I don’t get a lot of the contemporary political jokes that Shakespeare included in the plays. I don’t know what I don’t know in this department.
In this case, though, it seems I’ve always know that this line is a reference to the Diet of Worms, named for the town that the convocation was held in.

What I didn’t know was what the convocation was for. I didn’t know that this line was a reference to the reformation. I didn’t know that the convocation was a collection of priests. I’d have to think a lot more deeply about it to work out that layer. Though, certainly, I can’t help but picture some worms dressed up in priest outfits eating a dead body.

For me, this line has always felt like a pop culture pun in a contemporary comedy – a little shout out to the issues of the day – a way to make an audience nod and say, “I see what you did there.”

I can’t help but picture Polonius laid out on a dining room table – naked and covered in sushi, like one of those weird specialized models that people eat sushi off of.
I can’t believe that that is a thing.
But I know that it is
And this line evokes that for me.
It starts with the sushi sitting on top of him and once the gleeful mob has eaten all the rolls it can manage, they break out the knives and forks and start carving into the dish – i.e. carving into the dead naked Polonius. Yum. (Yuck.)

Shakespeare uses both “supper” and “dinner” (I think of Caliban saying, “I must eat my dinner.”) For me, the words are interchangeable. But I know that there are distinctions depending on where you come from. One example I can think of is Dinner being like a big lunch and Supper, the lighter evening meal. But I imagine there are more distinctions. What I’d like to know is A) were there any distinctions between supper and dinner that Shakespeare might be making? Were they interchangeable for him? Or his contemporaries? and B) Was there any perception of these concepts in Denmark at the time?

Is it Suppertime?

This is thought to be a reference to a game like hide and seek.
If this is the case, this is the second reference to a game that Hamlet has made.

RULES for the Fox Hunt Game (as imagined by a theatre maker hundreds of years after the fact)

The group gathers together in a tight cluster. There is a moment of expectancy while everyone waits to find out who will be the fox and who the hounds. The person who feels called to will tag someone on the elbow and shout, “Hide fox, and all after.” And whomever is tagged is the fox and s/he must run quickly and hide. The hounds (everyone remaining) must count to 30 together before pursuing the fox in whichever direction s/he rain. The one to find the fox then chooses the next fox.
And so it goes until all are tired of the game.

There are times when I wish I were religious. This is one of those times. I would like to somehow assure my dying grandmother that she’s on her way to heaven…that I might be able to bring her to Him, as it were.

In times like this, you really can see how religion got invented. Yes, of course, you’re not DYING so much as GOING on to the better place! You’re on your way to reunite with all your loved ones. You’re on your way to see your God. It’s all good news.
But fundamentally, I don’t believe any of this – so it’s hard to say reassuring things like it, even if SHE thinks they’re so.
Maybe we should hire a religious bedside sitter to bring her to Him.

One of the notes on this line references a “well-known” association of Shakespeare’s time for the word “Nothing,” It says it was a well-known euphemism for the vagina. Now. I’m not gonna quibble with an editor – but I would like some evidence for this “well-known” idea. I feel like I can get pretty deep into the weeds with scholarship –particularly bawdy scholarship – but this “well-known” euphemism is not known to me. An “O” I will accept and I can see how an “O” could lead quite neatly to nothing. O looking like ZERO, which equals nothing. Okay.
But maybe because I am possessed of an “O” or a “case” or a “pillicock –hill” or a “pie”, I am not at all keen on the “nothing” euphemism. Nothing? Really?

There are scholarly assessments of what Hamlet might be about to say here. I’d suggest that they probably know what they’re talking about – but as the words are not ACTUALLY here, they COULD be anything we want. I want them to be something like:
The King is a thing
That goes ring a ding ding
And sometimes kaching
When the meter’s running.

But I know it is definitely NOT that.
The thing is, though, imagining it to be so would create a very specific way to say the only part that is actually heard. It’s a moment for some possible comedy.

I remember this being explained to me as being a reference to the political body…and it was never clear to me if both bodies were the political body or just one. But now, I’ve gone ahead and looked this up and it sounds like this is a “well known saying” of the time. Maybe it’s a little like saying, “You have a right to remain silent” in our culture – a recognizable official thing to say. It highlights Hamlet the clown but it’s also Hamlet the verbal wit. He’ll draw on anything to make his point.

The thing about this is that the speech, asleep, will, eventually, one would imagine, awake.
I bet this particular knavish speech wakes right up right about the time that Rosencrantz realizes what was in that letter from the king.

My partner used to make fun of me for being such a Charles Dickens fan. He thought Dickens was all picturesque urchins and holiday sentimentality. Then I convinced him to read Bleak House and he discovered how much there was to love. He sent me hilarious up to the minute reactions to the book via text. His exclamations about Lady Deadlock were some of the best texts I’ve ever received.
We’ve had a kind of Dickens book club ever since. We don’t read them at the same time- but between us, we are both reading a Dickens novel and each of us reading one that the other has read before. I am reading Oliver Twist. He is reading Our Mutual Friend. And we are enjoying one another’s mutual journey through our respective books. We don’t talk much about politics or current events. We don’t talk about other people. We talk about Fagin and Riderhood, Mr. Bumble and Mr. Venus.

Now my partner rails at a culture that led him to believe that Dickens was a twee author reserved for carolers and ceramic villages.