This repetition of the stage direction feels less necessary than the first. This one makes me wonder about the source for the stage direction. Is this Shakespeare directing Hamlet? Or one of the Folio actors recalling what the staging was?
Or is it an editor recalling productions he’s seen over the years?
I’m not entirely convinced that Hamlet needs to leap into Ophelia’s grave for this fight to happen. Just showing his face is challenging enough to Laertes. Announcing his presence to a man who has already declared that he wants treble woe to fall on his head is enough of a challenge. Does he need to ALSO get into that tiny space with him? I’m not sure. It’s kind of awful to jump into a grave with your dead girlfriend to fight with her brother who is mourning her loss.
But Hamlet isn’t always nice.
Author: erainbowd
This is I, Hamlet the Dane.
I like the note from the Riverside edition that suggests that this is the way a king would announce himself. I might need a little context and evidence to fully believe it…but even if it’s not a solid note, I think it would be helpful in saying this line.
It is a bear to speak. Like – to contemporary ears it is so extreme and the style of it is so different than the rest of the play. It’s almost camp to announce yourself this way. It is I, Emily the American! It’s just…yeah, hard to make it authentic.
To think of it as an announcement of kingliness, though, does make it more possible. To step forward as if for my coronation rather than just campily announcing myself.
Whose phrase of sorrow Conjures the wandering stars and makes them stand Like wonder-wounded hearers?
This reveals both the dangers and the benefits of being as immersed in Shakespeare as I have been all those years.
I’ll explain.
My first acting job included performing in a production of Hamlet – so I heard the text a great many times. Of course I read it as well. And I taught it fairly often, too.
That’s what I mean by rolling around in Shakespeare.
I’m also a playwright.
This usually feels separate from my Shakespeare life. Little bits of Shakespeare make their way into my plays – sometimes consciously but also unconsciously.
I wrote a play called fig. a: The Heart a little over a decade ago. The Egyptian Gods in it spoke of the Wandering Stars – their way of speaking of the Earth was the place “beneath the wandering stars.”
I swear I thought I invented this.
I did not remember this line. There are large chunks of Hamlet that I have more or less memorized but not this line apparently. It sunk itself deep into my brain and surfaced out of my pen when I wasn’t looking.
What is he whose grief Bears such an emphasis?
I’m trying so hard to make this line NOT be a super dickish way of speaking to a grieving person. I tried to read these first two lines – before Hamlet re-introduces himself as the Dane in a moment – as a reference to himself. I wanted this step forward to be about his OWN grief – and a precursor question to the answer. That is – what is he? This is I, Hamlet the Dane! Who is he? Hamlet the Dane!
But…I don’t know, given how far Hamlet leans into his critique of Laertes’ grieving later, it’s pretty difficult to see this as a self presentation. Even though Laertes has said nothing about the wandering stars or anything star related …and it would, in a way, be very like Hamlet to brag – it is a stretch.
I don’t know why Laertes’ grief triggers Hamlet so hard. He blows his whole plan for it, I assume. I mean, I assume it wasn’t his plan to leap out at a funeral and cause a ruckus.
Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, Till of this flat a mountain you have made, To o’ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head Of blue Olympus.
This is a funny moment for Greece and Greek geography/mythology to show up. Most other references to such things were part of the Players repertoire – and that was largely from the point of view of the Trojans. We see the blood covered Greek laying waste to the woeful royal family in the player’s speech. But that’s the only other Greek reference I can think of offhand.
This is a Christian Denmark – we are living with Christian symbols and rules here – but Laertes calls to mind a tall mountain in Greece – a mountain built on top of another mountain to get closer to the gods on Olympus.
Maybe Laertes is longing for another paradigm, a way to get closer to Heaven together with his sister.
Leaps into the grave.
When I teach Shakespeare, I rarely acknowledge or engage with stage directions. They are most likely to be editor’s additions and don’t tend to help us engage with Shakespeare’s language much. That’s also the reason I mostly leave them out of this project.
But…in this case…this is such a juicy stage direction, it’s making me think about ways to utilize stage directions in general in my teaching.
There are some that are just so evocative – that say so much in a simple sentence. If you knew nothing about Hamlet but the fact that a character leaps into the grave, you actually know a great deal about the play.
If you knew nothing about A Winter’s Tale but that a character Exits pursued by a bear, you know something very intriguing about the play. I think I may be inventing an exercise for my upcoming workshops as I write this.
Hold off the earth awhile, Till I have caught her once more in mine arms.
This just goes to show that Laertes doesn’t have the support network necessary to help him handle his grief. It also suggests that the rituals prior to this burial were not sufficient to Laertes’ needs. He ought to have had an opportunity to hug Ophelia before they put her in the ground – or at least to have spent some time with her body. But it feels clear he has not had such a time – nor has he had anyone to grieve with. He has followers. He has friends, one supposes – but he probably doesn’t have a girlfriend. His father is dead and he didn’t handle that so well either. If anyone ever needed a grief counselor, it’s that guy.
O, treble woe Fall ten times treble on that cursed head, Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense Deprived thee of!
If I could go back in time and ask Shakespeare to write another play, I’d have a few requests – but one of them might be the play of Hamlet but from Laertes’ perspective. I mean – here he is asking for three times the woe to fall thirty times on Hamlet’s head and his perception of Hamlet’s deed is not actually wrong.
Hamlet did do something terrible that made Ophelia go crazy. And he didn’t even seem sorry.
We’re on Hamlet’s side, of course, because we have all of his information and we see things from his point of view and he’s articulate and sensitive and smart. But Laertes has quite a journey too – he’s just on the edges of this story. And it ends with as much tragedy as Hamlet’s story. The Tragedy of Laertes.
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d sweet maid, And not have strew’d thy grave.
Is this bride-bed be-decking an English tradition? Or a Danish one?
I don’t feel like I’ve seen a lot of this in European films – at least among the more Germanic, Scandinavian, English folks.
It’s hard to imagine a queen – like – a very English queen, strewing flowers on her daughter-in-law’s bed.
Like, if the current Queen Elizabeth had gone into her son’s bedroom to decorate it for Lady Diana. It’s just…unlikely.
But in cultures with a more expressive attitude toward sex, I don’t find it quite as hard to imagine. I can imagine a Queen that Isabelle Allende dreamed up doing some bridal bed flower strewing.
Earlier periods were sometimes freer about such things in some ways – and Gertrude and Hamlet are both fairly frank about sex in unexpected moments. Like this one.
I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife.
I have questions about this. Lots and lots of questions. Because Polonius makes it pretty clear that Ophelia is a prince out of Ophelia’s stars – that he had her return his letters because of this difference in their stations – and when Polonius says all this to Gertrude and Claudius, she does not say, “Now, Polonius, if they’re happy – why can’t we let them do their thing?”
She’s just, like, “Yeah, I don’t think that’s it.”
But WAS she supportive of this relationship at the time?
OR does she retroactively hope this? Like, now that Ophelia’s dead she can hope for it safely – without any danger of them actually getting married. Surely she would have preferred a princess from Austria or something. But maybe she did really hope this.
I’m not sure though.
The Hamlet Project 