And who is the most politician-like character in this play? Who is the most politic? Who speaks in long-winded obfuscating speeches? Claudius, Claudius, Claudius.

I mean, Polonius, too, to a degree. But he’s not quite as good at the politics. He speechifies but his speeches don’t sound like a politician.

Hamlet himself can get a wee bit political here and there but Claudius is my pick for an association with politics. I imagine he was just as political even before he was king.

But in any case, the gravedigger, this ass, is better than the politician is – just by being alive, of course – but also in his treatment of the former politician’s head. He could bop him on the head with no consequences. The politician has entered the gravedigger’s kingdom now.

This is one of those beautifully inconspicuous bits of invention here. Jowls, normally a noun for one’s jaw or cheeks or hanging flesh, here becomes a verb, a verb like throw, perhaps. Jowl and throw having a couple of letters in common and a sound in common so we can work out what he means when he says the knave jowls it to the ground.
If I were going to use jaw as a verb, I’d use it to mean something related to the mouth, like chew or talk but that does not appear to be what’s happening here. We’re in a zone where a word appears out of its common usage and then poof! We’re also time traveling and this skull and/or jawbone is suddenly shifted to the opening bits of the bible. We get chewing and throwing and killing all at once – all from the actions of this one “knave” described by Hamlet.

I love that the thing the skull could do when it had its tongue is singing. There are so many other things a tongue in a living skull could do – talk, kiss, eat, lick, taste, tie cherry stems into knots – but singing has a poetry that the others lack.
And it is surely not insignificant that the gravedigger has been singing at his work, connecting us from a living, singing man to the skull of a dead one.

But, I think, when I am gone, it will be the singing I’ll miss the most.

Even when I am fully employed, I tend to have a daintier sense than most. It has always been thus. And it always felt as mocked as the word daintier suggests it is. I have been called “too sensitive” my whole life. I have come to learn that this sensitivity is not necessarily a flaw but a trait shared by a small but significant part of the population. That is – there is an official name for a person with a nervous system with this measurable daintiness. I am a Highly Sensitive Person. And it does have its advantages.

Today I can’t remember what those advantages are because I’m feeling overwhelmed, like a canary coughing in a coal mine, trying to get the world’s attention but knowing they won’t see the problem until I’m dead on the floor of the cage.

But there are advantages to this kind of sensitivity.

*

Curiously though, I’m not at all troubled by a gravedigger singing while he digs graves. I think singing will help you in every troubling situation. I’m all for it. And my dainty sensibilities almost never got disturbed by theatre – I always know it’s pretend. In film though, I can’t even watch someone getting an injection without turning away.

We all do it. We chunk our information so we don’t have to think more deeply about things. We get satisfied with simple reductions of complex issues because we just would really rather not take the time to understand. I thought I was better than that but I am not. Not at all.

To the One Who Will Dig My Grave –

Please sing. Sing all manner of songs. You can sing drinking songs, songs of love, songs of hate, sea chanties, dirges, cantatas, hymns, nursery rhymes, dance tunes. Sing every song you know, if you have time. I’d hope that the notes would stick in the earth and keep me company there.
If you’re digging my grave, dig it with music.

This is a curious analysis of Hamlet’s character. Especially by a man who sees him as an enemy. I mean, he is generous and he DOES fail to peruse the foils. But he is absolutely NOT free from all contriving. And surely Claudius knows this. Hamlet contrived to have the story of the murder of his father in front of the murderer. He contrived to escape a ship taking him to his death and not be spotted upon his return.
It is an extraordinary and interesting contradiction.