What if this exchange were a vaudeville routine wherein Polonius is playing the straight man? As if Hamlet said, “My wife is so mean.” And Polonius said, “How mean is she?” which would lead Hamlet right to the punchline. Ba dum bum.

Because the answer to what treasure Jephthah had might seem obvious if you know the story and one would assume Polonius might know the story. Or perhaps he doesn’t – maybe Polonius is an expert in the ancients but not a religious man and Hamlet is a bit more Judeo-Christian?

Or Polonius could just be humoring Hamlet the way you do a child or a crazy person. But somehow I enjoy the idea of a little Polonius/Hamlet repartee.

Biblical references generally sail right past me. I’m lucky if I catch that it IS a biblical reference. But for those who grew up enmeshed in religion, a world of associations comes along with references like these.

My friend, raised in the Church of the Nazerene, is a walking Biblical reference book. Throw a name at him, or a verse, and he’ll shoot back the story. I quizzed him on Jephthah, because I thought it might be an obscure reference, you know, not Noah or Cain or Abraham or something since I’d never heard of. But either everyone knows Jephthah or he’s really good at Biblical references or both, because he brought it right out. Standard child sacrifice story except with no last minute reprieve and Jephthah has to kill his daughter because she’s the first thing he sees after promising God to sacrifice the first thing he sees. Boom.

The Judeo-Christian God can be a real shit sometimes.

There’s something so satisfying about knowing that not only does Polonius have favorite writers but we get to know who they are! And why he likes them! I’m not sure what the law of writ is but I assume it’s what Seneca was particularly good at illuminating because Plautus, as a comedy writer, just has to be the one gifted at the liberty. I like knowing what Polonius might have laughed at and what he took very seriously.

Because I take reading seriously, I often understand a person by what writers they love. Somehow a person’s favorite author makes him or her real to me. As if knowing that you love Thomas Pynchon (even though I think he’s a bit of a misogynist wanker) shines a light on you and the private corners of your brain.

That I love Neil Gaiman and Alice Hoffman and Jane Austen and Jeannette Winterson and Terry Pratchett and of course, my main squeeze, Shakespeare, says a lot about the private corners of mine.

So I like knowing a little bit about Polonius’ taste in writers because it helps to know him better. If I were to play him, I’d be reading a whole lot of Seneca and Plautus, you can count on it.

There is a curious Roman/Danish connection in this play. First, Hamlet brings up Roscius – a Roman actor. Now Polonius is selling these players on their Roman playwritten repertoire. When Hamlet has the player do a speech later, it is about the fall of Troy – one that would seem to take the Roman view on that event (i.e. not the Grecian victor’s). Polonius played Julius Caesar.

It’s as if there is a direct link from Ancient Rome to Elsinore, perhaps only as it relates to theatre. I can’t, off-hand, think of any other Roman references. (Perhaps I’ll discover them on the rest of the journey. In which case, watch below. . . )

Later, the players perform a Spanish tragedy rather than Roman repertoire as all these Rome references might lead us to believe.

Other plays reference Roman gods left and right, as part of the everyday world. Rosalind swears by Jupiter. Hermia swears by Cupid’s bow.

The ancient world slides through the comedies like shining Mercury and takes center stage in some histories but here Rome connects to Theatre and is otherwise a world away.

It’s funny that we don’t use Shakespeare’s own categories to classify his works. Why, for example, do we call a play like A Winter’s Tale a Romance when it might more descriptively called a pastoral? Or more accurately tragical-pastoral-comical? I think Cymbeline might be best represented by that last definition of tragical-comical-historical-pastoral (though not necessarily in that order).

If we used these classifications maybe we could stop talking about Cymbeline and Pericles as messes. (This is a giant pet peeve of mine. The program notes for one production were so full of “This Play is a Mess!” quotes that it made me want to throw something at the stage while shouting “If you guys think this play is such a mess, why the hell are you doing it?!”) Personally, I love a tragical-comical-historical-pastoral. I love not knowing what might happen next. I love when the tone switches from one category to the next. I love not being sure if I should laugh or cry.

My life is like that too. It is also a scene relatively indivisible and a poem unlimited (except, of course by the end).

Mostly when I see this played, the Polonius says this as if Hamlet’s buzzing were an affront. He says this as if he were a sweet old lady from the South with her hand pressed over her housecoat over her heart saying, “Well my word!”

But in wondering what would follow this, what line Polonius might be about to say where this dash is, it occurs to me that what lines likely about to say is what he does, in fact, say next, that is, he’s swearing upon his honor that the actors are come hither are the best actors in the world. That is – what if Polonius doesn’t pause for Hamlet to say either of his lines here and Hamlet just talks over him?

There is still, hidden away somewhere, a deep romance in me for acting and for actors. I may roll my eyes when I meet yet another actor and have to take a deep breath as yet another long story begins to boom out of yet another actorly mouth, but I can, at times, remember the romantic sense of the art.

Lines like this send a little flutter of it past me, like a butterfly riding a breeze. While the realities of touring are grueling and frustrating, they can also be sweet. It is a rush to be introduced in this way. It brings to mind the feeling of walking into a new theatre in a place you’ve never been and looking around, filling the place with your imagination, seeking out the surprising bits of architecture you might take advantage of, weighing the advantages and disadvantages of various angles on the stage.

It is more than the sweetness of an empty stage. It is an empty stage that you will shortly take ownership of, discovering it and the people who sit before it all at once.
It could almost make me get back on the road again.