Oooh. Lamond is a brooch? How stylish!
Now – very possibly a brooch did not quite have the association with femininity that it has now. But there’s something about this description that rings of fabulousness. That fashionable Lamond is the gem of the nation, placed like a jewel in a sparkly bit of bling.
Author: erainbowd
I know him well.
Lamond the French horseman and Laertes the Danish traveler.
They meet at a brothel in Paris. Lamond makes fun of Laertes’ Danish accent and Laertes makes fun of Lamond’s stockings. They buy each other drinks, visit the brothel together, maybe engage in some mild homo-eroticisim with a female intermediary.
Two young noble men on the town, preening for each other’s skills as a way of boasting of their own.
It was Lamond who planted the idea of a coup in Laertes’ mind – long before the opportunity arose. Lamond liked to joke that Laertes should be king since he was so self-righteous. It is Lamond’s voice Laertes hears when the crowd shouts “Laertes shall be king.”
The very same.
In the process of trying to put together a piece about my generation, I kept running across how cyclical the world can be. I discovered that pretty much every generation got called the Me Generation in their youth. One article I read pointed out that maybe it’s not that the generation is narcissistic, it’s that young people tend to be narcissists and so as we age, we perceive them as such, seeing those behind us as uniquely selfish when we ourselves were the very same when we were their age.
Upon my life, Lamond.
There was a kid named Lamont in my classes growing up. I wonder if Lamont was once Lamond and if the Lamont I grew up with was somehow, in his soul, descended from the legendary Lamond that Laertes and Claudius are discussing here. This also begs the question of whether this whole exchange might be a reference to some contemporary figure in Renaissance Europe. Is this Lamond referring to some specific Lamond?
A Norman.
The Genius note on this line features a photo of Norm from Cheers. I enjoy that. It’s partly why I love Genius – it has that mix of high and low brow – just like Shakespeare.
Genius began its life as RapGenius and that spirit still runs through the enterprise but maybe the rap side doesn’t show up on the Shakespeare as much as I’d like. I want more gifs. More memes. I should probably do that myself – but I don’t really think in a meme/gif way. I also don’t think in Tweets somehow. I’m not, like, bite-sized, I guess.
It’s always more complicated than that with me. I love the picture of Norm on the Genius note but I start thinking of Normans and I want to add Norman Rockwell and then I want to look up a list of all the other famous Normans and the joke is long dead before I get there.
A Norman was’t?
This response could just as easily be uncommitted small talk type question, a way to continue conversation with someone who has been monologue-ing for some time. It would seem to not be that – because in two lines Laertes will identify said Norman. But…in that case – why ask this question? We have two lines of rather unnecessary information. Laertes re-states something Claudius has already said and Claudius affirms it.
Has Laertes tuned out during Claudius’ fawning raptures on this bewitching horseman? Is this his way back in to this conversation?
So far he topp’d my thought, That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks, Come short of what he did.
What the? Why the immense mythologizing of this random French dude? I mean, I know Claudius is trying to build up Laertes and he’s doing it by building up this other guy who once spoke highly of Laertes – but we assume Laertes knows this guy – because he says, “Lamond” but it’s such an odd thing to do. It’s an odd odd way to flatter – to speak about a third party in such an extreme way. And to go on and on about him. Is this some common trick of rhetoric that seems weird now? Most contemporary productions cut this scene way down but why did Shakespeare put it here? That’s my question.
And to such wondrous doing brought his horse, As he had been incorpsed and demi-natured With the brave beast:
Man-horse.
Horse-man.
Grown together as one creature.
Incorpsed is an amazing word. Especially since it has corpse in it.
I expect this is also where we get incorporated –
Incorpsed –
In the body.
Intertwined corporeally.
Horse man
Man horse
Who leads who follows
Two minds as one
Two bodies as one
Two natures as one
Two natures in one nature
Of course – in this case it is clear who leads and who follows. It is the man who brings the horse to wondrous doings, not the other way round. It is the horse that is such a good follower that they seem two minds, two bodies, two natures in one.
