So he does indeed.

When you’re royal, I guess everyone knows your most mundane habits. They know when and where you like to walk. They know what you take in your tea. They know your tics, your little quirks of preference. They know when you will be where –perhaps even before you know it yourself. And if you were to change, even one of these things, the world might take note and might even decide you’d gone crazy if they saw you putting a lemon slice in your tea if you never had done before.

Gertrude, the Politician, knows how to equivocate. She can say stuff that certain ears wishing to hear one thing or another can hear either one thing or another. She doubts it is no other but the main but here, she can say, “Sure, maybe, something like that” without saying, “No, you nimrods. It seems unlikely that this slip of a girl to whom he has written some bad poetry would inspire full on madness. I think he’s pissed that he’s been dethroned. I think he’s pissed that I married his uncle. I think he’s mourning his father. Anything over that is some mad gravy.”
It is very curious how Claudius is so interested in getting to the bottom of what’s going on with Hamlet, when it’s so clear to his mother.

The Queen doesn’t seem to have much patience for Polonius’ speechifying. Clearly Polonius wants to perform this love letter, to present his case, to make his point in his own time and the Queen just wants him to cut to the chase. Polonius must explain it. Slowly. Perform the authoritative speech.
There are Poloniuses everywhere.

More art, with less matter, please!
All these plays have so much to say but no real art in how they say it. Art first. Matter second. Or, if there is a great deal of matter to put forward – wrap it in layers and layers of art. If your very important play about pig farming is just a “very important play about pig farming” it ceases to be very important to me. I file it under MATTER and with no art to make me care about it, I find that the importance of pig farming is lost entirely in the matter matter manner it was show to me.
This is not to say I don’t want art with matter. Art that is just technique or decoration will blow away very clearly without some matter to keep it on the ground. I guess I’d say three parts ART to one part MATTER. That’ll be very satisfying.

She’s not wrong. She’s missing (perhaps) a crucial bit of information
(some stuff about a ghost and a murder) but it could all be pretty much tied
to these two events fundamentally.
Gertrude’s not a dummy. She understands a few things – both about her son
and the world. Smart cookie, that Gertie.

My Spanish speaking students will often do some delightful things when they encounter an “Ay” in the text. The simple yes becomes impassioned and tinged with a little hint of pain. It is as if they would continue to say, “Ay yi yi” – hands to their hearts like they might have an attack. The queen becomes a lot more telenovela in this case and I dig that.

Why some? Why do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern get attendants, plural? Is it an extra dose of pomp and ceremony? Or a security measure. Seems to me that one attendant could just as easily show these guys where to find Hamlet – but the Queen sends SOME, which is not an exact number but is definitely more than one, that’s for sure.

This “too much changéd” sums up exactly how I feel about someone in my life with mental illness. A little bit of change is inevitable. We are all constantly being changed – By the weather, the culture, the people around us, the choices we make, the things we do. But when someone is struck with what they once called “madness” – it is too much change.
At first, there was just a thunderstorm of madness, an enormous black cloud that descended and threw out lightning and downpours. This, I could weather, no question. I threw on a slick poncho and a wide brim hat and let the wind batter me in whatever direction it would.
Once the storm had passed, though, the landscape had changed, as if we had set sail in Tahiti and ended in Antarctica. We kept waiting for the boat to return but it seems iced in there, too much changed ever to return.

The second in a pair –
This line like a shoe,
Needs its mate to really work.
They are not the same shoe –
One is right, the other is left –
Mirroring each other in their shape
But with a slightly different orientation.

Sum it all up with PROFIT.
The queen is gifted with political speech, able to use many words to make what is essentially a promise of money hidden in the veil of courteous language.
When I played the Queen, we cut most of this line, keeping only the thanks fitting a king’s remembrance. But reading it now, it expands Gertrude’s skill set considerably. She uses profit to suggest what she and Claudius will get out of them -profit more as a metaphor – but in using it to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (to whom she’s promising king’s remembrance) she’s planting a seed for big bucks.
We don’t see politically adept women in the plays and I wouldn’t have credited her as such at first. But she’s good, this Gertrude, she’s a good political match for Claudius.