Is Horatio reading the commission?

Did Hamlet lose him by giving him his death warrant reading material? I mean – if someone handed me the death warrant he’d discovered for himself, I might find it hard to resist perusing – even if I had been instructed to read it at my leisure later. I mean – it’s a death warrant! You don’t see a lot of those. Not unless you’re an executioner.

 

See, he can’t read it quickly because it has been so overlarded with reasons and ills and so on. What’s wild is that one can almost imagine the style of the text of that commission because Claudius’s way of talking is also often larded with excess phrases.

I’m curious how a word that once meant something like instructions for authority or delegation of power came to mean a work paid for by an authority. When the Medicis commissioned artwork, were they delegating authority? Or does it, perhaps, stem from the idea of empowering someone – that is, with money, you can empower an artist to create. The fact is, though, you are likely essentially giving them a very specific task to accomplish – so it’s not REALLY empowerment. It’s the kind of empowerment, I’d totally accept but still –

I’m very curious about what these bugs and goblins are that Claudius has described in Hamlet’s execution warrant. Like, are they literal goblins? Is Claudius claiming that Hamlet has become possessed by demons of some sort? That is, if the King of England were to let him speak or even allow time to sharpen the axe, moths or roaches or flies or beetles would pour out of Hamlet’s mouth and then England would be sorry they hadn’t taken off his head as quickly as instructed?
It’s hard to imagine anything besides supernatural explanations that would demand such a speedy execution.

It’s kind of unusual for Hamlet to interrupt himself so much like this. I mean – not unprecedented – certainly some Foh! About my Brains! Turns up earlier. But he’s interrupted himself twice in this same passage.

Well, he’s got a lot on his mind, certainly and a great deal of unease. So it does make some sense that he has some emotional outbursts.

Also – side note: I would love to find occasion to use “larded” as it’s used here. It’s so beautifully specific. Like – the letter is overloaded with reasons and the reasons are laid on thickly, like a layer of fat.

Knavery is another word that should have a comeback.

In the current moment, there is a great deal of knavery afoot. It’s not so much royal as political but it is categorically knavery. We use the word shenanigans more now but political shenanigans doesn’t quite reflect the layer of mischief that is inherent in knavery.

The knavery that the Republicans have gotten up to and continue to get up to – it boggles the mind. Russian knavery. Republican knavery. Capitalist knavery. Corporate knavery.

Hamlet is a good storyteller. He’s building suspense quite beautifully. He knows what the golden nugget of this story is and he is setting it up and postponing the pay-off very expertly.

I suppose it makes sense. He has studied the work of the players. He knows their speeches. He has written a bit of a play himself.

His audience may only be Horatio here – but he is still pulling out all the storytelling stops. This classic self-interruption is a great example of that.

It does feel like a good time to let go of manners or propriety. Like – if you think that the official letter your friends are carrying is your death sentence – I think you are well within your rights to check that out. Even if you’re wrong. And Hamlet is not wrong. His fears are entirely justified and correct. I don’t think, upon hearing this story, that anyone would say, “Hey – but wasn’t it kind of rude to open a piece of mail?”
Like – no one is concerned about mail fraud when murder is on the table. No one.

Almost every company of actors I’ve ever been a part of would have made a great deal of fun of “finger’d their packet” – but maybe it was just the company of Hamlet I was in, especially. We were, after all, pretty young and dirty jokes were our bread and butter. Not really my bread and butter – but the bread and butter that held the group together.

In that company, both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were both played by women – so there was some extra frisson to the idea to the idea of Hamlet fingering their packet.

I like that fingering has meant so many things over the years – in this case, stealing and/or pickpocketing. I’m not sure when fingering as a way of snitching on someone came in to play – I suspect it was in the Al Capone era. And of course there’s the bread and butter actor’s dirty mind of fingering someone.