Can Hamlet command Ophelia to talk with him?
Is this a royal thing? You can make girls you like come talk with you? Score.
If that’s the case, though –
How in the world is a royal subject supposed to refuse him?
Is what’s happening here a raise in status for Ophelia? When she refuses his letters, shuts her door on him,
Is she breaking royal command in addition to her faith?
Who’s got the lockdown on Danish Royal Protocol?
Author: erainbowd
From this time Be something scanter of your maiden presence.
I have tried this strategy, I confess.
When I have felt taken for granted, un-noticed
Or unacknowledged, I have stepped back –
Made myself something scanter
Taken my maiden presence elsewhere
In the hopes that my maiden presence
Might be felt more keenly
Next to my maiden absence.
These blazes, daughter, Giving more light than heat, extinct in both Even in their promise, as it is a-making You must not take for fire.
Was there anything, as Shakespeare was writing this
That looked like fire, but wasn’t?
Before electricity and special effects
Before animation and CGI
Before flash paper and flickering electric light,
What could be mistake for fire?
It’s an amazing metaphor here – almost impossible
Because he’s talking about a fire-less fire
Where there was none – – –
Except perhaps in a mirror
You couldn’t find an image of fire without fire
Only fire could be fire
And maybe that’s the point.
I do know When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul Lends the tongue vow.
Through cheek
Through ear
From chest to neck and up
Heart circling hot blood
Heating up the surfaces
Turning them pink with desire
Soul slid to the side
Tongue searching
Finds a promise
And speaks it.
Is the soul prodigal because it hides from heat
Or does it burn with the blood?
Is it the soul itself making mischief?
How do soul and desire mix?
At times, I suppose, they might compete, yes –
But sometimes the soul speaks through desire
Sometimes desire speaks without soul.
Ay, springes to catch woodcocks.
I think of a mousetrap
All springs and tension and snappings.
The mechanics of a mousetrap seem ancient somehow but also
Beautifully modern and scientific.
There are an inordinate number of mice in our apartment
So I am fantasizing about these
Springs and tensions and snappings
Wishing I could rig every corner and wall of my house
With no need for bait because they’re there anyway.
I’m not sure what sort of elaborate construction
Would catch a woodcock
Whatever a woodcock is.
It sounds like a dildo made of walnut or oak
But I’m pretty sure Polonius isn’t talking about such things with his daughter,
Especially one he’s counseling to keep her legs closed
By keeping her mouth shut and eyes blind to the man
Who wants to love her.
And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord, With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
Will you give a face to your words?
The face, so full of non-wordy words –
Words without words -Ideas, truths, hidden secrets.
We believe more when we’re young, right?
Before we know that people can lie to us
That they can mold their faces into masks
To hide what they really feel.
I may have learned this later than most or earlier.
I think of myself as too trusting but at the same time
I was always able to read faces
Able to understand feelings without words.
I was both.
We are all contradictions.
Go to, go to.
You can tell I was born in the 70s sometimes
Like when I read “Go to, go to” and all I can think of is R2D2
Because it rhymes and the name R2D2 is deeply embedded in my consciousness,
Despite the fact that I didn’t see Star Wars when it first come out,
I was a little too young.
But the kids around me all had Star Wars toys and I knew, just from playground games and recess chatter, that R2D2 was my favorite.
Perhaps because of the sound of his name
Or for the affection I heard in the voices of those who’d seen the movie
But I knew, when I DID see Star Wars
That I’d be rooting for the little beeping robot.
Ay, “fashion” you may call it.
I’m standing in a dressing room
At a trendy vintage clothing shop.
My mother found this spot somehow,
I don’t know how – there wasn’t an internet then –
But we’ve come to the big city and we have come
To explore the vintage clothes. To buy them, too.
I am currently wearing a yellow ruffled gown sort of thing.
I’m 14 but this makes me feel like I’m twenty.
The guy who runs the register has given me a free bit of make-up (orange eye shadow)
And I feel amazing. I’m not going to buy this dress.
I have no occasion for it. We’re looking for
Something for me to wear to the theatre, to Broadway
And even I know that this yellow ruffled affair that makes me look like a Southern Belle princess would be too much – even for Broadway, which I’ve been dreaming of for years.
I try on other things. Things I bought, I’m sure.
Some Army issue pants, some funky neckties, a dressing coat perhaps?
At this age, clothes mean so much to me.
I am sure that every single thing I put on explains everything about me.
I don’t look like anyone else I know.
I walk into school wearing hats I adore but I resent that I must remove them due
To dress codes (The 40s style small ones give me serious hathead.)
I am fully committed to my look.
I hate gym class. Mostly because of gym
But partly because I have to wear a t-shirt and shorts
(I try to find funky urban t’s to make up for it.)
I am happy with this image in the mirror,
In this yellow-white gown with my orange eye shadow
That’s made a grown-up man flirt with me for the first time (that I know of)
And this bit of style, of all the crazy things I wore in the subsequent four years
Is the thing I remember with the most fondness.
My lord, he hath importuned me with love In honorable fashion.
What are the rules for honorable love?
Not that stupid “rules” book, those are rules
For game playing and manipulation, but
For love in honor, honor in love?
It is an honor to be loved, to receive it,
An honor to love, an honor to feel
An honor to share love, to see it, to hold it, to be it.
I cannot say I have ever been importuned
With love or importuned at all
Particularly in honorable fashion.
It’s a curious word choice.
It makes me feel like Ophelia is really her father’s daughter.
This is the sort of word he’d make up
To make what he was talking about sound
More official
More business like
More important.
Tender yourself more dearly Or – not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, Running it thus – you’ll tender me a fool.
I aspire to tender myself more dearly.
Sometimes life can be a series of occasions to diminish myself
To deny my truth
To contain my body
My emotions
My desires and impulses
And we get so good at denying, so very good
At pretending that we are not what we are
That we forget what we were pretending
And we insult the secret parts of ourselves
Beat ourselves up for the thin-ness of our disguise.
But to tender myself dearly
Seems even nicer than simply treating myself with kindness
Finding tenderness, dear tenderness for my own self
Conjures up a motherly version of myself
Wrapping a child version of me in a soft blanket
Stroking her hair and singing her loving lullabies.
Here, though, I suspect that Polonius is not
Thinking of wrapping his daughter up in a blanket,
(Though maybe that would protect her from this danger he perceives)
Given that he’s been talking about money so far – he’s likely
Playing on the legal tender idea
For which one could pay dear.
A metaphor that was tender and sweet
Becomes an exploration about worth and value,
Becomes about her dowry almost.
Is tendering her father a fool
Bankrupting him somehow?
Or is the poor phrase an old vaudeville standard
The punchline of the hour, the catchphrase –
The “Where’s the beef?” of the Danish court.
The Hamlet Project 