I looked up “argal” in the dictionary – it says “therefore.”
Which, I knew…but my question wasn’t really what was meant here – it was “Is this a joke?”
Like – it feels to me that it’s possible that the gravedigger/clown means to say “ergo” and gets it wrong.

But there is this circularity in language and Shakespeare. We get words from Shakespeare so we define them by what the word is doing in Shakespeare’s text – meanwhile, the word may have been invented by Shakespeare, or was a common joke, or a slang version of something. And what once was a joke might become an actual word that serious literary people use as an alternative to “Ergo.”

Last night I saw Monica Bill Barnes’ show, One Night Only and I cried my face off and laughed, too. All day I have been grappling with my feelings and thoughts about it. I think I want to write something but I don’t know what. Usually, when I write something like this, it just sort of starts writing itself in my head and I really just have to catch hold and ride. Not this time, though. This time there is just a sort of empty space where I imagine words might go at some point.

Partly, this show hit me in the guts because it is partly to do with these branches of action – to act, to do, to perform.

As one who acts and does and performs in the artistic senses of those words, grappling with performance, acting, with doing onstage is a big grapple. From the moment I knew about actors, I wanted to be one. The desire feels almost as old as I am. I cannot remember a time before acting seemed enticing. I think I was four when acting and performing first made themselves clear to me. And while I did not yet know I wanted to BE an actor, I did know that performance was incredibly interesting to me, that pretending to be other people was liberating and thrilling and I was never happier than when making up a story to be acted, performed and done.

The show I saw (or imagined) addresses a bit of that lifelong desire. Or compulsion. And all that we sacrifice to fulfill it.

Dear Reader – I wrote it. It is here.

Hmm. Three branches, eh? Not three aspects or three elements?
No. Three branches. And it is, essentially, a branch that breaks and sends Ophelia into the water, if we are to believe Gertrude’s story. So nature weaves her way through the garden of this story – even unconsciously.

That is, if I drown myself with my wits, with self-knowledge, with myself, then it is an action.
But Ophelia would definitely qualify as someone who didn’t drown herself with her wits. So even if she meant to do it, she’d be in the clear on the suicide line.

I don’t think this pun is actually in play here – But I can’t help imagining the point as a sword, the point of a sword, just lying in wait somewhere for someone to reach down and grab it by accident for an unwitting hand to slice itself open on the blade.

I don’t know why my mind made this metaphor today. I suspect it has to do with a sharp thing revealing itself that I wasn’t expecting. I’d planned for a creative adventure and celebration on what is often a dark day but the darkness came and got me anyway, despite my best intentions, like a sharp sword, lying in a drawer.

Each time I put on a show, I am surprised anew at how much brain space it takes up, how much time even the smallest tasks can take. Even with a small thing – something improvised, for example or a reading with no rehearsal. I willfully forget how much such a thing will require…or maybe I don’t willfully forget. I do forget but maybe it’s like the way women forget the pain of labor so that they can have another child. The body might just facilitate the forgetting of such things. We just – pretend – or fool ourselves – into thinking that it will be a breeze, that we’ve reduced so much of the work around a thing that even though every other show we’ve ever put on demanded everything of us, this one will be different. And yet –

She offended herself. She offed herself. She offended herself by offing herself?
This must be Latin for she offed or offended herself. Or something like that.
Someone is definitely offended.

It’s a joke, see. Because if you murder someone, you can get off by pleading self-defense. Joke.

I just read a bunch of notes that seemed to take this line very seriously – that Ophelia drowned herself in defense of seeing more death and destruction. I mean – come on. Joke, man. It’s a JOKE. The character making the joke may not realize that it’s a joke but it’s a joke nonetheless. It may not be a particularly funny joke. But joke.