The multitude of ways to dismiss someone
Can be sort of overwhelming
We create so many kiss-offs, we humans.
We tear, we rip, we give the finger
We grind into dirt
We laugh
We wave off
We punch.
Claudius
Young Fortinbras, Holding a weak supposal of our worth, Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death Our state to be disjoint and out of frame, Colleagued with the dream of his advantage, He hath not fail’d to pester us with message, Importing the surrender of those lands Lost by his father, with all bonds of law, To our most valiant brother.
Someone else in this play finds the state
To be out of joint.
It’s not just Fortinbras.
Suddenly though, I picture the castle
Or the scene
Or the stage
Framed slightly askew
With bits of it obscured
And the under matte exposed.
Things are held together loosely
Wood doesn’t quite meet wood where it ought.
The rungs of the chair are just barely holding together.
Here we have Claudius attempting to convince
This cobbled together court
That it is sound
That its joints will hold
While they try not to fall out of their broken chairs.
Now follows that you know.
Let me break it down for you again
Let me tell you what you know
Everything I’m about to say is common knowledge
The information
That will shortly
Fall out of my mouth
Like water from a fountain
Flowing from one word to the next word
With no seeming end
Is not news.
If I tell you it is not news
I am asking you to listen
For something other than fact.
I am preparing your ears
For something
Else.
For all, our thanks.
For the smell of bread baking
For feet striking the floor in soft rhythm
For harmony
For the way one part of the body relates to another
For the elevation of art
For ideas that bust the worldview open, cracking its glasses, sending it scrambling
For stories that move, that inspire, that relate, that make you wanna do something
For songs that expand you
For arms that hold you
For eyes that smile
For words that comfort and words that heal
For water sliding over a tongue
For curious hands and eyes and minds
For wisdom
For contradictions
For circles of connection
For hope
For faith
For it’s gonna be alright.
Nor have we herein barred Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone With this affair along.
When you said this was a horrible idea
We heard you.
That screaming by the side of the road you did
Don’t think we didn’t notice.
We saw that sign you made.
We heard that protest song.
You make a very good point.
Yes yes
You do.
You did.
Anyway – it’s done now.
Thanks for your input.
Take this pat on the head as our thanks.
It really was terribly kind of you
To share your opinion.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our Queen, Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state Have we, as twere with a defeated joy With an auspicious and drooping eye With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage In equal scale weighing delight and dole Taken to wife.
Picture a piece of wood
Interlocked with another piece of wood.
A joint
Of glue or nail or careful
Interlocking notches.
She is a jointress
An imperial one, no less,
Connecting a martial state.
Is it all hinging on her?
Are the challenges to the borders
Somehow less because she stands there
Connecting state to state
Or king to king.
She is the interlocking piece somehow
A fitted joint
Who must stand connected
Or the state will fall.
Jointress
Bringing together all the opposites
Containing all the dualities
Defeat/joy
Mirth/dirge
Funeral/marriage
Delight/dole
She’s the meeting place.
Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death the memory be green, and that it us befitted To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom To be contracted in one brow of woe Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature That we with wisest sorrow think on him Together with remembrance of ourselves.
The wisest sorrow
He says
Is the one that has a double vision
To see both loss and gain at once.
Discretion has won this battle with nature
Which, of course, assumes that they are on separate sides.
If grief is natural
Doesn’t discretion suggest
The expression of it?
We do not bear our hearts in grief
Or knit our brows in woe
On purpose.
It is natural that we should
But if we do it because reason says we ought to
That is no longer grief
That is no longer woe.
We’re in trappings and suits territory here.
Then, too, if we feel our hearts in grief
And want to knit our brows in woe
And do not allow them forth
Due to some imagined discretion,
Aren’t we then betraying our wisdom?
The wisest sorrow
Would seem to be the one that knows what it is and
Finds its way out
Allowing the heart to heave if it must
Or the brow to knit.
The wisest sorrow is not likely to be
A double-speak speech
Circling around the idea of sorrow.
It is not likely to brag
About the triumph of reason
Or discretion
Over nature.
It is not a bulldozer laughing over fallen trees.
The Hamlet Project 