I think rather that one has so dominated the other that his will is no longer visible.
but this gallant Had witchcraft in’t; he grew unto his seat;
The Enchanted Saddle
Once upon a time there was a witch. She had a pretty good witchy life, witchy food on the table, witchy friends and she got up to her witchy business without much interference from busybodies. One day, however, a young man rode by on his horse. He was dressed in fine fabrics and trinkets hung from him like ornaments on a tree. As he passed the witch’s hunt, he spotted her tending to her hedges and he shouted at her. I won’t repeat what he shouted because it was rude and does not bear repeating. But needless to say, the witch did not take kindly to be shouted at. She did not take kindly to rude people with too much authority and too much entitlement.
But she did not shout back at him, no, no. She quickly spoke a charm that halted the horse right where it stood. She giggled as she watched the man try to goad his horse into moving, to no avail, and then she slowly walked into her house. By the time she emerged, the man had dismounted and was looking anxiously around his horse for some small clue as to what prevented them from proceeding. The witch made her slow way toward him and chortled as she went – inwardly, of course, she knew how threatening such men found a laughing woman. She was a witch, she knew how to be careful. As she approached, the man looked up and saw her.
“Damned horse,” he said. “Won’t go for no reason at all.”
“I think it’s the saddle,” said the witch.
“The saddle?”
“Yes,” said the witch. “I took the liberty of bringing you an extra one that I happened to have lying around, taking up space. I wonder if you’d like to have it.”
“I don’t have any small change,” said the man.
“Oh no,” said the witch. “You misunderstand. It’s a present. I will give you this saddle on only one condition.”
“What condition is that?” asked the man, suspiciously.
“That you shout no more at the women that you see. Young or old. Fair or foul. If you take this saddle from me, you agree to such a bargain.”
“Fine,” said the man, who had gotten a look at the saddle and found it to be quite remarkably well made upon inspection.
“Do you promise?” asked the witch.
“Yes, yes,” agreed the man.
“Then it’s a bargain,” said the witch, as she watched him remove the old saddle.
With the new saddle in place, the man hopped astride his horse and the witch whispered her counter charm to get the horse moving again.
The man rode along, quite satisfied with his new saddle and pleased to have gotten it so cheaply. He had not gone far when he noticed a young woman picking flowers by the side of the road. He shouted his approbation of her body as he passed and she blushed in a way that he found very appealing. She seemed to speed up her task and he thought to himself, “I’d like to catch hold of that girl,” so he stopped his horse and began to dismount. He pulled his foot from the stirrup and began to swing his leg around but found that he could not. He tried with the other leg but that too failed to clear the horse.
“No matter,” he thought to himself, “I’ll just hop up and off.”
But when he pushed with his arms, he found he could not raise himself up from the saddle.
The girl had long since hurried away and still he remained, trying ever more desperately to unseat himself from his saddle. When he looked down, he could see that his body had begun to lose its edges, such that he and the saddle were one thing. He cursed and shouted but the more he shouted, the more firmly attached he became.
Finally, he gave up and turned his horse to return to that old woman’s house. The horse, however, had other ideas and the man was no longer its master. The witch, having burdened the horse with a man grown into his saddle, had also charmed the horse to understand its freedom as soon as the man set the enchantment into action.
And for the rest of their days, the horse went where it chose and the man just had to follow.
I’ve seen myself, and served against, the French And they can well on horseback:
1) Claudius was in the wars, too? We know about Hamlet Senior and his sledded pole-axe. But Claudius was in battle?
2) Against the French? When did the French and the Danish get into military scuffles? This is not current, obviously, since Laertes was off to France at the top of the play.
3) But at one point, the Danes were fighting the French on horseback. I guess each nation has its own specialty. The French are good on horses? This seems weird. How did THAT come to be? Or is it just something Shakespeare made up? How about some nitty gritty literary military history? I’d like to know where all this is coming from.
The Hamlet Project 