Hmm. Thou. Informal. Hmmm.
And…maybe a little disingenuous. Claudius isn’t stupid. He’s probably fully aware of what Hamlet means by all of it. I just keep wondering who the show is for? Claudius isn’t being particularly direct. And he could be. It feels like he’s putting on a show.
But who is it for?

This is very odd. Very odd.
What IS Claudius responding to here? And which Claudius is this?
I mean – I’d expect Claudius to say something like, “Come on, Hamlet, stop messing around.”
But he doesn’t. He says, “Alas, alas!”
Which is really more like something Gertrude would say.
It feels like he might be putting on a show of grief. But who is the show for? Hamlet?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? He didn’t say, “Alas, alas!” to them.
It’s just such an oddly out of character thing to say.

Whenever I think, “This place is ridiculous. I really need to get out of here.” Then the next thought is the inevitable, “Where?”
Not Detroit. Though I’ve considered it…it is a good place for artists. But the problem with the performing arts is that they require a critical mass of people with performing arts talent. Unless you’re willing to do a lot of teaching and waiting for those newly taught to get ripe enough to get good. I do not have the patience for this sort of thing at this stage in my life.

If I could go anywhere, it would be London. But immigration laws do not allow it. I’d also happily enjoy Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver. But again…immigration laws…so in my native land, I feel pretty stuck with NYC, no matter how crazy it makes me.
Sure, I’d like to see some more trees on a regular basis and to not have to spend every waking hour worrying about money. But in this country, the critical mass of talent and skill and people in that zone is such that I cannot leave. Because leave? And go where?

I’ve seen this played with a period as well. As in, “At supper.” As in, “At supper, you asshole. Please don’t fuck with me.”

O now the King’s calling the dead body “Polonius”?
It’s been dead body this and body that all this time but now… it’s Polonius. When it suits his purposes, he will give the dead body its identity.
It is hard, I grant him, to reconcile a person with their dead body. Or to un-reconcile them.
In the last few days, I’ve thought much more deeply into the circumstances of my grandmother’s body’s journey to ashes than I would like to have considered. An error in cremation has sent my imagination on an uncomfortable journey with her dead body. From the hospice to bags to slabs to fire… and never, even though I know she is no longer in there, never was I able to think of her as a thing and not as a her. Claudius here has gone straight to thing and returns Polonius to a him when talking to Hamlet.

I have leadership and authority on the brain.
This line has an authoritative ring.
I rarely sound authoritative.
I realized this when teaching young people about directing. I remember a game of Mother May I (AKA Grandmother’s Footsteps) that opened my eyes.
When in the role of the Mother, the leader is charged with telling the others what to do. The usual method is:
“Betty, take 3 giant steps forward.”
And Betty is supposed to reply, “Mother, May I?”
And the leader says, “Yes, you may.”
Anyway – in playing this with a group of kids, I noticed a lot of them saying, “Betty, could you take 3 giant steps forward?”
At first I suggested that they be more direct – and then I realized that they were doing exactly what I had done.
It was me who was leading by saying, “Could you…” instead of direct instruction. So I worked on becoming more direct. But also on embracing a softer leadership that could ask, “Could you…”

Of course the king is most concerned with Hamlet’s location. He’s probably worried about him popping out behind an arras at any moment. Is he hiding in a cabinet? The broom cupboard? Check under the bed before you go to sleep.

You could be eating breakfast – and BLAM – he comes out from under the tablecloth. There could be a Hamlet hiding in the garden, behind a tree during an afternoon walk – or a Hamlet under the stairs – or a Hamlet rolled up in a rug like Cleopatra delivered to her lover. There could be a Hamlet in the basement, a Hamlet in the throne room, a Hamlet in the hall.
He could be anywhere.

I decided to re-write this one because the first one was just so brief and so disconnected from the line and the spirit of it was so different than the sense of the line. I wrote that one after the first day of a process I’d been painfully nervous about but which had turned out beautifully. Nothing had befallen because it went so much better than I feared.

Now, today, in a year wherein it feels like something new and horrible befalls us very day, I actually received good news, which is overriding all the bad for me. So once again, I have a good artistic surprise on a day when I’m encountering this line that asks what bad has happened.

Throw a rock in this town and you will hit an actor. Unless you need one for your project and then somehow they all disappear.
I cast more than I need because I know I will lose them. And then I lose more than I expected – and I have to expand my search, beyond my first tier.

That’s when I start looking around me whenever I find myself, wondering, “Are you an actor? Might you be free tomorrow?” And no one looks like they are. I see marketing execs and social media managers and salespeople and graphic designers – but I can’t spot any actors.

Normally, they drive me crazy by appearing to be everywhere. Today they must all be at auditions.

Ooooh. An instance of historical context being very illuminating. Apparently, this line has a lot in common with something Guy Fawkes said. This boosts up Claudius’ villain cred. Because Guy Fawkes was clearly enemy # 1 and if Claudius is using his language, it is a cue to the audience for how to feel in this moment. Even if you don’t know it consciously, if that language is in the water, it might be working on your villain responsiveness.