Status Point of Interest! The sailors use “You” to address Horatio but he uses “Thee” to address them. Does this suggest that Horatio is some kind of recognizable gentleman? And are sailors just automatically people you talk down to?

Horatio is a little bit mysterious in his way. We don’t know much about him. We know he’s someone (not from Denmark) who Hamlet trusts. He’s also someone the guards at the top of the play trust. But beyond that, we have only a handful of facts.

So, WEIRDLY, this little bit of information about how sailors talk to him and he talks to sailors manages to reveal a tiny bit more.

See, this is interesting. It doesn’t seem it from the outset. The basics of the information aren’t much to speak of. He’s just saying the letters are probably from Hamlet.
What’s interesting is that he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say, “I bet these are from Hamlet.” Or “I wonder if Hamlet’s writing to me.” No.
There’s this extra bit of information here – a suggestion that he can’t imagine anyone else in the world writing to him. Which is odd, considering that he’s not from Denmark. Theoretically, he should be receiving letters from his family in, say, Italy. (I’m guessing Italy because of his name – but of course Marcellus and Barnardo and Francisco are all also Italian names and they seem more native to Elsinore.)
Doesn’t Horatio have any other friends? Does he not have any family? Why is no one writing to him but Hamlet? Does he have friends and family but he’s just not let them know where to find him? This raises a lot of questions for me about Horatio. What is going on with him? Why IS he in Elsinore?

Here in early 2017, there is a tremendous crisis of immigration in progress. The travel ban held refugees, residents and visitors alike at the border. Even with the ban overturned by the court, there is still injustice at the border – people turned away for nothing, for no other reason than their religion or their politics. There is constant talk of extreme vetting of refugees. And yet – there is already extreme vetting. It takes years and constant paperwork and interviews and only the squeaky cleanest mothers and children mostly make it through that process.
There is no metric that these folks have not already been measured by. At least no reasonable metric. But we have come to an age of no reason. And refugees that were bound for our shores are now in limbo.
Meanwhile, our kinder saner neighbors and friends, take in refugees by the boatload. Greece and Italy take the lion’s share. Canada picks up our slack. But here we are – some of us with our arms open –but there are guards at the border who would handcuff a 5 year old child to a pipe and deny a baby food for 18 hours.
Immigrants and refugees have been proven to work harder than most natural born citizens. Their contributions are measurably immense to a nation’s progress. To hold them away diminishes us – not just in making us seem unkind – but in failing to benefit of the refugees collective wisdom.

Please. Let them come in.

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This is still true two years later. I want to weep for five thousand years.

It’s interesting that he uses “What” here, instead of “Who.” I’m not quite sure why – but it does seem like “What” may be SLIGHTLY more specific than “Who.” If someone asked me “Who are you?” I’d have a lot of answers. I’d likely start with my name, maybe include my nationality, likes, dislikes and general aspects of my personality. If asked, “What are you?” I’d go with “artist.” Unless I was being asked by an alien from another world or an animal – and then I’d go with “human.” Maybe even “human artist.”