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. “
Author: erainbowd
Now thou dost ill to say the Gallows is built stronger than the church:
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.
It does well to those that do ill.
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.
But how does it well?
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.
The gallows does well.
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?
I like thy wit well, in good faith:
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.
For that frame outlives a thousand tenants.
The real estate market is so crazy in New York City that I could actually imagine some real estate agent renting out a gallows to someone to live in.
“These are handcrafted hardwood floors and you’ll notice here at the center, a convenient trap door. This comes in very handy for garbage scraps or pesky visitors. This tall frame here provides a strong architectural element that will be eye-catching to any visitors you may have. An artisanal wooden staircase leads you into the space and out, if you prefer not to use the trap.”
The gallows-maker;
The thing is – isn’t a gallows maker really a carpenter? I mean – most gallows are constructed from wood. And I have to hope that there wasn’t so much call for gallows that there weren’t gallows specialists – ones who ONLY built gallows. You’d have to be a traveling gallows maker if you wanted to make a living like that.
I mean – it would be wild if that was why hanging people became a trend. Some gallows maker comes to town and is such a good salesman that the town decides they need to hire him to build a gallows and once they have a gallows they have to USE it, they can’t have given all that money to the gallows-maker and not USE what he made for them. And so groups of people became murderers, just because one charming sociopath sold them a gallows.
What is he that builds stronger than either the Mason, the Shipwright or the Carpenter?
How about the playwright? Certainly this play has outlasted numerous buildings – more than might be counted.
Maybe that’s why we call them playwrights, like shipwrights. It is a construction built to last a lot of battering by the elements.
Go to.
Despite my facility and long term familiarity with Shakespeare’s language, I almost never drop it into my daily speech. I know people who do but it’s, for me, almost like a faucet and when it’s off, it’s off and when it’s on, it’s on.
Go to is one of those phrases that I’d enjoy having access to in my daily use. I never think of it – because the faucet is off – but whenever I’ve had occasion to say it in scenes, I have enjoyed it and its effect immensely, especially in repetition. As in, “Go to. Go to.”
It is somehow so much better than “Go on.” It has a flavor of “Get out of here.”
The Hamlet Project 