This is some interesting status play. (For those reading who are not trained in practical status work in theatre, playing with levels of status can keep many a scene alive and some status play is written right in. This is one of those. If you want to learn more about this, Keith Johnstone’s book on Impro is fabulous.)
It’s interesting because Hamlet objectively has the higher status. He is the Prince and heir apparent. But Osric comes in and raises his own status by welcoming Hamlet home. Hamlet responds, not by raising his status, but by lowering it – by thanking Osric with humility. His humble thanks outwardly lower his status while inwardly, his status rises, because the humility is so performative. The toying begins here and will go to such extremes once the hat play commences.
Author: erainbowd
Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.
There’s something about a guy welcoming the prince back to his own country that says a lot about the guy. I mean – it has a quality of self-inflation, as if it’s his country, rather than the prince’s. It’s a little like one’s housekeeper inviting you in.
Who comes here?
And so Horatio echoes the sense of the beginning of the play. “Who’s there?” is not so far from who comes here. It’s a subtle bookend, really. Perhaps, like the opening scene, it heightens the tension before a dramatic event.
Barnardo and Francisco become Horatio.
What’s funny is – after the sentinel’s “Who’s there?” – eventually we get to the ghost.
Immediately following “Who comes here?” – we get Osric. We get comic relief.
Peace!
Uh. Did Horatio just tell Hamlet to be quiet?
Wha?
Really?
Is that allowed when talking to a prince?
I may need to get the low down on royal protocol.
But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me Into a towering passion.
Is that what that was?
A towering passion, was it?
A passion is one thing.
But a towering one is another. I picture it like an angry animal, like a bull, maybe. And at first there’s just one angry bull but they start to multiply. They are piled one on top of another until they form a tower and as the tower grows, their fury increases as well. And sooner or later, the tower is about to fall and all the furious bulls will tumble down and let their rage run wild.
I’ll court his favors.
I wonder what Hamlet’s plan for this is. How will he win Laertes over? Does he imagine taking him for a drink or going to watch a match of some kind?
How did Hamlet imagine this before he’s enrolled in the rapier and dagger game with him in a moment?
For, by the image of my cause, I see the portraiture of his.
It is unfortunate that so many of us can only see through the images of our own causes. It’s like we’re all wearing lenses that filter out anything that is not our experience. The self-oriented glasses reframe everything to ourselves.
It is a tremendous obstacle when trying to teach empathy. Why care about someone who is different from you, who has different life experience?
Hamlet shouldn’t have to have an epiphany that Laertes’ experience is like his. It would be great if he could recognize Laertes’ grief for Ophelia separate from his own. But in the moment, he can’t. So he has to backtrack to understand how Laertes’ situation is so like his.
But I am very sorry, good Horatio, That to Laertes I forgot myself.
You sure did, Hamlet.
You sure did.
You jumped in his sister’s grave and challenged him to a grief-off.
That was some serious self forgetting.
And a man’s life’s no more than to say ‘one.’
This is a good line to give to students, actually – one of those that can be introduced as “there is almost no agreement on what the heck Hamlet is talking about here. It may be very simple. Or it may be very complex. What do you think Hamlet means here?”
And then just let them bat it around for a while. There are no words that are particularly challenging – it feels simple. Though it isn’t. I feel I’d enjoy watching students wrestle with its possibilities. I know there would be students who would be as certain as they could be that they knew the answers. There are always such students.
But none of us can be certain.
We don’t know what this “one” is referring to is.
The number? A self? A life? A moment? An interim?
The interim is mine.
There’s a potency in this sentiment. Hamlet feeling his power, his moment. He has taken possession of time itself for this interim period. I wonder what he imagines he will do with this potent moment. In the end, he acquiesces to the king’s request and whatever plan he has is lost in the events that follow. But in this moment, he must have something in mind, something that makes him feel emboldened and ready to take on the world.
The Hamlet Project 