This kid I was working with as part of his drama club was still sitting while the rest of his classmates stood, ready onstage. When I asked him why he wasn’t up there with them, he told me he was preserving his energy to the last possible moment when he would spring up and do the task. He thought this was a really smart strategy he’d invented. And maybe for him it IS a upper effective strategy. Me, though, I don’t usually go from zero to 60 like that. I have to get myself moving, jamming, running, if I have to, so that my energy isn’t dead by the time we get to my moment.
But that is a lesson in the future for this young actor. He has not yet worked out how much of the work is about energy manipulation, about speed and readiness. And if you have urgency or haste nowhere else, please, at least, put it on stage.

See. You start doing the King’s dirty work and the next thing you know you’re moving dead bodies for him. I mean….it’s a short road. First, you do a little reporting back. Then you do some errands. And then, before you know it, you’re moving freshly killed bodies.

This is generally good policy. Even and especially when speaking with someone who’s just run his blade through another man. If you’re trying to avoid getting a blade through the belly yourself, that is. If you’re keen on death then inciting a murderer, still high on the kill, is probably a great way to go.

In the dream I had last night, I had a playful imaginative quick witted director as a mentor/creative partner. He led me through an adventure – but it was all in a rehearsal studio. Or was it me leading him? I think I created this guy in my dream because he is what I need. The first step will be to determine if such a person exists. The second step will be to go seek him out.

And I imagine the third step will be to finally understand that that director guide is in me.

I’m not always the most INTO the meter of the text. I love that it’s there and when I’m performing it, I will get INTO it – but in this context, it hardly ever pops out at me as something to discuss.
This time is different, though.
There’s something about the rhythm of this pair of lines that sounds like a nursery rhyme to me. Maybe it’s the feminine endings, or the regular irregularity or the words, maybe.
It’s like a 2 line story.
Like one of to those super short stories that are popular these days.
The meter of this whole speech is incredibly disjointed. One gets the sense that this event has sent Claudius into a little bit of a fluster. And yet he pulls out this sort of regular 2 line story in the middle of it.

See, I wondered, when the king just called for Guildenstern and the stage directions say “Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” if this was just an editorial decision to include Rosencrantz. But then I read this line, in which it feels fairly clear that the king is now speaking to them both – and is purposefully including Rosencrantz, when he ignored him earlier. Or maybe it’s not that Guildenstern is preferred by the King. Maybe it’s that they are so quick to enter that the King doesn’t have time to call for Rosencrantz. They’re so fast, they spare him the call. But even if that is so, the king STILL calls Guildenstern first. And Rosencrantz appears with him.

Ho, ho! The Guildenstern plot thickens!
The king calls for Guildenstern
But not Rosencrantz.
This supports my theory about Guildenstern’s transformation and possible deal with the king. He’s somehow earned preferential treatment from the king. He must have given him something – earned his trust by higher levels of betrayal of Hamlet, perhaps?
I’m not sure – but I do think Rosencrantz’s head would be an interesting place to be at this moment in the play.
He comes in with Guildenstern when Guildenstern is called for. And neither of them says a word. But what is Rosencrantz thinking when the King calls only Guildenstern?
Does he know something is up?
Does he feel slighted?
Wonder what happened?
I wonder what happened. The King has them wrapped around his finger.

Why though? Are the people of Denmark going to rise up and protest the murder of a high state official by a member of the royal family? Seems to me that Royals have people killed all the time and no one says a thing about it. It is one of the distinct advantages of being a royal. Claudius is making it sound like it’s going to be quite a difficult PR job to excuse Hamlet from the murder. But would it? I mean, Hamlet is beloved by the people. The laws are pretty loose for royals. He’s already got a great madness excuse in the making.
Who is he trying to impress here? Gertrude?
Why not just turn the authorities loose on him?
(Well, aside from the fact that his way will actually kill Hamlet and trying his nephew/stepson in a court might reveal some facts that the king might not want revealed.)

This is a lovely way to tell time – and poetic, too.
Actually practical and it sounds good.
Which is quite beautiful for a moment that is actually so dark.
Hamlet’s shipping hence is a death sentence.
I wonder if there’s a way to utilize this kind of time telling in an urban setting.
I can’t see any mountains here.

The garbage trucks no sooner shall rustle down the streets.
The sun no sooner shall the fires escape touch.
The rats no sooner shall have gone to bed
The neighbor no sooner shall start shouting
But it will be dawn.

Where ARE they going? Is there, like, an official sending people to England chamber? And why does Gertrude have to go there?
This scene takes place in Gertrude’s closet, after the murder. This “Come away” – makes sense. I mean, yes, by all means get a witness to a crime out of the horrible location where it happened. But – the entrance seems to suggest that there is some passage of time between the closet scene and this one – that maybe it’s in an entirely different location – in which case – Away is weirder.