This line begs further analysis and/or investigation. The only time I can imagine saying “I am ill at these numbers” would be in relationship to a set of figures that have recently been revealed. Like, if I’d just lost a fortune in the stock market and my financial advisor just showed me the details. Those numbers might make me ill. Or, more like MY life, if I just saw the negative balance in my bank account next to the number of my student loan payment. I have been ill at those numbers. But somehow I don’t think that’s love poem material. Stars, sun, truth, love, financial report?
Nope. Numbers must be pointing at something else. Illness being a perfectly normal response to love, it must be the numbers that are something other than numbers.
It’s not like Hamlet is confessing an odd quirk wherein the mention of #7 makes him nauseous. Plus, no numbers follow “These numbers.” It doesn’t read: I am ill at these numbers: 7, 23 and 15. But what these numbers are is a total mystery to me. I make a little stretch to the numbers of feet in a verse and wonder if he’s saying, “O Ophelia, I’m a lousy poet.” Because that would make sense. Particularly because he kind of IS a lousy poet if this love letter is any indication.
He’s kind of the best poet ever in his everyday speech, though, so there’s that.
Author: erainbowd
But never doubt I love.
There is a rather convenient absence of an object in this sentence. We can assume that everyone loves. Even if it’s only the taste of cherries warmed by the sun.
I love. You love. Even the cruelest of dictators loves. The thing that a man’s lover wants to be assured of though, is that OBJECT part – that he loves HER.
The question is not that he loves but if she stands in the sights of that loving. He may love his mother. He may love his dagger. He may love Erasmus. He may love telescopes. He may love his dog. He loves. There is no doubt of that. But who? But what?
Doubt truth to be a liar.
There’s that old riddle about the two brothers at a crossroads, the one in which one always lies and the other always tells the truth but you don’t know which; you can only ask one question to figure out which way you should go. If you don’t know this riddle and want to work it out on your own, read no further and do that. If you’ve heard this riddle as many times as I have, you may recall that the solution is (SPOILER ALERT) to ask what his brother would say. In lying, the lying brother will reveal the truth and the truth teller will illuminate his brother’s lie.
The trouble with this thought experiment is how absolute it is. There was never yet a human who was so reliable a liar that you could tell the truth by his lies – nor was there ever a truth-teller so rock solid that you couldn’t find some reason to doubt him. Even the most die-hard radical honesty advocate might slip off the rock of truth, if only by accident. But apart from that, a person you could set your Truth Watch by, ceases to be human somehow – you certainly wouldn’t want to chat with him at a party. Maybe this riddle would work better with robots.
Doubt that the sun doth move.
Doubt that the sun doth move.
Don’t tell anyone but I’m a little bit of a glosser. I can easily gloss right over lines like this. I’m a big batch organizer, I guess. As in, I read a couple of lines in what is meant to be a love poem, put them in the box marked “love poetry” and dismiss them with, “Yeah, yeah, standard poem, Next!”
I have been known to do this when reading novels, as well, especially with descriptions, nature particularly. Give me a detailed description of the wheat bending in the wind across the plains and I batch it up with – Nature. Wheat. Wind. Next!
Which is partly why I’m doing this project because it is with this discipline that I catch my short-cuts. Thinking about the science of doubting the stars and the sun raises a whole host of questions about what in the heck Hamlet is up to in this poem, if in fact, he wrote in it the first place. It does not read: Doubt the existence of stars. Doubt the existence of the sun. Doubt the existence of truth. This is the sort of standard batching way I read it. Yeah, yeah. Stars. Sun. Truth. Love. It points at all of those things in a world where all of those things are newly questionable. Including Hamlet’s love.
Doubt thou the stars are fire.
This is actually good scientific advice; Doubt of accepted norms being one of the things that really moves science along. And if I’m not mistaken, we know now that stars are not, in fact, fire, so it’s a pretty good bet to doubt in this case. It is curiously fascinating to think about what was undoubtable for Shakespeare. Stars were fire. That’s it. There was no way to know that this was so, it simply was. Was fire the accepted fact of the moment? What did the Renaissance scientists think?
The evolution of the telescope taught us a great deal about the celestial bodies and their materials but I’m thinking, if I remember my science history correctly, that it was about 100 years after this that we got a really good look at the sky.
