Nope. None.
Everything’s peachy keen.
No war. No murder. No rape. No corruption.
Everything’s fair and justice reigns.
The bad guys lose and the good guys win every single time.

Isn’t poison hilarious?
Sneaky poisoners, walking around on their tippy toes with vials of the vile stuff – just ready to slip it in to someone when they’re not paying attention. In the ear, in the food, in the drink, in the pearl that goes in the drink, on the sword.

It’s interesting how much poison is in this play and all of it comes back to Claudius. He is a poisoner. That is his method of choice (except when he can use bureaucracy and have England do his killing for him.) I’m sure there is some sort of taxonomy of murderers and their methods, something that gives each murderer a particular psychological profile.

If I were playing Claudius, I’d find such a taxonomy and spend some time understanding why Claudius prefers to poison.

She doesn’t, though, does she?
I mean, if the dumb show is a preview of what’s to come in this play, she most definitively does not keep her word. All it takes is a few gifts from the poisoner and her word is toast.

We don’t get far enough into the spoken portion of this play to see this enacted again but it seems pretty clear that the story is the same – so we can be pretty sure that the Queen does not keep her word on this point.

It would seem that Hamlet can only be saying this as a dig on his mother. As in, SHE’LL keep her word as opposed to YOU who married my stupid uncle, who just in case you weren’t in on it, murdered your first husband, you idiot.

Apparently in the first quarto, it’s made explicit that Gertrude doesn’t know and is therefore only complicit in seeking revenge along with her son. This makes Hamlet seem all the more cruel to her. But in the second quarto and folio editions, it is all a great deal more ambiguous. Does she know or doesn’t she? Is Hamlet’s cruelty to his mother justified? Those editions create more questions, which does make this much more artful in a way. It’s interesting to have to decide.

Lately, whenever anyone asks me this question, my answer tends to be, “Not much.”
I’m starting to fear that I will never like anything again. While all around me, people enthuse about what they’re watching, I look around wondering what I’m missing. Or wondering how I could fix whatever it is I’m watching.
What would please me?
What could be done to that play, that production, that performance to move me?
I usually have ideas. But I can’t do much about them in my current situation. I can only fix the plays that are before me.
But even, of course, my own work needs fixing. It needs enormous amounts of fixing. And probably other people watch it and wonder how they’d fix it.

There have been analyses of this line that ask – is he meaning BREAK it as in break character? And it’s certainly possible – but it seems fairly obvious to me that he means the oath. If, after basically swearing herself into a miserable existence, should she break it, (she does, in fact, break it – as we know she will) then, what? Misery. Obviously.

Oaths are really made to be broken, aren’t they?
And the more fervent the oath, the more likely it will break and the more an audience will want to see it broken. A story where someone swears intense fealty and then just keeps that oath? Well, it’s like putting a gun on stage and never shooting it.

A piece of wood, made a meal of by a worm, or a family of worms, will retain its shape, will still seem to be a piece of wood. But the worms, in their feeding, will leave behind a void. Where there was wood, there will be air.
Where all was solid, will now be dotted with space.
A piece of wormwood is destined to break. Something solid becomes fragile and the slightest pressure will crack it into holey pieces.
That’s wormwood.

When our hearts get broken, suddenly everything gets generalized. You feel a woman did you wrong then clearly all women are wrong-doers. If a man behaves like a dog, then clearly all men are dogs. We love so specifically and then hate so generally.

This seems to be inevitable – at least in heterosexual relationships.
Certainly a woman who’s had her heart broken by a woman might still indulge in a lamentations of “Women! Can’t live with ‘em. . .” but there’s always in reserve the self. If it’s included, it includes a measure of self-deprecation, self-mockery, self denial.

Woman’s love is just as long and just as short as man’s is. Depending on the people and the circumstance.

You know what would be a really good gift for a total Shakespeare geek?
A ring. Like a nice silver one, with this prologue engraved on it.
It would be one of those things that said Shakespeare geek would wear and when he or she would show it to a fellow Shakespeare geek, the 2nd geek would first find it amusing and then get to say this line and then get all jealous and want one of his very own.
It’s like having an inside joke on a piece of jewelry – one that could last for centuries. Because the joke could have been as funny and as inside as it was 400 years ago. And will be as amusing as it will be 400 years from now, I hope.
The question is, though, could the prologue actually fit on a ring?

Given Ophelia’s response to this, it’s possible that this is meant to be a little ribald, maybe a little personally suggestive.
He’s using the formal You, so it’s got some distance but it’s a directive so it does seem aimed at our fair Ophelia. And what exactly could he be suggesting she show without shame? Something it might be funny for the prologue to explain.
Why on earth is he making jokes like this to the woman he just broke up with?

A compelling case of logorrhea
He will remain mute of all subjects
Until you show him a show
Then he suddenly cannot stop talking
He will explain every detail
Make sure you’ve missed nothing
Will place the whole thing in its theatrical framework
Or its artistic movement.
No plot point left unturned
No character left unanalyzed
No prop left unsymbolized
No metaphor left unpacked.
He is a prologue machine
And will discourse on anything
So long as it’s a show.