1) Claudius was in the wars, too? We know about Hamlet Senior and his sledded pole-axe. But Claudius was in battle?
2) Against the French? When did the French and the Danish get into military scuffles? This is not current, obviously, since Laertes was off to France at the top of the play.
3) But at one point, the Danes were fighting the French on horseback. I guess each nation has its own specialty. The French are good on horses? This seems weird. How did THAT come to be? Or is it just something Shakespeare made up? How about some nitty gritty literary military history? I’d like to know where all this is coming from.
Claudius
Two months since, Here was a gentleman of Normandy:
I have timeline questions. What else was happening two months ago? If Hamlet can be trusted as a time resource, we assume that Gertrude married Claudius a month after Claudius killed Hamlet Senior. At what point AFTER that wedding does this play take place? And how long do the events of the play take to occur? How long does it take to get to France and back? And was Laertes in France when this supposed gentleman from Normandy showed up? Did the gentleman of Normandy arrive at the same time as the murder? That’s my question. If even such a person exists. It is a curious time to choose, given the circumstances.
For youth no less becomes The light and careless livery that it wears Than settled age his sables and his weeds, Importing health and graveners.
While I wouldn’t trade the age I live in now for anything (No age has yet been better for women, not that this one is super great but) I do see the appeal of a time when one could know the age of a person simply by what they wore. Ah, sables and such! That there is a man in his settled age! Ah, a ribbon in his cap! That must be a light and careless youth! One look, I’m done! I know so much, just by the clothes!
In our age of freedom, though, you need to look more closely to determine someone’s age. A grandmother might just as easily wear her hair in pigtails. A child might be dressed in a business suit. A man might dress as a woman. A girl may dress as a boy. A person may just in an non-gendered way entirely. We can no longer make any assumption about anyone – even what might have been the most basic understanding before. I firmly believe that looking closer is a better way. When we look without thinking, we inevitably leave someone out and lose sensitivity. But I do understand the longing for seemingly simpler times.
The question though is – simple for Who? Only those who could easily conform. So…in the end, I’m happy to not know a person’s age by their sable. Maybe their age is none of my business.
A very riband in the cap of youth, Yet needful too.
Ribbon comes from riband. This is very logical. I like when etymology is this logical. Apparently, the Dutch ringhband is also related. That is, a ribbon was once a ring band – and become ribbon, probably just by dropping the d. And someone bedecked in ribbons is ribboned – which could sound an awful lot like riband. That’s satisfying.
This metaphor, though, something is a decoration, a little flourish on youth – but also necessary? Hmmm. Claudius? What ARE you doing here? Trying to diminish, then build back up? Is this in the gaslighting playbook?
Your sum of parts Did not together pluck such envy from him As did that one, and that, in my regard, Of the unworthiest siege.
Envy is plucked, isn’t it?
It’s like a string, tightly wound in ourselves and mostly it just stays there silent and taut. But we encounter someone or something that triggers envy and that trigger takes its fingers and plucks that string.
And envy vibrates – taking up space and reverberating around the self, no matter how you wish it would be silent.
You have been talk’d of since your travel much, And that in Hamlet’s hearing, for a quality Wherein, they say, you shine.
I’m trying to imagine what I could be manipulated with in this way. Like – I came back from traveling and someone was like, “Everyone’s been talking about you since you got back. They’re saying you shine at this one thing.”
What would I imagine that one thing to be?
I mean Claudius would ultimately seem to be aiming at Laertes’ fighting skills – skills that trigger a particular sort of masculine pride perhaps? What do I have pride in that could be that easily exploited? I feel like I’d have trouble believing any particular flattery. Maybe that’s an advantage of being a woman in patriarchy, it’s harder to buy the bullshit.
It falls right.
When Feldenkrais worked with Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, he taught Gurion how to stand on his head by teaching him how to fall. We cannot avoid falls entirely. Our bipedal structure is unstable and we are bound to tumble at some point or another. If we learn how to fall better, though, we learn how to bounce back from our inevitable missteps a lot more easily.
I still have a lot to learn in the falling department. I am still very disoriented by a sudden change in orientation. I wouldn’t slide to the ground voluntarily. I’m not ready to study martial arts, for example. But I can see my training at work when I end up on the ground. It used to be that any misstep I might take would end in injury. A step into a pothole would dramatically turn my ankle. A fall to the ground would break my wrist or chip my elbow. But I know my body has learned a thing or two because I took a major tumble on a slippery rock about a week ago and while I fell and slid and rolled and got my entire side and back covered in mud, I came out unscathed. I fell right.
And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe, But even his mother shall uncharge the practice And call it accident.
And we have landed here on the crux of the thing. Claudius has meandered his way here to “his death” and it all starts to get a whole lot clearer a whole lot faster. There’s a complex wind up and then it’s a very simple pitch. Boom. He’s gonna die and it’s gonna look like an accident. Boom. How you like that, Laertes? Boom.
If he be now return’d As checking at his voyage, and that he means No more to undertake it, I will work him To an exploit, now ripe in my device Under the which he shall not choose but fall:
Claudius! Is this how you think? Are we seeing a Claudius thought being formed as you talk? Is that what’s happening here? I mean – this is one long meander-y sentence. I feel like Claudius must be one of those people who just starts talking and hopes he’s worked out what he’s going to say by the time he gets to the end of his thought.
It makes me think of a bit of advice that Anne Bogart gave in her book about directing. It was to just start talking – to say “I have an idea!” and start walking to the stage and just do whatever occurs to you as you go. I feel like Claudius is doing that here. His wind-up is the stuff about Hamlet’s return and then boom – he’s at an idea – a device. OR – he’s at the moment where he declares he has an idea but is probably not yet clear what it is.
To thine own peace.
I suppose this is all any of us can ask for. The world is full of chaos and discord. To find peace outside of ourselves may well be impossible. To focus on all of the disturbances out there – the wars, the political unrest, the catastrophic weather somewhere. There will always be something to disrupt the peace. But our own peace – that is more possible. It becomes less and less possible the closer any of those things comes to home. To find thine own peace in a war zone is a real feat of internal peace-making. To find mine own peace while my government implodes and causes chaos in the whole population – well, it’s not as easy as it once was. The things outside of us do impact our own peace – but I suppose that’s the work. That is what the job is – to find thine own peace even when it seems as though there is none to be had.
I just watched a video of Nelson Mandela coming out at a Johnny Clegg concert and when asked to say something, said, “It is music and dancing that makes me at peace with the world and at peace with myself.”
That’s a man who knew how to find his own peace when it was not easy.
The Hamlet Project 