I have timeline questions. What else was happening two months ago? If Hamlet can be trusted as a time resource, we assume that Gertrude married Claudius a month after Claudius killed Hamlet Senior. At what point AFTER that wedding does this play take place? And how long do the events of the play take to occur? How long does it take to get to France and back? And was Laertes in France when this supposed gentleman from Normandy showed up? Did the gentleman of Normandy arrive at the same time as the murder? That’s my question. If even such a person exists. It is a curious time to choose, given the circumstances.
Author: erainbowd
For youth no less becomes The light and careless livery that it wears Than settled age his sables and his weeds, Importing health and graveners.
While I wouldn’t trade the age I live in now for anything (No age has yet been better for women, not that this one is super great but) I do see the appeal of a time when one could know the age of a person simply by what they wore. Ah, sables and such! That there is a man in his settled age! Ah, a ribbon in his cap! That must be a light and careless youth! One look, I’m done! I know so much, just by the clothes!
In our age of freedom, though, you need to look more closely to determine someone’s age. A grandmother might just as easily wear her hair in pigtails. A child might be dressed in a business suit. A man might dress as a woman. A girl may dress as a boy. A person may just in an non-gendered way entirely. We can no longer make any assumption about anyone – even what might have been the most basic understanding before. I firmly believe that looking closer is a better way. When we look without thinking, we inevitably leave someone out and lose sensitivity. But I do understand the longing for seemingly simpler times.
The question though is – simple for Who? Only those who could easily conform. So…in the end, I’m happy to not know a person’s age by their sable. Maybe their age is none of my business.
A very riband in the cap of youth, Yet needful too.
Ribbon comes from riband. This is very logical. I like when etymology is this logical. Apparently, the Dutch ringhband is also related. That is, a ribbon was once a ring band – and become ribbon, probably just by dropping the d. And someone bedecked in ribbons is ribboned – which could sound an awful lot like riband. That’s satisfying.
This metaphor, though, something is a decoration, a little flourish on youth – but also necessary? Hmmm. Claudius? What ARE you doing here? Trying to diminish, then build back up? Is this in the gaslighting playbook?
What part is that, my lord?
This is like a line that a straight man in a comedy duo would use. I can almost hear it like a “How hot is it, Lou?” That heads to a “It’s so hot, the frog’s legs are frying themselves on the lilypads!” Or something.
This is probably an old vaudeville structure, I’d wager. And vaudeville likely came from earlier comedy tropes. But of course this scene isn’t a comedy duo. (Though I would very much enjoy a vaudeville style version of this scene.) It is, though, a masterful shift in status and power. The last time we saw him, Laertes came in all ready to overthrow the king and by this scene, he’s playing the straight man to Claudius’ epic riffs. Claudius has skills. He’s a villain, sure – but like a lot of villains, he is skillful.
Your sum of parts Did not together pluck such envy from him As did that one, and that, in my regard, Of the unworthiest siege.
Envy is plucked, isn’t it?
It’s like a string, tightly wound in ourselves and mostly it just stays there silent and taut. But we encounter someone or something that triggers envy and that trigger takes its fingers and plucks that string.
And envy vibrates – taking up space and reverberating around the self, no matter how you wish it would be silent.
You have been talk’d of since your travel much, And that in Hamlet’s hearing, for a quality Wherein, they say, you shine.
I’m trying to imagine what I could be manipulated with in this way. Like – I came back from traveling and someone was like, “Everyone’s been talking about you since you got back. They’re saying you shine at this one thing.”
What would I imagine that one thing to be?
I mean Claudius would ultimately seem to be aiming at Laertes’ fighting skills – skills that trigger a particular sort of masculine pride perhaps? What do I have pride in that could be that easily exploited? I feel like I’d have trouble believing any particular flattery. Maybe that’s an advantage of being a woman in patriarchy, it’s harder to buy the bullshit.
It falls right.
When Feldenkrais worked with Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, he taught Gurion how to stand on his head by teaching him how to fall. We cannot avoid falls entirely. Our bipedal structure is unstable and we are bound to tumble at some point or another. If we learn how to fall better, though, we learn how to bounce back from our inevitable missteps a lot more easily.
I still have a lot to learn in the falling department. I am still very disoriented by a sudden change in orientation. I wouldn’t slide to the ground voluntarily. I’m not ready to study martial arts, for example. But I can see my training at work when I end up on the ground. It used to be that any misstep I might take would end in injury. A step into a pothole would dramatically turn my ankle. A fall to the ground would break my wrist or chip my elbow. But I know my body has learned a thing or two because I took a major tumble on a slippery rock about a week ago and while I fell and slid and rolled and got my entire side and back covered in mud, I came out unscathed. I fell right.
The rather, if you could devise it so That I might be the organ.
REJECTED PLANS for murdering HAMLET with LAERTES as the ORGAN
1) Claudius offers Hamlet pipe organ lessons. Laertes hides in the hollowed body of the fake organ and as soon as Hamlet presses the F# key, releases the pointiest pipe and runs it through him.
2) Death by a giant dressed up penis. Claudius rents Laertes a giant cock costume (like the one Russell Howard’s fan comes out in in his special) and Hamlet laughs himself to death while Laertes chases him.
3) Claudius puts Hamlet on the organ donor list and when someone requests a kidney, after removing Hamlet’s kidney, he replaces it with Laertes who has shrunk himself down to kidney size and wrapped himself in an organ disguise. Once installed in Hamlet’s body, he breaks loose and causes havoc as the Wandering Kidney of Denmark.
4) Claudius brings Hamlet to a giant map of the (as yet undiscovered) United States and they tour the many states of the future. Claudius has hired many people to dress up as each state and then discuss their qualities. Laertes, as Oregon, waits in the West to drown him in micro-brewed beer.
My lord, I will be ruled;
If I were a notebook, I would not be ruled. I would have clean pages – sometimes called plain. I would thrill at the possibilities that might emerge across my canvas.
Words, yes, it could be words. Words in any orientation – large, small, slanting up or down. Sometimes a mix of all.
But there might also be drawings, or diagrams or maps. Those things might be possible on ruled pages but the ruling will always hang out in the background – projecting the words that are expected to fit in between the lines.
Laertes will be ruled.
I will be open pages.
And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe, But even his mother shall uncharge the practice And call it accident.
And we have landed here on the crux of the thing. Claudius has meandered his way here to “his death” and it all starts to get a whole lot clearer a whole lot faster. There’s a complex wind up and then it’s a very simple pitch. Boom. He’s gonna die and it’s gonna look like an accident. Boom. How you like that, Laertes? Boom.
The Hamlet Project 