Is this the first time the Ghost
Has said his son’s name?
(Which is, of course, also his own)
What does your name sound like in the mouth of a ghost?
What does it sound like in the mouth of your father?
I read a silly article in which
They asked kids what love was
And one of them said you knew
Someone loved you by the way they say your name –
That when there is love, your name
Was safe in their mouth.
Does that change in the transition
From life to death to ghost?
How much love is in this instruction to hear?
Also how many synonyms for listening is this ghost gonna use?
Mark, List, Hear.
He really needs to know
That we’re paying attention.
Author: erainbowd
I find thee apt, And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed That roots itself in ease on lethe warf, Wouldst thou not stir in this.
The internet will not work
So I must rely on the lexicon in my mind
To work out what lethe warf might signify. Is it the edge of death?
I know people in lethe sleep –
Is it like the River Styx somehow?
And what is this plant, this weed
That grows on a warf?
Why dull? It would seem that a plant with roots that will not stir
Is a sturdy plant, a reliable plant –
One that will not be blown about by wind or wave.
But whatever this mystery plant is
It is not a favorite of this ghostly king.
Haste me to know’t, that, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge.
Why bring love and meditation into this?
We’re talking about murder and revenge here
Where did the loving meditationing references come from?
Also – what’s so swift about meditation?
It seems to me to be, at its core, a slow process
Nor are thoughts of love
Particularly speedy. One might be struck with them suddenly,
Particularly in a love at first sight situation
But one of the sweetest qualities of love
Is its lack of speed, the way one can sink
Into loving, losing all sense of time,
Where hours can pass in love
Without seeming to have been a minute.
The world slows down with love.
Love slows down the world.
I do not think thoughts of love
Would add speed or wind to an arrow,
It would rather slowly focus it
Til it reached its aim.
Murder, most foul, as in the best it is, But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
Wait. What’s he saying here?
Is he saying what I was saying before?
That any murder is most foul?
But especially this one?
Which, now, in additon to being foul and unnatural,
Has also become strange.
I don’t know anything about rhetoric
Or rhetorical patterns but I am
Interested in the pattern of
Most unnatural
Most foul
Most foul
Foul and unnatural murder
Murder most foul
Most foul, strange and unnatural.
It makes me think of a sestina –
The way the words rearrange
And shift over the course of the repetition.
The only sestina I can call to mind
Is this one by Elizabeth Bishop
Which features a gasoline can, I think.
I can remember none of the words
(exept perhaps esso s-o-esso?)
but I remember the feeling of the poem
nostalgic and tactile and it makes me
long for something old and rusty that I never really knew.
This sentence of the ghost’s feels like it’s like that –
Really just a repetition of words
Where the meaning isn’t nearly so significant as the feeling.
Murder?
Did you say murder? We’re five scenes into the play
And Now we discover a murder?
It’s clearly not a murder mystery.
In a mystery, the murder happens quickly
And then we swiftly set about solving it.
We know this isn’t that by its placement in the play and of course, it isn’t.
Because this mystery will be solved in a matter
Of minutes from this first mention of murder.
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
I’m not sure it was the MOST unnatural murder.
Maybe it’s the culture we live in now
But I hear about much more foul, much more unnatural
Murders all the time.
As far as getting murdered goes
Getting some poison in your ear
Isn’t nearly as gruesome as most things.
It’s not even the most foul or unnatural murder in Shakespeare.
I’d pick almost any death in Titus Andronicus over this one
In the foul and unnatural department.
But – I cut the ghost some slack.
Any murder that happens to you
Is bound to be the most foul and the most unnatural.
O God!
It occurs to me that the editors
May have put this exclamation mark here.
Or the printers (I’ll have to check the folio, huh?)
Perhaps it’s a dash –
Perhaps Hamlet is about to swear.
Perhaps there is more.
A sort of “O God, I swear that my love for my father is such – etc”
I’m not sure what that possibility gives us but it occurred to me
Because I can’t think of another instance
In the plays in which a character exclaims this way.
It feels like a very contemporary exclamation –
And an oddly brief and direct response from Hamlet.
It’s also curious that he says this, not after all the terrible descriptions of the hell
That his father has been condemned to, but at the mention of love.
If it’s a gasp, as it’s often played –
It’s interesting that it happens when the focus shifts to fatherly love.
I’m also amused that Hamlet has been quiet all this while
Until a line after he’s been told to “List, list, O list” and then he starts talking.
This happens in classrooms too. As soon as a group of people have been told
To listen carefully, that’s when they start talking.
If thou didst ever thy dear father love –
In becoming a a ghost,
Hamlet’s father has not only lost his life and his body,
He seems to have lost the sense of himself.
He speaks of himself in the third person
As if he is not Hamlet’s dear father
As if Hamlet’s dear father were some distant foreign figure
As if the person saying these words had nothing to do with the father once loved.
He is Hamlet’s father’s spirit.
He is not Hamlet’s father. Nor does he seem
to be any other identity of the former king of Denmark.
Wait – strike that – he’s dressed as the version of himself that once went to war
But he’s not wearing his crown, he’s wearing his helmet.
Which makes me wonder –
Is the spirit that walks these walls the version of his father that Hamlet most remembers?
Is this the idealized vision of his dad?
Younger, triumphant, coming home from the wars.
Little boy Prince runs to these arms as a child
Not the stately king.
This ghost, disconnected from all of his worldly initiatives and desires
(Save one: to get revenge against his brother)
Can not even identify himself as the one his son dearly loved,
He just calls that identity up
To compel the prince to what he wants him to do.
Ghost psychology, though, is tricky.
No one really knows the rules.
List, list, O list!
I just cackled when I saw what my sentence was today. Now, I’m trying
To work out what inspired that enthusiastic laugh.
It’s a great line. So simple.
Every day I ask groups of people
To listen to me. Never have I said: List, list, O list! (Maybe I should.)
It’s just so unabashedly theatrical.
Or I suppose one might say melodramatic.
Let’s settle for dramatic.
A big ole ghost
Who already has all the attention he could possibly need
Has to say “List, list, O list!”?
Why? Given what we’ve just heard
About flesh and blood ears – maybe it’s some kind of incantation to ready human ears
For really freakin’ startling news.
He says these words, vibrates the ear follicles a little bit to this rhythm
And then lets it loose.
But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood.
What are a spirit’s ears made of?
What else can hear?
The ghostly ear may be made of vapor and mist
Or forms its drums and cochlears
From breath, from wind, from sea foam
From fog – the chambers gather together
Into intricate misty conch shells of hearing
Designed, perhaps, especially for hearing
Troubling descriptions of hell.
Whatever word might be spoken
(From lips gathered together from starstuff and wind)
It vibrates at some frequency that is destructive to the delicate human ear.
Its little strands of hearing
Might well stand on end like the quills of a porcupine
And then snap off like pine needles from a tree.
Do the Infernal Powers That Be
Provide an orientation to life in the afterlife?
Are the spirits put onto folding chairs
Given a packet and a lecture by a man
With a laser pointer – and warned
Not to speak of their torments.
Are they shown pictures of human ears
Bleeding post description? Diagrams of
What happens to the drum (Swelling, rising, Infernal explosion.)
Hell must be run by bureaucrats in dull gray suits
Who keep the ghosts on schedule and in line.
It’s interesting that the reason Hamlet Sr. doesn’t
Tell his son what his after life is like is NOT
That he doesn’t want to freeze his son’s young blood
But because he’s forbidden to do it.
The Hamlet Project 