like a loggia. And it evolved to be a monastic cloister. But again – we don’t have a mini monastery at Elsinore, I wouldn’t think. So this lobby upstairs is in this funny moment of evolution with this word. It would appear to be an architectural reference – and that is all. Not monastic. Not public. Just a covered open arena. I think.
If your messenger find him not there, seek him i’ th’ other place yourself.
Sick burn, Hamlet! Yeah!
This line always feels like such a perfect insult. It’s got the structure of a joke – all that set up …and then pow! A perfect way to tell someone to go to hell without specifically telling him to go to hell. It’s a perfect insult for a guarded world. And a slow burner. Like, the sort where you walk away thinking, “What did he….” Oh! “What?! That guy just told me to go to hell! Or at least implied that I would belong in hell in some way. Damn!”
I find it very satisfying for some reason.
Send thither to see.
It would be so cool if we could send a message to heaven. If we could be like…”Hey, so what’s up there? Who’s around?”
If there were someone we needed some thoughts from, we could send a messenger to ask. I’d have a lot of questions for Shakespeare, of course. But I’d also like some answers from Jane Austin and Mary Shelly. I’d like to get a message to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I’d also like to hear from Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin.
I’d have messages and questions for Charles Dickens and Remedios Varo. All of course, the recently deceased – the Princes and the Bowies and the Alan RIckmans. I suppose this is why we don’t have a messaging system with heaven as it might become just like email and all those dead people trying to take a rest would just be answering emails all day,
In heaven.
This FEELS like a classic middle school boy response, like, “What’s up?” “The Sky.”
But in fact, given the existential difficulty of the question, “in heaven” is a perfectly logical reply. Polonius is not, really, in his body anymore and in a culture that believes in heaven…he has clearly departed to go there. (One assumes. Although given all his manipulations and spying, it also MAY not be an accurate assumption.)
This suddenly makes me think of a sketch on W/Bob and David where a little kid has a near death experience and goes to heaven where he meets God. And when he’s on a talk show promoting his book about heaven, he lets slip that he saw Hitler in heaven and all kinds of other horrible people we would hope not to find there. His parents disavow him and it’s generally a big mess. But it does point out how complicated having some options about where one goes at death can be. Some believe in heaven but not hell. And who goes where if you do believe in hell can get quite complicated.
Where is Polonius?
Heaven?
Purgatory?
Hell?
He doesn’t get to confess his sins before he dies – so it’s a tricky one.
Where is Polonius?
He has already asked this question.
It did not yield the sort of result he was looking for.
I’m still not entirely clear why Claudius needs to know this. The only explanation I can come up with is that if Claudius has a body to point to, he’ll have a much easier time pointing to it to justify sending Hamlet away.
It is also possible, though for some reason not likely, that Claudius wants to see Polonius’ body because he was his colleague or friend or something and he just wants to bid him goodbye.
But it is funny, this game of hide and seek.
Hamlet has no reason to hide the body (he’s not trying to pretend he didn’t do it) and Claudius has no reason to find it in a hurry.
And play this game, they must.
Nothing but to show you how a king may go a Progress through the guts of a beggar.
This is an interesting sequence of lines in that this beggar reference seems quite a bit different than the one a few lines earlier.
Previously, the king and the beggar were side by side, two dead people on a table. Now, the king is consumed by a beggar – (presumably via the fish that ate of the worm that ate of the King). They started off as equals and then by the end of this idea, one has consumed the other. So it’s not even that the king is no better than a beggar…it’s that the beggar wins.
What dost thou mean by this?
Hmm. Thou. Informal. Hmmm.
And…maybe a little disingenuous. Claudius isn’t stupid. He’s probably fully aware of what Hamlet means by all of it. I just keep wondering who the show is for? Claudius isn’t being particularly direct. And he could be. It feels like he’s putting on a show.
But who is it for?
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and (eat) of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
Circle of life!
Insert gif of Lion King here.
Except.
One doesn’t REALLY fish with the worms that eat corpses, does one? I mean – aren’t worms more into vegetable matter? Or, like, dirt? Maggots, for sure, are into corpses. And surely there are many sorts of worms that eat dead bodies – but I’m thinking those aren’t the kind you want to put on a hook and stick in the water. I could be wrong, though. I’d need to do some major research on worms and decomposition and also fishing to be sure.
Alas, alas!
This is very odd. Very odd.
What IS Claudius responding to here? And which Claudius is this?
I mean – I’d expect Claudius to say something like, “Come on, Hamlet, stop messing around.”
But he doesn’t. He says, “Alas, alas!”
Which is really more like something Gertrude would say.
It feels like he might be putting on a show of grief. But who is the show for? Hamlet?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? He didn’t say, “Alas, alas!” to them.
It’s just such an oddly out of character thing to say.
The Hamlet Project 