I do not really understand this line.
I don’t think he’s speaking directly of Claudius and Gertude here –
I think he’s speaking generally of virtue and lewdness (which is, of course, how he sees Gertrude and Claudius respectively) but what I do not understand
Is what exactly lust is up to.
Is it that it hangs out with radiant angels?
Lust sleeps in the celestial bed with a radiant angel – is lust having sex with the angel?
It is sating itself by preying on garbage?
Is lust bringing trashy whores home to the angel’s celestial bed?
Is lust banging a hooker from the corner next to the angel, trying to sleep?
Lewdness is in a shape of heaven – does it fool virtue with its disguise?
Or does lust drag a bag filled with food scraps and packaging
And old wet newspapers and make a feast over the supine radiant angel?
It’s lust, not disgust, how does lust prey on garbage?
Author: erainbowd
O, Hamlet, what a falling off was there. From me, whose love was of that dignity That it went hand in hand even with the vow I made to her in marriage; and to decline Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor To those of mine!
This ghost is not humble –
That much is certain.
The primary objection here is that he is so much better
Than his brother – that he’s more dignified and has richer natural gifts.
This may be true.
Certainly he’s got that not-having-committed-fratricide on his side –
But this whole falling off notion would seem to suggest a Lucifer falling
from heaven to hell, from an angel to a devil.
For a spirit/man currently doing time in the flames of hell
This is a gutsy assertion.
won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming virtuous queen.
This tangent of the ghost
Would seem to suggest
That, from his ghostly purgatory,
He has some privileged views
Of the world he left behind.
Did he stand (ephemerally) by
Watching his widow get seduced by his brother?
Did he watch the woman
He thought of as So Virtous
Listen carefully to his brother’s proposition?
Did he see her resist for a bit
Then suddenly relent?
Did he watch his brother
Touch first his widow’s hand, then her arm?
Was he looking when Claudius moved a strand of Gertrude’s hair
Away from her face and went in to kiss her?
Did he watch her respond?
Did he see the desire between them grow just where he’d thought there would
Always be ice cold chastity?
It might be worse than the daily purifying flames to witness such things.
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power So to seduce!
Does anyone who really has this power ever use it for good?
A man with great skill at seduction
Does not use it on a willing seductee.
In order to be a world class seducer, one stretched to the limit of his powers,
One has to convince someone of something
They really didn’t want in the first place.
And in the realm of romance,
No seducer worth his salt
Would ever stop at just one seduction.
It is a game that must be played over and over.
Wit and gifts – the killer combination.
We see Richard the Third use this. Iago. Claudius.
But never the good guys.
It’s not a good guy strategy.
There were times when I wish I’d known that.
Ay, that incestous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts –
Did Claudius always have witchcrafty wit?
When the Royal brothers were boys,
Was Claudius the smart one, the crafty one, the brains of the operation?
Was Hamlet the brawn? Practical at sledding poleaxes or beating up his younger brother?
I wonder if Claudius often got his brother into trouble –
If he got him punished for things he himself had done.
I wonder if Claudius talked his brother into circles, fooling him,
Damning him with these spell like words.
Perhaps, to Claudius, there was always great injustice in the succession.
Perhaps, he’d always felt he deserved the crown, that the system was unjust
Because it promoted the thicker of the two.
What sort of wordy witchcraft did Claudius perform even during his brother’s reign?
Was he constantly attempting to unseat his brother before he finally resorted to murder?
Did he try Iago’s tactics? Aaron’s? Don John’s? Richard the Third’s?
Or did he bide his time – planning, quietly scheming for this violent moment?
What finally pushed him toward the fateful poisoning?
What indignity did he feel he endured? What slight?
Or did everything coalesce to that fratricidal moment in the garden?
How many fratricides did he commit in his mind before the one he actually committed?
My uncle?
I haven’t seen the text notes on this
But I suspect that this punctuation
Is Editor’s Choice. Which would seem
To make it actor’s choice as well.
I feel sure I’ve seen it as “My uncle.”
Or if not seen, certainly performed, with that period instead of a question mark.
But a question mark has its merits.
The period seems to continue the thought of “my prophetic soul”
It says “I knew it” with a kind of finality.
The question mark could either bring a hint of uncertainty
To this prophetic question or a wave of disbelief.
Or perhaps some editor once
Punctuated it with an exclamation point
That would make assurance double sure
Or even a dash –
My uncle –
Unfinished could indicate the unfinished thought of
“My uncle murdered you.” Or “My uncle is the serpent.” Or
“My uncle is one slimy son of a bitch and I knew it all along.”
But most likely, editors have given this a period. Or a question mark.
But all punctuation is up for questioning I think and perhaps
Worth forgetting for a moment.
O my prophetic soul!
There is absolutely no better way to say “I knew it!”
Deep down
Beyond consciousness
The soul is telling all kinds of prophetic secrets.
Things that couldn’t really be true but of course are.
Of course, we can know all kinds of untrue things too.
I thought I knew exactly the right place to go for grad school.
I knew that if I tried hard enough, I would find a way to live in London.
Both these knowings of my prophetic soul
Were decidedly incorrect and it is the falliability of my knowing
That caused so much damage.
The mistakes were one thing but the sureness around them at the time
Disrupted my entire navigation system.
The lode star of my knowing things proved to be a false guide –
A glimmer out of place, a plane, not a star.
What then to navigate by?
What compass to use?
We can’t really move by the whole sky
Can’t drive the entire map.
We must have something.
Soul.
Star.
Hope.
True or not.
But know, thou noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father’s life Now wears his crown.
A cartoon snake sits on a throne wearing a crown.
He slithers to a garden where a king lies sleeping.
He bites him on his ear sending his venom through the king’s brain and into his blood
Then undulates around until he can push the crown off the king’s head,
Sending it clattering onto the stones nearby.
He noses it until he can get it upright – until he can put his snakey head beneath it.
He sits upright, like a cobra, proud and smiling with a crown on his scaly head.
So the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forgéd process of my death Rankly abused.
Process would seem to be something that could not be forged.
By its very nature, a process would seem to be what happens. It is the product
That can be forged or the story of the process.
Papers, I suppose, can be forged. Papers
Which are the processing of somone’s application for a wedding license
Or a gun permit or refugee status
But real or genuine papers (Is there a difference? They’re both genuinely paper.)
Are seemingly processed just the same,
Denmark is abused by a forgéd process.
The king’s death certificate went through the channels,
Got stamped “Accidental” instead of “Murdered” and from there, as the certificate
Travelled along the conveyor belt of Danish Law,
It kicked off the entirely wrong switches
Creating thereby a fake process.
‘Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, A serpent stung me.
Do snakes sting?
I thought they only bit.
If they don’t (and I don’t think they do)
Then this little bending of truth does still make alliterative assonant sense.
A snake bit me doesn’t have the ssing, winding, serpentine quality
That a serpent stung me does.
Sometimes sound trumps sense
Even for the dead.
The Hamlet Project 