This makes me think of the difficulties we get into if we take a character’s view of themselves as the view on a play. For so many people, this play is about a wimpy or passive guy who fails to act decisively …but that’s just Hamlet’s opinion of himself. That’s taking his thoughts about his own experience as objective or face value. Lord knows I wouldn’t want anyone to judge me based on my self talk. We, most of us, have a much lower opinion of ourselves than others have of us. Except Donald Trump. I’m sure he does to bed at night telling himself he’s great and tremendous. But he surely doesn’t believe himself deep down in that orange tanned heart.

It’s a shame that Hamlet doesn’t just take off running from here – that he can’t somehow send Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on ahead and then book it out of there, or put on a disguise and join the Norwegian army or whatever. Like – if he escaped here instead of later, during the pirate attack – maybe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wouldn’t have gotten on the boat and they wouldn’t have had their letters switched and they wouldn’t have been executed by the King of England. I mean – I guess I mean it’s a shame for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Obviously a pirate rescue that includes a letter switch and ends with an execution is a much better story.

I would love to have this kind of authority. To be able to say to those sent to control me – “Go on ahead. I’ll catch up.” And have them do it. With my socialization, I’d be all like, “I’m sorry. I need a minute alone. I mean, if it’s okay with you. I mean, it’s fine. No never mind. I’ll come with you now.”

This is interesting as a status transaction. We have a prince talking to a captain in the army. The prince does not reveal his status to the captain but there’s a way wherein this line sort of makes the most sense as being a high status person attempting to lower his status.

If Hamlet were a peasant, it would seem less likely that he would humbly thank someone – the humbleness might be redundant in that case. A peasant doesn’t need to humbly thank anyone – any thank you is humble.

Hmm. Wealth and peace create an imposthume? An abscess? Or maybe – it’s like in the warm hospitable environment of wealth and peace, it becomes much more possible for a dark disease to grow. The way, say, a tropical island – so warm and wet can encourage a rot…but it is not the fault of the island, just the hospitality of the environment.
And in this case, Claudius is likely the disease that wealth and peace allows to multiply.

Lines like this call out the question of what Hamlet would have been like as a king, had he been given the chance. We think he would be a good one because he’s thoughtful and reflective and sees the absurdity of sending 2000 men to their deaths and wasting 20,000 ducats in the process. We think – this is the kind of leader who would keep us out of harm’s way, who would lead with compassion. But then – those leaders don’t often get remembered (or in our day and age, elected.) We do not necessarily value the philosophical leader. It’s almost as though we NEED them to be war-like and intractable so we have something to complain about.

Oh sweet Hamlet. We see how you failed to seize the throne. You clearly have no idea how leaders can be or what wars are fought over.
Claudius would know that “the Polack” would seize any opportunity to engage the Norwegian army – and Hamlet Sr. – who sledded the pole-ax/pollacks on the ice…he too knew the ways of war, I’d wager.
Hamlet, though, is a logical, intelligent, reflective man and sees this situation as a person would, not a politician or warrior.

I am such an American. I hear the word “frontier” and I picture the American West in Frontier Times – but with a Polish flavor. And because I grew up in the 80s, I have a very particular Eastern Bloc image of Poland. And so I put these two images together in this line and it’s, like, lots of blonde people in cowboy hats with little fur caps perched on top, leading horses in front of severe concrete architecture. It’s the Polish Frontier, Little Doggies. Yippee kay yay. (Polish cheers.) The Polish Frontier.

We had a good chat about the military and leadership and how businesses want to learn what people in the military have learned but can’t really be seen as taking consulting or help from the military.
We think of it as so – well, military – as somehow martial.
I, too, have a gut response that says, “Oh, no. Not military influence!” But I’ve spent enough time with military people to know how gracious they can be, how intelligent, how full of the idea of service. Those who learn to lead, really learn to LEAD. I mean, if you’re going to lead someone to their death, you have to be really good at leading in the end.
So there are things to learn, of course. I’m not interested in the hierarchy but the leadership and camaraderie, I’d be very happy to have those at my command.

On the Paris Metro, two missionaries tried to enroll me in their church. They are good at their jobs, if not actually successful with me. It’s funny, too, how they seemed to be having a normal conversation and then suddenly flipped into their story of how moving it is to be with someone who is saying their first prayer – and then they start asking questions – at first they were relatively harmless. Where are you from? How long are you here? Where’d you get those shoes? And then after they’d asked me what my religion was, if I ever wondered why we’re here and I’d not given them anything they could work with, they tried. “What’s your main purpose in life?”
And while I have a very clear answer to this one – to make good art – I didn’t particularly want to share it with them. And FINALLY FINALLY, my stop arrived.