The doctor sits down across from his patient’s parents. He adjusts his tie, clicks his pen, clips and unclips the papers in his clipboard and gives his diagnosis. “Your noble son is mad.” He says. And the mother lets out a cry of despair. She had hoped for a reprieve – a case of temporary manic episodes or odd behavior due to exposure to cantaloupe. She does not want her son to be mad, no, not her only son. Her husband takes her hand and holds it. He tries to comfort her. He is actually grateful for this diagnosis. Perhaps, if they know what it is, there is something to be done about it. A diagnosis can be one step closer to cured. He would rather not pretend that nothing is wrong. He hopes to acknowledge what is wrong and figure out a way to deal with it. He imagines that they will have to learn to dance with madness, get to know it as they once knew their son.
Author: erainbowd
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.
So WIT is this person, right – a very clever person – and his soul is brevity. His essence is succinct pithy direct hits. At his best, his most true, he is brief. His arms and legs are tediousness – as are the outward flourishes – which raises some questions for me about this WIT person.
One: Are his outward flourishes his gestures? And are gestures tedious? What does a tedious flourish look like?
Two: His limbs are tedious? To whom? Is it tedious for him to have a body, to lift his legs to walk, or raise his arms to lift his child? Or tedious to watch him plod along or repeat that nervous tic?
Three: It sounds like this wit person might have some difficulties. What do those look like?
Or else, despite how good this language sounds, this sentence may not really make much sense.
It’s still funny though. It’s funny for a guy who’s already talked way too much to wax poetic about the value of brevity, before declaring, with too many words, that he will be brief.
My liege and madam, to expostulate What majesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night night, and time is time Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Some people love Shakespeare for the poetry, some for the tragedy, some for the comedy, some for the complicated human heroes, or the calculating villains. Me? I love the pedants. Just cannot get enough of the pedantry. This line is as full of genius as a “What a piece of work is a man” or an “All the world’s a stage” If not more so.
In addition to being a gorgeous demonstration of who Polonius is, the rhythm of it makes it poetry – albeit, very silly poetry – but poetry none the less – and Polonius seems quite pleased with himself for inventing it. He has no reason to bring up why day is day or night night or why time is time. No such question was on the table until he brought it up and dismissed it. He has created a poetic construction only to knock it back down. The language of this guy winding up to tell a story is extraordinary – as if anyone was going to expostulate what majesty should be in this moment. We’ve just sent the ambassadors off and Polonius has already told the King and Queen what the next item on the agenda is. There is no reason to say any of this. This bit is pure character and it is gloriously full of it.
This business is well ended.
If we are to trust the verse, Polonius chimes in with this as soon as the king has welcomed the ambassadors home. Polonius doesn’t give the king time to see the ambassadors out or wait for the king to turn to him and ask for his news. He gives his judgment on what has just come to pass. It could be read as a comment on the good news or as a compliment for the king’s handling of it. If it’s a compliment, it could be seen as slightly condescending to a king – a sort of “Good job, King!”
It is interesting that the king does not speak again for quite a few lines after this. I’m wondering how he takes this bit of commentary from Polonius.
Most welcome home!
We say that snails carry their homes with them but is this true? Do snails, or turtles, or all things with shells not have homes?
Is there no nest that the snail family returns to? No place where turtles gather to sleep or tell their stories?
Just because they can retreat into solitude, the kind no one can intrude upon doesn’t mean they don’t leave their shells, their selves, in the care of other turtles or snails or whatnot.
Somewhere someone greets them with “Most welcome home!”
At night we’ll feast together.
There was a time, last summer, in which I was at my friend’s gathering in the South of France. There were many of us there, spending the days in the sea, swimming, reading, chatting, having lunch on the patio, retiring to our rooms for naps before returning to the sea. . .then, at night, dining together.
It was only a few days but they were redemptive days, days that brought back hope and pleasure and joy. The feasts (which were not so called but they take on that quality in my memory) so filled with an air of conviviality. Never has dining with a dozen strangers felt so easy or so pleasurable.
When I read my journal from those days, I was almost there again, struck by the generosity of a man I barely knew offering me his apartment in Spain or the genuine interest of human beings in other human beings, floored by the surprise of never once being asked what I did or asked to demonstrate my worth or jockey for position.
Dining together, nay, feasting together, was extraordinary in its togetherness. Together there were people adept at conversation, in two languages, creating art out of mealtime.
Go to your rest.
There’s a finality to this wish – as if sending these guys off to their death. And if I’m not mistaken, this is the last we see of Voltemand and Cornelius, so they might as well be going off to their final retirement.
Or, if they were robot ambassadors, they exit and climb into their re-charging stations where their batteries are removed until future use. Or a cryogenic freezing chamber where they suspend the lives of ambassadors until they are needed again.
Voltemand and Cornelius go off to their rest and are not seen again. What if they went off to sleep and slept so hard and sound that they didn’t wake for days and when they woke up, they were Norwegian?
Is this what happens? All the Danish royalty dies before Fortinbras shows up. Who’s left to rule Denmark but the Norwegian guy? Voltemand and Cornelius stumble out of their days of sleep and rub their eyes, wondering where their diplomatic work went wrong.
Meantime we thank you for your well-took labor.
The king’s a better boss than most of mine. He handles the business expediently and thanks his employees for their work. I make a lot of organizations look good with the labor I do for them and the times that I have been honestly thanked for doing that are few and far between. There have been quite a few perfunctory thanks over the years but the authentic personal ones are in short supply. The king does not have to thank his employees here. He could just as easily give orders and dismiss them – but he thanks them anyway. I’d like that, too.
And at our more considered time we’ll read, Answer, and think upon this business.
I want a world with more considered time. Everything happens so fast. Before the event is over, there are millions of tweets and tumblrs and Facebook pages and comments comments comments. Some of it is wonderful. But. . . there must be value for the slow thought, too. The one that baked in the mind all night and all day. The one that weighed one thing against another and came to a conclusion. The one that rattled around the empty house for a while before resting on the sofa.
I want to write something called “Our Considered Time” and in it, I will advocate for the response that took a while, for the person who took a while to reach a conclusion, for the slow-baked meal.
It likes us well.
If I were the King of Denmark, I would not like this so well. Let a guy in, who, up until a few moments before, was poised to invade my kingdom? And not just let him IN to my kingdom – but let him in with weapons and soldiers and war preparation? I’m sorry, I don’t care who he needs to invade now, he’s not walking through my kingdom with that army. Not even if his feeble old uncle (who he managed to put one over on before) vouches for him and swears up and down that he’s harmless. I suppose I might, if I were itching to use all the war stuff I just got together to defend the place from this guy. Maybe letting him in leaves all sorts of openings for misunderstandings on both his and our sides. Maybe if I find that exciting, I let him in. Or maybe Claudius is just more trusting than I am.
The Hamlet Project 