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.

The image I have of this moment is Hamlet in pitch black, feeling his way through the ship, stumbling into chairs and tables, pulling back blankets on sailors and other passengers before finally feeling some distinctive feature of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Or maybe they’re the only two sharing a bunk or something – so he could know immediately upon seeing their two bodies huddled together with fear and complicity.

I have, in the past, felt kind of bad for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern but in the current political climate, I see complicity rather differently than I once did. I don’t feel so bad for these guys anymore.

There seems to be not much agreement about what this sea-gown is. Depending on the source, it is a sailor’s tunic, a nightshirt worn at sea or the fog.
I like that there might be special clothes for sea voyages and that they’re called gowns. I also like the specificity of how Hamlet is wearing this gown. Scarf-d about him suggests to me he’s either tied the gown on with a scarf – like belted it or just sort of tossed it around his neck. It gives him a sort of cavalier feeling. What does he care for actually fastening his clothes? He can just scarf them on, just drape them over himself as he gropes in the dark, like a guy with his jacket draped over his arm, ready to fly if he has to.

I used to really believe this. It was quite comforting to think that some divine hand was pulling the strings around me, guiding me to some magnificent fate. It allowed me to move with great confidence, convinced that the universe had my best interests at heart. But then I ran into a rough patch and I couldn’t understand why the divine hand let me down, had sent me to a place that did not push me forward, that seemed to throw me into the dark forest. When I emerged, I had lost my belief in the divine and felt entirely rough-hewn.

This is a weirdly complicated sentence for what seems to be a fairly simple thought – which is that sometimes it pays to be rash and/or indiscriminate.
But the thought bounces hither and yon.
Like, what is “let us know” doing in the middle of this sentence?
And what is rashly related to, grammatically speaking?
Is this fragmented phrasing suggestive of his fighting heart that would not let him sleep?

And I bet mutineers in shackles don’t sleep so good either. What I love about this sentence is that it has the flavor of nonsense. Like it sounds a little bit like the jabberwocky. Soley based on sound, the mutines in the bilboes could easily be in the Jabberwock’s forest.

I wonder if this was a common phrase of the time – an idiomatic but commonly recognized image – or one that Shakespeare invented. If he invented it, it is a funny moment for this series of sounds. I know the image makes sense – especially since Hamlet is talking about his experience on a boat – but the sounds have a silly quality. I don’t object to silliness one bit. In fact, I applaud it mightily.

But if it is silliness, what is it trying to accomplish? I suspect it’s Hamlet embroidering the story for Horatio – performing it, really.