Whatever you do for a dead woman, you do too late. You could write her a poem or carve her a sculpture but she will never see it. Anything you do for a dead woman, you do for the living – which is not to say you should not write that poem or carve that sculpture.
We need monuments to women. In New York City, there are five monuments to women. I have seen one of them – just by chance. I stumbled upon the sculpture of Gertrude Stein in Bryant Park. I did not know it was there and was so delighted to suddenly see her. I wish there were monuments to Margaret Sanger, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Madam Restell, Victoria Woodhull, Susan B. Anthony, Zora Neal Hurston, Josephine Baker and dozens and dozens of others.
Author: erainbowd
Forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum.
This is a real shitty way to declare you love someone. I mean. On one hand, it’s got just the extremity of high numbers and hyperbole that we expect from lovers.
It’s got some quality of Juliet’s love being as boundless as the sea. Love is big! Love is out sized! Love is forty thousand times love!
But it’s not just the standard hyperbole of lovers – it’s comparative. It’s saying my love is 40,000 times bigger than yours, Laertes.
Which is just dick measuring but with love.
I loved Ophelia.
Did you, Hamlet? This is the first moment in the play wherein it feels as though you did. Pretty much the rest of it you’ve been a complete and total cock.
And actually now, too, to Laertes and everyone else here who came to mourn her. Leaping into her grave? Fighting with her beloved brother? There are men who love like this, I suppose. The woman herself is inconsequential – it’s the men around her he must prove himself to.
O my son, what theme?
I suspect others have punctuated this differently. Some editors probably make this two sentences. It could even be three: O. My son. What theme?
I might go with O, my son. What theme?
But the Queen’s question really is a sensible one, in fact. And she is really listening to him even though he is not making a lot of sense.
I mean, once we know what he means, what the theme is, more or less, then it’s kind of logical – but backwards. As most of us are, really. Logical – but only backwards. What is mysterious in one direction can sometimes add up in the other.
Why I will fight with him up on this theme Until my eyelids will no longer wag.
This is a strangely blithe way to talk about fighting over a dead woman’s body. I mean – I guess I understand why Hamlet wants to fight on the theme. He wants to prove he loved Ophelia. Okay. But to talk about eyelids waging just seems a little silly. Wagging being most associated with the tails of dogs. The next most associated might be heads wagging – up and down – but again that has a sort of overly enthusiastic quality. And I think of Helena talking about waggish boys. So to have this boyish dog-like image connected to the eyelids makes it feel like Hamlet is perhaps not taking this fight seriously.
The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave.
Again, a super enticing stage direction. I am so tempted to give this to a group of students and have them try to figure out what is happening here. There’s no way someone doesn’t think about zombies or vampires.
Good my lord, be quiet.
The dude who works here has been telling me his life story for about an hour. He’s super sweet and 19 and leaving the state tomorrow…but phew. It’s a lot.
Gentlemen,
All? Really? All? Like “that would hang us every mother’s son?” All?
It’s kind of a great word for a whole bunch of people to all decide to say together. “Gentlemen” doesn’t necessarily roll right off the tongue. Who would kick off this all with “gentlemen”? My guess is the priest. And others backed him up.
Or the king, I suppose. But he’s just spoken and no one joined in. I’m sticking with the priest.
Hamlet, Hamlet!
As far as we know, the last time Gertrude saw Hamlet was right after he killed Polonius. She may have feared she’d never see him again. I mean, sea travel was clearly not without peril, as evidenced by the pirates that turn up – and maybe she even has a glimmer of what Claudius was up to with this England thing.
She has had, theoretically, some suggestion of Hamlet’s return via the letters – but we don’t know how much Hamlet has told her. Maybe just “I’m alive.”
Anyway – there’s a lot that she may be feeling at seeing her son again grappling in the grave she just threw flowers in. Does she feel like she called him there by saying his name?
A line like this offers so many possibilities.
Pluck them asunder.
Laertes must be losing in this fight because why else would the king want it broken up?
Like – I know he has a plan – but what if Laertes could just take care of Hamlet for him right then?
I suppose it’s a political choice.
He can’t appear to be allowing violence before him – in a woman’s grave, no less.
Also. Pluck them asunder is such a delightful turn of phrase. It’s one of those that, even if you don’t immediately know what “asunder” means or what plucking might have to do with anything, you can work out the sense in context. It’s the kind of phrase I can get a middle school boy who hates English class to get into.
The Hamlet Project 