Coroner can be a tricky word to say. There’s something about the R in the middle that could trip up a not so careful speaker. Put that R at the beginning and it’s no trouble at all. You could say CROWNER while drunk as a skunk but I’d bet coroner would be a real stumbling block if you had a few in you. This may, in fact, be the situation of these gravediggers. They have certainly been played drunk more than once.
Author: erainbowd
and therefore make her grave straight
Most notes will suggest that the gravedigger is saying to make her grave straight away, as in, right away, as in ASAP. As this is common usage in Shakespeare, I agree. But puns are also common in Shakespeare and I’d bet that the other sense of straight is not entirely unwanted here. Make her grave straight as in, not round, not bent, not curved.
Which makes me wonder if there might have been some customs of burial that would allow for different kinds of death. Like, aren’t you supposed to bury some people face down? Like witches or something? And I could imagine a world wherein you were supposed to bury a suicide victim in, say, a fetal position, curved around themselves for comfort.
So, yes, of course, the gravedigger is saying he should make the grave right away – but Shakespeare’s propensity for wordplay makes me wonder about other ways of experiencing that “straightness.”
I tell thee she is:
I have some questions about the power dynamic between these two gravediggers. Normally in a comedy duo, you have the boss and the 2nd and/or the smart one and the stupid one. But these two keep switching status. The first gravedigger would seem to have the highest status because he speaks first but then the second gravedigger responds with a commanding, “I tell thee she is” and then an order. Sometimes the first one gives the orders and sometimes the 2nd. In the end, the first sends the 2nd for refreshment so he would seem to be top banana – but it is not readily apparent from the dialogue. The 2nd really loses his status when he fails to tell a joke well – and so the 1st can send him away.
I almost always see this played as if the Gravedigger who speaks first is the boss – but I think it would be very interesting to see them as equals, in a status competition until the 2nd loses.
Is she to be buried in Christian burial that Willfully seeks her own salvation?
Ophelia’s will is doubtful here and this debate calls into question a lot of things. In Gertrude’s account, just moments before in the previous scene, Ophelia is the passive victim of her clothes. She falls in the river, floats there and is pulled to the bottom by her garments. At no point in this description does Gertrude suggest that Ophelia means to drown herself.
We’ve seen how Ophelia was before she drowned. She doesn’t seem like someone who is WILLFUL about killing herself. If she had been seen collecting rocks to put in her pockets, then maybe we could attribute her death to drowning. But no one reports such a thing and the way her death is described does not suggest she was carrying stones with which to drown herself.
It is entirely possible that Gertrude is fabricating this story to give Ophelia a more poetic end than suicide but even if Ophelia had an armful of stones in her mad scene – as someone not in possession of her right wits, as someone divided from herself and her fair judgment, there is still an incredible lack of WILL in any self-destruction. Her will was lost with her father. If she ever had any real will to begin with.
Therefore let’s follow.
I realized in my session with my Rubenfeld Synergist yesterday that I was longing to be a part of something wonderful – something that I didn’t have to lead. I want to be invited to the party, not host it. I want to join festivities already in progress.
I have mostly been leading those last years.
I am ready to follow for a change.
Now fear I this will give it start again;
There is no explicit accusation of Gertrude here. He does not say, “You messed up” or “You destroyed my careful plan,” or “You meddling woman.”
But my woman’s brain hears an accusation anyway. We learn very early to read the smallest of signals, to see the first hint of threat.
There isn’t a threat written here and I’ve never seen one played – but I hear one. I hear a “Watch out, Gertrude.” I hear a “You’ll pay for this later.” I hear a “Why do you ruin everything?” and a “Why did you have to come in and tell him that bad news right then?” Probably this means that I’ve known too many assholes in my life. But I would be curious to see this moment played as the threat I hear.
How much I had to do to calm his rage!
This may be one of the most honest lines that Claudius says to another person. He really did have to work Laertes for a LONG time. But that work is not just calming, of course. That work was carefully manipulating his rage, carefully focusing it where he wanted it. But he DID have to do a LOT to “calm” him.
Let’s follow, Gertrude.
I feel like Claudius mostly uses her name when he wants to boss her. When he calls her by her name, he wants her to do something. In this case, it’s following Laertes. And the line he’s about to say might be interpreted as an accusation. It is, after all, Gertrude who has come in and given them enflaming news. She’s messing up his game. I feel like – if they were more in cahoots, she would not have burst in to deliver this news. If Gertrude were closely aligned with Claudius in his political workings and manipulations, she would have waited to tell Laertes about Ophelia. Is she intentionally enflaming Laertes? A Gertrude who has firmly aligned herself with Hamlet might do such a thing. I don’t think she’s aligned herself with anyone, though. She seems to just be operating on nerves by this point in the play. And now she’s the only woman left standing.
I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze, But that this folly drowns it.
I’ve been told that anger is not a primary emotion, that it is often a mask for fear or sadness. But as someone who avoided anger for most of my youth, I have come to really admire anger, to respect speeches of fire and to appreciate how anger can energize.
I have doused numerous speeches of fire in my tears. Sometimes it feels as though I could drown myself in the tears – but then my partner will offer up his hand to punch and if I’m ready – the tears start to dry up as my anger begins to ignite. Making the switch from the moist tear soaked environment to the land of fiery speeches and cathartic kicks and punches is how I know I won’t cry forever. And the fire does FIRE. It fires one up. But it is hard to blaze in a rain of tears.
Adieu, my lord:
What? You can’t say goodbye to the Queen, too?
I guess in the middle of a patriarchal expression of grief wherein you denigrate the woman within, it’s a little hard to acknowledge an actual woman, especially the woman who just told you that your sister is dead.
But, man – I mean – can a Queen get a little respect around here? Might it be possible to, like, at least say adieu to her too when you’re leaving?
But that’s the thing – in the patriarchy, only men are really PEOPLE. They are all that matter. Ophelia only matters as the daughter of a man, the (ex) girlfriend of a man and the sister of a man. In and of herself, she’s not that important.
And I fear this is true of Gertrude, too, a little bit. I don’t like to think that way. I love this play. I love my man, Shakespeare. But this is a patriarchal moment to be sure.
The Hamlet Project 