Chemistry class had nothing to do with science. We filled out exercise sheets as we recounted all that had happened between one or the other of us and a man or boy. Each detail, each word, each exchange was absolutely essential to share. I needed to know what he said to her. She needed to know what he said to me. If, by some chance, we actually had to do some chemistry work in chemistry, like take a test or actually listen to instruction from the teacher, we felt cheated and the desire to know might burst forth into notes or cartoons or on the rare occasion postponed til after school.
The rest of the students in the class were a blur. The teacher, a blur. We were in a bubble of exchange. And no one was getting in there.

Ghosts tend to tell the truth – as if in life
the truth was shackled inside the body
covered with a thin veneer of lies
and as soon as the life has been released,
the truth flies free like a bird from a jasmine bush.
One of the few advantages of death would seem to be
the removal of social constraints and niceties. Maybe it’s like being very drunk, there’s no restraint on the tongue, no further will to lie
or position one’s self in the game.
I wonder though, if some ghosts, constrained by truth throughout their lives, might find death gives them great opportunity and freedom to lie.
“Mark, me, Traveler. I was the King of Schneckendorf when I lived.
Quake in your boots, bow to me – for yea, even in death I have magical powers.
I was very definitely not a blacksmith in life. No, no.
I’m here to tell you where my kingly treasure lies buried.
Tremble and note – lo, for it shall come to you if you pay close attention.
And I am definitely not yanking your chain on this. I very definitely did not
Make chains when I lived. Treasure. King of Schneckendorf Right Here.”

Okay, scholars, bring out the goods.
Is there another mention of Saint Patrick in the canon?
Why, particularly, is Hamlet swearing by Saint Patrick?
Is this the same Patrick with the snakes in Ireland?
I’m told that the snakes were a metaphor for pagans, that Saint Patrick drove a bunch of non-believers away. I need some saintly scholarship here.
Let’s just go with snakes for the purposes of the mythological reference.
Is Hamlet swearing by our expeller of snakes because he’d like to do some driving out of a snake, himself? Patrick (whether it be snakes or heretics) was seen as a cleanser of his nation and much honored for it. Hamlet may be seeking a Patrick to clean out his native land.

Wanted: Danish St Patrick, able to drive out all incestuous, murderous and damnéd Danes. No experience required. All expenses paid.

That’s how you should do it, yes, faith.
All this shouting and flailing about
All this gesturing to one another’s genitals
All this thrusting of the pelvis to indicate a kind of joke,
To make us know it as sexual, to make us understand,
With a big neon sign, that this is lewd –
All of the beating of the breast, the grasping. . .
I don’t think it’s the way, There is no heart in it.
I can empathize, this outsize demonstration of big bold telegraphy choices
Is what we can fall into when we don’t know if we are okay.
When we think our words are not landing, when they’re not ours, really
And we have to broadcast the Shakespeare news, push past the truth of ourselves
And the things we could express heartily –
That is, from our hearts –
That’s the scary stuff.
And it takes a brave guide to pull an actor back from the shouting cliff
To speak gentle truths
To do less
Or more with less.
I have shouted, too. I have probably over-gestured. I have probably strained
Toward making that old joke understood. I know I have. And may again.
But I want to check myself, stop myself from doing it again if the occasion arises. Next time, I want the words to flow through me
Like water through a spout
Heartily – easily, with no force, no stop, no defense between me, my heart,
the words and the audience.

Is there another play that deals with offense as much as this one? Or at least uses the concept? I cannot think of one. People don’t seem to talk much of being offended in Shakespeare, except here. And then later, Claudius names his deed as an offense, a rank one, too.
When we talk about offending these days, it’s usually about language. It’s swearing when the climate abhors rude language. It’s jokes in poor taste or ones that cross the line on stereotypes. Offense has become smaller. A murder is still a criminal offense but the victim’s family wouldn’t call it so – – offense is the least of their worries. It’s the loss, the hole in their lives, the disruption of the ordered universe, the violation of trust that we have in one another that we’ll generally behave, that we will do unto others, that we will hold life sacred.

Every woman, too, hath business and desire –
Or at least, every woman I know. I can’t make sense of a person without some business even if it’s only to wash the dishes. Taking on one’s business and desire seems to be the task of adulthood. You start taking care of business – sometimes in the name of your desire. Sometimes you chase desire with all the ferocity of business and sometimes desire comes upon you like the scent of Jasmine on an afternoon walk, all business, when, poof! Desire wafts by without warning.
Even so, it requires tending to just like business.
Prayer, though, that’s like a step out of the striving of both business and desire. Hamlet sends his friends back into the business of the world while he sets himself up to have that moment out.

The woman they’ve brought in to be my boss has so little social grace
That I had to ask if I could shake her hand after she’d come in in a flurry, all
Mad about something that she seemed to think was my fault, but was entirely hers.
This is how she introduced herself to me, by spinning and spitting,
then sitting behind me. I had to turn around and say, “Can I shake your hand?”
To which she assented (so gracious!)
I wish I had the authority to say this line instead – to simply acknowledge that there need be no more circumstance, no more stilted negotiations, that we shake hands, this once, then part. No need for any more than that.
I think there are some organizations wherein the workers get a say as to who becomes their boss. When universities hire tenure track professors, they ask the students. But they never ask. And if they do you really have to lie.
If they’d asked me in this case, I would have happily acquiesced to whatever they needed me to say, told them they were in the right and then found a way to shake hands and part.

Horatio’s response to this line
Seems to suggest that this is something of a cliché’.
Perhaps it’s an old adage, adapted.
“Villain dwelling in all Denmark” has a heightened sense of musicality
That might indicate an old nursery rhyme form
Or if not an old adage, the analogy might be an obvious one, as in,
“There isn’t an asshole in all of New York
That isn’t a son of a bitch.”
My edition puts a dash between
The “if” and the “then” of the analogy
Which might indicate a disconnected thought,
That Hamlet starts to say one thing and ends with another.
As if he were correcting himself, first calling Claudius a jerkwad, then realizing Jerkwad was too good for the assface that Claudius is.

Locked up tight.

Key, squirrelled away to someplace dark and inaccessible.

I can keep a secret

But sometimes I don’t –

Usually when I have not realized I was meant to box up some revealings

When I didn’t know I shouldn’t say and said.

Secrets are best secreted when they are known to be secret.

This one baffles me. If I weren’t attempting to read closely, I’d probably sail on by a mystery like this. Sandwiched as it is between “How say you then?” and “But you’ll be secret?” you can sort of elide the thought to just continue the line of “Can you keep a secret?” but I don’t see how it connects when I pull it out. Is it a sort of call back to what he just experienced? Are the ghost’s words so unfathomable that the general heart of mankind should not even be able to consider it? Or that the secret could be revealed?
Is “How say you then?” to the ghost, then? Then, the next line perhaps actually questions the heart of man, given the ghost’s position in the earth. As we’ll shortly see, the ghost might have more direct access to the heart of man than the living standing upon it. Or Hamlet could be questioning his own decision, checking in his own man’s heart before confirming the secretness of his friends.
The general heart of man contains quite a lot. I find I can really only truly know the heart of one.