I will point out that the next line is, “Doubt that the sun doth move, “which is another thing that one really really should doubt – and makes me wonder at what point the news from Galileo made it over to England. (Fun fact: Galileo and Shakespeare were born the same year!)
It feels like there are few possibilities here:
1) Shakespeare knew of the developments in astronomy and was giving Hamlet some scientifically interesting things to say or
2) The scientific news had not yet hit and Hamlet is here asserting things he holds to be true – as in Doubt that the table is wooden. Doubt that we breathe air – which poetically is much more effective than telling someone to doubt things that are already in doubt
3) Shakespeare is giving Denmark a more medieval worldview than his Renaissance England where the sun still revolves around the earth and the stars burn with fire in the darkness.
Science scholars and Renaissance lit scholars unite! What is likely going on here?!
I will be faithful.
If I said, “ I will be faithful” I think the automatic assumption would be that I was talking about being faithful to a romantic partner. Despite faith’s importance to religion, even religious folks are rarely heard to declare, “I will be faithful.”
In our current climate, we would seem to be the most concerned with being faithful to each other. This is the essence of a promise between lovers. But when else might we hear this phrase now? A writer adapting the novel for the screen, perhaps, or a theatre director known for his avant garde interpretations letting us know that he won’t be messing this particular dramatic text around. It is in art and in love that we are worried about faithfulness, I suppose. In religion, you just have faith – in love and in art, you are faithful.
Good madam, stay awhile.
I’m trying to find a way to interpret this line a way that isn’t condescending. From every angle I look at it, it has a patronizing hue. From one side, it has a Calm-down-little-lady-stick-around-for-the-end-of-the-story quality.
From another side: “Now, now. Don’t go anywhere.”
Or a “You’ll get your answer in a minute.”
Or – and this is one I’ve said – “Just watch the movie.”
A woman, who I loathed but was obligated to spend a lot of time with, couldn’t watch a film or a play without asking a multitude of inane questions. “Who’s that?” “Why’s he stabbing him?” “Why is she crying?” “Why does he have a skull?”
She was particularly aggravated by the mysteries of plot. When an unidentified stranger appeared on the scene, she asked, “Who’s that?” and expected an answer. She was never happy getting the answer from the story. You could say, “We don’t know yet. He’s a stranger.” But it didn’t help. So in order not to miss any of the plot yourself, you’d pretty much have to say, “Just watch the movie. We’ll find out.”
Came this from Hamlet to her?
The Queen doesn’t seem to have much patience for Polonius’ speechifying. Clearly Polonius wants to perform this love letter, to present his case, to make his point in his own time and the Queen just wants him to cut to the chase. Polonius must explain it. Slowly. Perform the authoritative speech.
There are Poloniuses everywhere.
In her excellent white bosom, these, et cetera.
Et cetera!?! Now is this what Polonius actually says, or is this, perhaps an opportunity for a lazzo? It could easily just be the line. It’s logical for Polonius to skip through some of Hamlet’s letter to get to the juicy stuff – but there are a couple of other possibilities raised by this et cetera, as far as I’m concerned.
1) Depending on where it fell on the page (and I haven’t seen this page on either the folio or the Quarto recently) it could be as simple as the printers running out of space.
2) The printer/actors use et cetera as a placeholder while they try to remember the actual text.
3) Et cetera becomes a cue for Polonius to improvise. Polonius being essentially a Pantalone, could easily slip into the lazzo of reading a love letter. He could escalate the praise of his daughter until Gertrude stops him in the next line.
The improviser and comedian in me likes this last idea best – because I can imagine it bringing some exciting energy into the scene. The writer in me assumes Shakespeare meant exactly what he wrote. But because Shakespeare was also an actor, perhaps both parts lived side by side in him.
Thus:
Polonius is about to read a letter. His “thus” an intro to text. Thus can also lead to text of the body. His head moved thusly. Thus he took the letter from the hands of his lover. Thus did the main character write to his lady love. Thus did he appear to go mad. Thus did he send his former friends to their death via a letter. Thus did he die. Thus did Horatio live to tell his story. Thus did Shakespeare write it all down. Thus did I write a whole lot of shite in response to it.
The Hamlet Project 