I dig tumbling as a metaphor for sex. It has a nice end over end quality – it has a rolling, a sense of movement. Especially as a metaphor for a deflowering (itself a metaphor, of course.) As a metaphor for a first sexual encounter, tumbling has a less intrusive quality than most. Deflowering, as nice as it might sound, is actually a little violent in its cutting off of a flower from a plant.
I feel like all the images tend to come from a man’s perspective – what it’s like to thrust one’s self in to a place where no one has been before. Tumbled, for me, while it does have a falling magic in it, is somehow softer – more pleasurable, more mental, perhaps – as tumbling with someone requires a togetherness – an actual coupling instead of a single thrusting actor.

This is curious. So much of Shakespeare performance features single thrusting actors. Coincidence?

The podcast I was listening to featured a chat between two hosts in their early 30s and a guest in his late 30s. They discussed how men in their 20s were basically assholes and pretty worthless – especially in relationships. It was an interesting perspective – and one that originated in the male guest, though the female host agreed. I’d never heard this assertion before – but I can’t say as I can refute it.

I wish I’d heard it while I was IN my 20s. It would have helped me understand so much. I found it so hard not to think of all men being assholes when I was in my 20s and it was mostly because all the men who were my age were in the midst of that dark period. I might have internalized a lot less self-hate and confusion if I’d understood that it was not me but the men around me. In Jill Soloway’s TIFF talk,  she talked about how so much of the music of our youth was about grooming young women for men’s consumption. And not just the music, of course. We were a success or failure based on whether or not some man admired us enough to write a song about our beauty – either literally writing a song — or metaphorically.
But we were being groomed for assholes. And eventually, the good ones figure out how not to be assholes – if I’d known this, I feel I might have had a much more satisfying decade in my 20s.

I looked up Gis. The note says it means “Jesus.”
Okay. I can see that it might be close. But where is the evidence? I looked up “Gis” on it’s own and yes, a few definitions claimed it was “Jesus” but the evidence for that was this line. So…is there no other incidence of the word “Gis” previous to this? And if not, how are we to know that Ophelia means Jesus? Gis sounds more like Dis to me, than Jesus…so I want the origins of this idea. And the evidence can’t be this line.

I can see how it’s a logical conclusion – if she’s swearing by Saint Charity, than, yes, Jesus would make sense. But if this is a word that no one else uses – it’s odd. Is Ophelia inventing pet names for Jesus? I need more information. It’s such a peculiar construction. It bears investigation. If Ophelia isn’t the first/only to use “Gis” then it would be illuminating to know who else did. Maybe that would tell us something else about Ophelia.

There are the allusions to marriage, of course, of course I see that.
The oath being the promise of marriage that without it, the end must come.
But there is, too, the literal thing of Ophelia making an end to her song.
And, la, la, la, she keeps getting interrupted by this pretty talk.
I’m sure she’s heard oaths like this for much of her young life…maybe she’s just asking to be able to finish her song in peace. It’s a reasonable enough request.

Close reading can really change everything. I’ve heard these words dozens of times before. Possibly hundreds. In my imagination, it was Hamlet, post-coital, getting up, getting dressed and sending the woman he’d just deflowered on her way.
But it’s not that. Not at all. It is, in fact, very logical, this story – and turns some assumptions topsy turvy.
The maid in this story goes to a man’s window early in the morning. So early, in fact, that the man is still in bed and undressed. He gets up, puts on his clothes and lets her in. Sure, she’s going to lose her virginity in this chamber but it feels very clear that she is choosing it. She is the actor here.
The guy does turn out to be a cad when we get to the 2nd verse but in this first verse, it could really be a nice sexy story about a lady waking up her Valentine with a bit of Good Morning sexiness.
Also, I like that the guy in this song may possibly be sleeping in the nude.

See – there’s a big assumption here that almost all of us make – which is that she’s talking about Hamlet. It seems like she’s upset about (possibly) losing her virginity to Hamlet. Or rather, she was into the idea at first – since she showed up at the window (and not the other way around) and then she went crazy. Because sex will do that to you when you’re a young virginal girl.
Except. Except. She is saying You and Your. And I know this is crazy – but even if she DIDN’T have an affair with Claudius – she is still talking to him, saying “You” and “Your” which may implicate him in others’ eyes.
There’s something about this as well that makes Polonius’ behavior around Ophelia a lot more interesting. Like, what if Polonius sort of suspected that Claudius was involved with Ophelia? There’s a way that their behavior or this Hamlet/Ophelia issue could really read as a big honking denial, a huge cover up of what was really underneath.
I mean, the numbers of girls who have been sexually abused by men in their lives, family members, family friends, those numbers are staggering. And this kind of familial shuffle around the possible abuse would be pretty normal. As awful as it may be. It’s a stretch, I know. But an interesting layer to consider.

I would like to have a bit of this song prepared for every time someone asks me what anything in Shakespeare means. I feel like, if I sang this every time I was asked for a meaning, if I sang this song that Ophelia’s about to sing, students would work out pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to tell them what anything means.
If I were an English teacher, I would absolutely do this. It’d be exactly the kind of crazy behavior that would make an English teacher memorable and beloved. (Not that that’s why I’d do it…I’m just saying these are the kinds of stories people always report when discussing previous beloved teachers.) I’d sing it and sing it every time someone asked me what it means and eventually some bright bulb would look it up and work out what I was doing and pass that information throughout the class and then eventually, they’d all be singing every time someone asked what it means.

Ophelia doesn’t have a lot of lines. She probably speaks/sings more in this scene than she does is in the entire rest of the play. We tend to value people who have a lot of words. We think people who talk know things. I know that this is not necessarily so…and sometimes talking only covers things up. So there is something poignant about a quiet character asking for “no words of this.”