A life in Shakespeare can sometimes yield some funny crossovers. I learned Titania’s “forgeries of jealousy” speech to perform for my friend’s students. So a week later, I see “unyoke” in this line and I’m instantly with the ox who has stretched his yoke in vain. So the ox and the second clown become sort of merged in my mind, just because of the commonality of yoking. Which – I’ll be honest – I don’t have much other experience of, or have much occasion to talk about.

I was crushingly sad yesterday. I’m still a little hung over from that sad. I wondered at one point if this was perhaps a modified post-show blues. I performed a speech a few days before and I had a visceral jolt in returning to performing – the high, the pleasure of having Shakespeare’s words in my head and in my body. When I was so sad yesterday, I thought maybe it was just my body’s way of saying, “I missed that. When will we do that again? To’t again, come.”

Why? Because he was clever and came up with a different answer than the one you were looking for? Because of your made up inference that the gallows is better than the church?
Now, of course, we don’t expect a gravedigger to be an expert teacher but this kind of questioning reminds me of the kind of questions new teachers will sometimes ask before they learn how to ask open questions. They will ask a question that is not unrelated to a “What number am I thinking of?” type of question. “Uh, 9? Are you thinking of 9? I don’t know. “

Ah, but he did not say this. He said nothing of the kind. He did not mention the church at all so you are bringing in information that is outside the parameters of the riddle.

You can’t change the parameters of the riddle like that – not in mid answer! That’s against the Riddler’s Code! If there were such a thing.

I beg to differ, clown. The gallows does well to one person and one person only and that is the gallows maker. I cannot believe that death is the best thing for he that is condemned to it. And most nations around the world agree. Mine is one of the few still in the dark ages in this respect.

The desire to see a criminal hanged is understandable but it does not benefit the criminal in any way – nor does it benefit the society that does it to him. It just codifies and ritualizes murder. I’m not absolutist about a lot of things but I think murder is murder, whether a criminal is doing it or the state. And murder will inevitably stain the hands of whomever commits it – even if you offload the stain to an executioner, the stain spreads to the one who condemned someone to die, the one who failed to defend him from it, those who accused him, the ones who made the laws that condemned him, the witnesses, the ones who enforced the law. Spreading the stain does not make it any less horrible. The stain’s reach is infinite.

I wonder what our world would be like if we interrogated our wellness as much as we interrogate our illness. Like instead of moving on when someone says they’re doing well after being asked how they are, to ask “How are you well?” “How so?”
We usually only do this when someone says they’re terrible or mad or sad or “not great” or whatever variation from “fine” we happen to run into. What if things were reversed? What if we investigated fine-ness and well-ness and came to understand what factors created such blessed states? Would it be a more beautiful world? Or would we just lie and say we weren’t well so we didn’t have to talk to one another.

Point awarded to Second Clown by First Clown. Check! Let’s look up on the board, Chuck. Is “Gallows” up there?
And it is! It is!
But let’s return for some more – can you name something else, Jim?

My friend pointed out that the things we are attracted to in others are usually things we’re seeking in ourselves or that we already have but don’t recognize.

I thought of that just now because this line made me think about how sexy I find someone with a sharp wit. And then I thought maybe I ought to recognize that mine’s not so bad either.