Best Jeopardy category ever.

And the thousand pound one is the most challenging.
The Ghost’s Word for 200 is a snap.
Adieu, Adieu!. Hamlet, Remember me
The thousand pound question is:
“But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine”

This a great example of a line that might make more sense through the lens of
original pronunciation. It may even be a line that helped those who have been
working out what original pronunciation was. I mean “was” just has to have been pronounced in such that it might rhyme with “ass.”

Horatio indicates that Hamlet has avoided the rhyme here. There is some expectation – some sense that “peacock” is the substitute for something else and it just has to be “ass” doesn’t it? In order for the joke to work.
Because it really doesn’t work as it stands.

I’m not hugely interested in OP (original pronunciation) as a performance technique.
As an American, I am skeptical of any codification of how l should speak the text.
I’m interested in the wide variety of accents that one could use. The wider the better.
But THIS is the area where I find it very useful to consider – when it can explain a mysterious text problem – then it becomes VERY interesting to me.

My English friends are much enamored of OP, which I didn’t understand at first.
Not until one of them explained how it liberated the text from RP (received pronunciation,) how it took Shakespeare down off of an upper class pedestal he’d gotten put up on, did the attraction start to make sense to me.
The class distinctions are less of an issue here in the states where speech isn’t so codified. Many people are still fighting for the idea that one doesn’t need to use an English accent when reading Shakespeare – to shift to now needing to use one, is a little bit repugnant.

However – if this new OP allows us to understand things, well, that’s a very useful tool and one I won’t be turning my nose up at –
not without thoroughly investigation it first.

Even in a metaphor, this guy is a great negotiator.
They’re just joking around here about the role Hamlet could play in an imaginary company. Horatio offers him half a share, presumably as an upgrade from the fellowship Hamlet proposed, and Hamlet ups it again to a full share.

I’ve been thinking about negotiation and how hard it is to learn. I posted a blog about a negotiation that actually worked out for me last summer – but what I didn’t post was how much coaching l needed to get there. There’s a whole world of literature on women and negotiation – how women don’t negotiate – how we should learn to do it but also how we have good reasons for not doing it. (Like the article called “women don’t negotiate become they’re not idiots.”)

But there’s another non-negotiating impulse that comes with being an artist. Artists don’t negotiate either – also because we’re not idiots. We’re in precarious positions most of the places we work and despite the uniqueness of each of us, we are extraordinarily replaceable. An artist who negotiates might not be asked back. Same as being a woman, really.

So we learned, artists, women and others who are in unstable position, not to ask for more – while people like the Prince of Denmark are just automatic negotiators, primed to ask for more from the beginning – probably even as a child, always advocating for a little bit more.

It would be great if all it took to join a theatre company was a crazy outfit featuring feathers and shoes. I’d have tried that technique straight out of the gate. No auditioning required – just get a lot of feathers and some funny shoes.
And then I could join a “CRY” of players. Is that really the collective of players? Like a murder of crows? A cry of players?

It makes a great deal of sense. First, a great deal of crying happens on stage and Second, a player’s life probably had a great deal of crying off stage as well.
I suppose, though, that it’s not just his outfit but also the play he just put on that might get him his membership in the players. So – write a play, put on the shoes and some feathers – get a membership in a theatre company.
I have written a great many plays – and since I started a theatre company –in order to produce them, I guess it worked! Now all we need are the feathers and the shoes.

The world tiptoed up to Venus’ door and rang her doorbell. The planet’s gravity was strong but the world had its own gravity so it could sneak in, ring the doorbell and then make a break for it. The world ran to hide in the cloud cover nearby – ones that really looked like bushes. It laughed and laughed when Venus opened the door, and looked around.
“Hello?” she asked, “Is that Earth again? You and Mercury, always joking around.”
The world laughed all the way back into its own orbit.

I volunteer to be one of the sleeping ones.
I mean, I guess the idea is that we take turns – that the one who watches watches so that the other may sleep and so – we must switch at some point.
But – if it’s an either or situation. I’ll sleep.

My boyfriend calls me a championship sleeper.
I’m pretty good at sleeping.
I’m not a genius at getting to sleep – he’s much better at that – but at staying asleep? Sometimes it feels like I could go for days just sleeping and sleeping. It’s like, once I get started, I just don’t want to stop.
So if we’re choosing watching or sleeping. I’m gonna go with sleeping. Also, because there are dreams.

What ARE you on about, Hamlet?
The rhythm, I understand –
It’s like, nursery rhyme time
Time to celebrate or gloat or tease.
And I get, too, the metaphorical –
The deer, struck by an arrow, let’s say, is Claudius, with the arrow of the play struck home and Hamlet’s fine to let him go weep, go nurse the wound. I imagine in hunting that this might be a practice of striking, then allowing the animal to do what it needs to before following along and finishing the job.

But what about the hart? While it’s often prey, too, it’s ungalléd here, unbothered.
I guess Hamlet is the hart?
Claudius = deer going off bleeding
Hamlet = hart cavorting in the fields
Metaphorically makes some sense.

But is this a saying?
It sounds like one – though not a terribly logical saying. Unless it’s a mnemonic hunting policy – like you should always let the deer slink off and leave harts alone without bothering them?
Could be I guess.
Could be a “liquor before beer never fear” sort of saying – a little rhyme-y reminder for hunters but it feels more likely that Hamlet just makes this one up.

What did these players use for false fire?
I mean – now – there are usually some complex LEDS or just some crumpled yellow and orange gels with a moving light behind them or if there’s actual fire… it’s highly controlled by fire specialists with fire extinguisher in hand.
Nothing looks like fire like fire.

What was fire that wasn’t fire in Shakespeare’s time?

If the dumbshow is any indication, he does it with gifts. I suspect that this is not how Claudius managed it with Gertrude. What gift could he possibly have given her that she didn’t already posses or have a way to procure?
I suspect that the appeal was probably more in the charm and attentions category. Claudius is real good with words, he could probably turn a lady’s heart with those. Or maybe he offered her sexual chemistry. That can be hard to resist.
Or – perhaps – he offered her more of a role in government, more political power, more of a say. After years of watching and not doing, I might find that sufficiently seductive.
The gifts may not have been of the material kind. I don’t think Gertrude would be bought with sapphires. But the gifts of sex, or power, or attention, or authority?
Those might do the trick.

Which Italian is the choice one?Dante’s Italian? Boccaccio’s?

A Florentine Italian?

Or Roman? 

How many Italians were there when Shakespeare wrote this play? 

And which one was the choice?

The Italian language has experienced a world of change over the years – much of which was a homogenization after a great deal of diversity – even after there was an Italy to unify. 
Whose Italian was Shakespeare’s?