I’m always asking my fella how he’s doing even when I know he won’t tell me.
I ask when he comes in, silent and illegible.
I ask when he’s boiling with fury.
I ask when his eyes are frozen open like a picture of eyes instead of actual eyes.
I ask when I know and when I don’t.
He tends to either lie or joke or deny.
“Great!” he’ll say, when he’s clearly not.
Or today, I asked, “Are you okay?” and he said, “Define okay.”

The Queen here is asking in the third person.
She’s probably asking him in his kingly persona – or she could be asking someone else how he’s doing. Someone who’s gotten to him first – someone who’d know how he is.
Or maybe he’s like my fella and wouldn’t say when he isn’t okay.

She does, though. That’s the thing. That oath the lady just swore is too damn much. And even though the Queen could easily be implicated in remarking on it, she does – because that oath is off the charts over the top. Seconded only by the previous speech’s over the top-ness.

And so far, there’s no action in this play. It’s just these two boring royals over swearing. The dumb show before it is much more interesting. And always raises the question for me of why Claudius waits so long to freak out about it. Is he not paying attention during the dumb show? Or is it a slow build and he’s simmering all through the epic speeches and then boils over eventually.

The Queen takes a lot of crap but in so many ways she is quite sensible. And this line becomes one of the world’s favorite zingers.

Sometimes I think of the queen as Arkadina in The Seagull, a woman who may love her son but is also struggling with her sexuality. She is pulled toward men who can engage it, who make her feel like a woman, not just someone’s mother.
I imagine that the Queen might just wish for her son to give it a rest already and let her enjoy her newfound vitality with her new husband.
But of course, her son couldn’t possibly and so she must continue to woo him back to her, to sit by her side sometimes.

This line makes me think that the Queen genuinely does want Ophelia for her son. She says so at her funeral, that she hoped Ophelia would have been Hamlet’s wife and the way she talks to her here would seem to confirm it.

It’s quite a hopeful line in its way. And it does give Ophelia a lot of credit. Could a girlfriend’s virtues bring her boyfriend back from the brink of madness? Possibly. If they were accompanied by a lot of active help.

And maybe that’s what the Queen is implying? Is listening one of Ophelia’s virtues? Understanding? Problem-solving? We don’t see any evidence of any of those things in the text but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them.

Fact is, we rarely see Ophelia without her father until after his death, is she herself when he’s not around? Or is her self based entirely on her relationship with her father? The fact that she falls apart at his loss points in that direction.

But all of that is beside the point. Here Gertrude hopes that Ophelia has the power to retrieve Hamlet. It is the only exchange between two women in the play, mad scene excepted.

Beauty, yes, beauty is the maddener. It is Ophelia’s beauties that might make a man run mad. Not her spirit, not her intelligence or herSELF, really. It is her beauty.

“For which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?”

With women, it is always their beauty. Men in poetry, songs and stories, they are struck dumb by beauty, inspired by beauty, could run mad by beauty. And it becomes a woman’s beauty that incites a man to rape her. It’s a woman’s beauty that turns a man into a beast. He will blame her beauty, claim no responsibility for it – in the face of such extraordinary beauty, what was he supposed to do? Beauty is often framed as dangerous for men but it seems to me even more dangerous for women. Nothing will get you into trouble faster than the possession of an unusual amount of beauty.

I can’t help thinking that Ophelia must be particularly beautiful because she has the blandness of the exceptionally beautiful. Not that all exceptionally beautiful people are bland – I’ve met some really gorgeous brilliant firecrackers. But some people get away with great blandness due to their beauty.

My edition has a period followed by a dash. I’m not sure what that’s meant to signify – a strange interruption of self? Is it because the next sentence begins with “And”? (And if you’ve spent any time with my writing, you may have noticed this is one of my favorite grammar rules to break.)

Gertrude chooses to say, “I shall obey you.” in response to a request that seems softer than a command by virtue of its beginning with “Sweet Gertrude.” There are layers in “I shall obey you.” – a conceding to the request, if not the premise of the request somehow. It is a careful answering of one thing without addressing the other. It feels coded.

I know there have been periods in which I had idle time – long stretches of afternoons in which there were jigsaw puzzles and card playing or leisurely dips in the pool. Times where “what should we do?” meant anything instead of the next means to meet a goal, or the next thing on the To Do list.

It’s not that I don’t have moments of leisure but it’s more like I STEAL them now, guiltily playing a little computer game when I should be sending emails or throwing up my hands and watching a TV show in the midst of writing an application.

It feels like a pastime is something one has when one has a large stretch of time in which to do nothing, in which any number of pleasurable activities could happen.

I didn’t grow up with a lot of social rituals. I learned some basic manners but not a whole lot of rules. My friend, though, grew up with a whole host of guidelines. She knows what fork to use at every occasion and is exacting in her speech.

And these things seem to be primarily a matter of class, the more social status you have as you grow up, the more ways to do things incorrectly emerge. In thinking about this Queen’s concern about Hamlet’s reception, it makes me wonder if she’s asking about his manners as much as anything.

A Royal family would, I imagine, have the most etiquette of all. There would likely be very precise ways of receiving guests, of greeting them, of parting company, of interacting while with company. The queen could be asking if her son had a good rapport with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but she could also be asking if he’s retained his social control, if he still has his manners, if he at least continues to follow the code.

But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.

Sometimes, when I see people walking down the street staring at their phones, reading their texts or their emails, or frantically typing, I think “That’s it for our civilization. We’re all going to blindly walk and text ourselves into manholes made into Human Traps and step into our distracted doom.”
But it sounds like people thought the same about books in the old days. If Hamlet is coming reading, he’s not just hanging out with his book in the window seat, he is walking and reading. Now, I love to read and I love to walk but only when I just can’t bear to not finish the paragraph I started on the train do I walk and read at the same time. In the city, particularly, it’s a risky behavior.
I guess, though, if you’re the Prince- you’ve got hallways and ballrooms to walk through and even if people unexpectedly appear in those places, they are likely to quickly get out of your way.
Doesn’t really work like that for us common folk. We could be turning the pages and find ourselves running into a prince.