This is something that is perfectly reasonable to do with a glass of wine. There is no reason to hurry to drink it. It’s not like ice cream. It’s not going to melt. And unless it’s like, champagne or a white that really needs chilling, which seems unlikely in Denmark in this period before refrigeration or iceboxes, it can only be made better by sitting for a bit. Claudius trying to insist on Hamlet having a drink in the middle of an athletic event could be seen as suspicious by anyone looking for it. I mean – we know why Claudius wants Hamlet to drink that wine and it IS suspicious. Wine is for spectators not athletes.
Author: erainbowd
I’ll play this bout first.
A bout is related to about which comes from the sense of a roundabout. The circularity is in all of them. A bout is also called a round. I think this is to do with it completing a circuit in each section.
About isn’t always round – sometimes if someone is, say, skipping about, they’re traveling all over the place, not necessarily a circle.
And when we ask what a story is about, we’re not necessarily thinking of a summary as a circle. There is a great deal more circularity under our language than I realized.
Give him the cup.
I’m not an athlete but I think most people engaged in sport wouldn’t be inclined to drink wine in the middle of it, not if they were trying to win.
There are lot of great places for wine drinking: parties, weddings, funerals, showers, watching shows, even watching sports – but I’ve never seen anyone stop in the middle of a fight or game or duel or race to take a sip of wine. Marathon runners will stop for some water or Gatorade but wine? Nope. It’s interesting that Claudius thinks this wine poisoning bit is going to work – because almost anyone would be likely to refuse it in the midst of a bout.
Here’s to thy health.
Claudius is using the familiar here. Is he attempting to perform some affection?
Or does he feel close to Hamlet now that his death is nigh?
Also – I feel like Claudius probably adds “in hell” to the end of this sentence in his mind.
Hamlet, this pearl is thine.
What was the prep on this pearl and how did it go down?
First – is it actually a pearl or just some poison pressed into a pearl shape?
Or is it actually a pearl – but the poison has been applied to it somehow – like it’s been dipped in some poison coating, like a strawberry dunked in chocolate but less tasty and more deadly. Is it maybe a hollowed out pearl? Like a jewel with a hole drilled into it and then filled with poison. Or a souvenir Claudius picked up somewhere – a little pill pearl – a pearl that opens and holds compounds of any sort – could be aspirin. Making it a little headache pearl, not a murder weapon.
And whatever the case, someone would have had to do the crafting – the dipping or filling of the pearl.
In all likelihood, this is not a task to trust to someone else – so whatever the method, Claudius probably did it himself.
And since he did some other poisoning before this play even began, he seems to have an affinity and a skill for this sort of thing.
It makes me think of the Queen in Cymbeline – practicing her poisoning skills on small animals.
This is probably what Claudius did for fun before he became king.
Stay; give me drink.
Are Laertes and Claudius in a little competition over who gets to kill Hamlet? Like, Laertes here is ready to get back to the fighting, which gets him closer to his kill. And Claudius will not let the moment pass without this drink. Both of them must have adrenaline coursing thorugh them – they must be pretty amped up. They’re both ready to kill him at any moment. I wonder if it’s a factor in Laertes losing these points to Hamlet – he’s so focused on the murder game. And Claudius, too, who is normally so smooth, somehow cannot find a way to prevent Gertrude from drinking the poison – which, apart from killing his wife, who he maybe loves, also will spoil his plans and reveal them, too.
If I were directing this show, I’d probably explore a scene before this fight where Laertes and Claudius get themselves psyched up for this. Playing adrenaline coursing through you is not really possible but it is a huge part of having a body and what you do.
Well, again.
Well is such a deliciously flexible word. Laertes could be meaning any number of things in using it. It could be a way to say all is well – the ancient Danish way to say, “It’s all good.” Or it could be a way to say “fine” – both the sarcastic and the sincere versions of that flexible word.
It could also express a kind of resignation – a sense of “whatever.” Or it could just be a placeholder – a non-response response to just get back to fighting.
A hit, a very palpable hit.
It’s funny that Osric describes the hit as palpable – with its sense of touch, its tactile sense. I don’t THINK the hit is judged with touch. It is almost always reckoned by the eye in this scene. Though suddenly, I am very interested in Osric investigating the hit with his hands. To see him palpate Laertes wheresoever Hamlet hit would be a) possibly hilarious b) homoerotic c) a bit of surreal staging.
It might be that the hit causes a tear in clothing so it could, in fact, be palpable in a literal sense – not just a figurative one.
Judgment.
There are some words that we spell differently in American English that don’t necessarily make a lot of sense. Some pop out in their difference. Color and colours. Labor and labour. And others that don’t involve just adding or subtracting a u. But they’re sort of obvious.
Judgment and judgement are a kind of sneaky example. I think I was already confused about how to spell this word when I started experiencing cross cultural spelling. However, I spelled it, whenever I spelled it, I’d trigger the spelling alarm.
Curiously, in reckoning with the truth of the two spellings, I finally figured it out. I think.
No.
Does he say no because he doesn’t feel it? Or he doesn’t want to believe it? Why would he deny something as tiny and clear cut as a point in a game? A game, by the way, that is rigged to get him what he wants.
But – there are many inferences one could make about his personality based on the reason for this no. It could simply be that he does not like to lose. There are people who could not bear to concede a single point in a single game. Maybe Laertes is built like that? Or he’s so hyped up on adrenaline he can’t feel physical contact. That would reveal something about how he relates to his body.
Or, he doesn’t mean to deny the point – he just really can’t believe Hamlet has enough skill to win it.
Or – it’s an attempt at humor.
Or or or or.
There are a lot of possibilities in a no.
The Hamlet Project 