So where exactly has Hamlet stashed body? On a landing of the stairs? Seems an odd spot. Maybe in a nook by the stairs? Or a closet?
And I’m also interested in the architecture of this building. You go UP the stairs into the lobby? Why is there a lobby in this building? It is not a theatre or a hotel or an office building. Or is it? I find I need a lesson in the origins of lobbies. I think of a lobby as being a public open space that provides the introductory room to the rest of a building. The public aspect seeming to be the most significant part of that definition. And maybe this lobby is a public space.
And maybe it isn’t.
But it is definitely upstairs.
Which is unusual for most lobbies.

Lobby was, it turns out, previously a covered portico…like a loggia. And it evolved to be a monastic cloister. But again – we don’t have a mini monastery at Elsinore, I wouldn’t think. So this lobby upstairs is in this funny moment of evolution with this word. It would appear to be an architectural reference – and that is all. Not monastic. Not public. Just a covered open arena. I think.

Sick burn, Hamlet! Yeah!
This line always feels like such a perfect insult. It’s got the structure of a joke – all that set up …and then pow! A perfect way to tell someone to go to hell without specifically telling him to go to hell. It’s a perfect insult for a guarded world. And a slow burner. Like, the sort where you walk away thinking, “What did he….” Oh! “What?! That guy just told me to go to hell! Or at least implied that I would belong in hell in some way. Damn!”
I find it very satisfying for some reason.

It would be so cool if we could send a message to heaven. If we could be like…”Hey, so what’s up there? Who’s around?”

If there were someone we needed some thoughts from, we could send a messenger to ask. I’d have a lot of questions for Shakespeare, of course. But I’d also like some answers from Jane Austin and Mary Shelly. I’d like to get a message to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I’d also like to hear from Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin.
I’d have messages and questions for Charles Dickens and Remedios Varo. All of course, the recently deceased – the Princes and the Bowies and the Alan RIckmans. I suppose this is why we don’t have a messaging system with heaven as it might become just like email and all those dead people trying to take a rest would just be answering emails all day,

This FEELS like a classic middle school boy response, like, “What’s up?” “The Sky.”
But in fact, given the existential difficulty of the question, “in heaven” is a perfectly logical reply. Polonius is not, really, in his body anymore and in a culture that believes in heaven…he has clearly departed to go there. (One assumes. Although given all his manipulations and spying, it also MAY not be an accurate assumption.)

This suddenly makes me think of a sketch on W/Bob and David where a little kid has a near death experience and goes to heaven where he meets God. And when he’s on a talk show promoting his book about heaven, he lets slip that he saw Hitler in heaven and all kinds of other horrible people we would hope not to find there. His parents disavow him and it’s generally a big mess. But it does point out how complicated having some options about where one goes at death can be. Some believe in heaven but not hell. And who goes where if you do believe in hell can get quite complicated.
Where is Polonius?
Heaven?
Purgatory?
Hell?
He doesn’t get to confess his sins before he dies – so it’s a tricky one.

This is an interesting sequence of lines in that this beggar reference seems quite a bit different than the one a few lines earlier.
Previously, the king and the beggar were side by side, two dead people on a table. Now, the king is consumed by a beggar – (presumably via the fish that ate of the worm that ate of the King). They started off as equals and then by the end of this idea, one has consumed the other. So it’s not even that the king is no better than a beggar…it’s that the beggar wins.

Circle of life!

Insert gif of Lion King here.

Except.
One doesn’t REALLY fish with the worms that eat corpses, does one? I mean – aren’t worms more into vegetable matter? Or, like, dirt? Maggots, for sure, are into corpses. And surely there are many sorts of worms that eat dead bodies – but I’m thinking those aren’t the kind you want to put on a hook and stick in the water. I could be wrong, though. I’d need to do some major research on worms and decomposition and also fishing to be sure.

It is, though. Definitely. For everyone, more or less – either metaphorically or actually. We do, all end up dead. We don’t believe it. We think the things that happen to us will go on forever but…wait long enough and everything will change. The people we thought would always be here, they will all go, either before or after we do. We thought we’d always have Bowie and Prince and Alan Rickman. And because she had always been, it felt as though my grandmother would always be.
It is, even when you know better, hard to believe there will be an end.

Oh, Bienvenue Monsieur et Madame – we have some deliciously new specials on the menu today. We bring to you a royal dish – a plate of roasted king. This skin crisp, fresh, ready to fall off the bone. This one was nice and fat and juicy and will roast up beautifully.

We also have an especially lean cut of a beggar. It is well seasoned and, you’ll see, carries the flavor of many roads, many lands with him.

These are our top sellers and excellent companions to one another, due to the contrast. Look over the menu, see what you fancy. We’ll bring to your table any combination you like.

It would be something if maggots, realizing they were at the top of a food chain, began to take over.
What if they’ve already taken over?
We think we want to eat that ice cream sandwich because it tastes good but really our maggot overlords are sending secret mind control messages to our brains. “Eat the ice cream sandwich,” the message says. “Eat two!”

They try and adjust our diets to get a different flavor of human. There’s, like, a breed of maggots that really hates wheat, so they kicked off the whole “No Carbs” idea.

His crown is one of leaves. The smallest his followers can find. The worm Emperor sometimes wears a toga, like a Roman emperor – and sometimes a tight business suit, like a movie mogul.

His business is dieting. He makes an incredible amount of money in telling people what to eat and what not to. He himself will eat anything but he knows that’s no way to make a living. If he can sell people his “only compost” program or is “Eat Nothing but Protein” or “Only Orange Food for a Week.” He can get an unparalleled amount of people at his meetings for which he charges a hefty sum.

He presides – worm that he is – perched on a chair – crown on his head.