Some people try very hard to resist their weirdness. They do everything they can think of to avoid letting anyone see their quirks and oddities. People will go see shows or concerts that they don’t want to see because they think other people will have expected them to see them. They will attempt to shape their bodies into forms that will more closely align them to an imagined norm. They will wear clothes that help them fit in. They will hide their thoughts, their eccentricities.

My weirdness? I embrace it freely. Not without cost, of course. I am not insensitive to the response that my weirdness can generate. But I embrace it anyway.

I love this shot my arrow over the house business but I also don’t fully understand it. It has the FEELING of an idiom but it is not known to be one as far as any notes I’ve read indicate.

It’s not terribly logical this shooting an arrow over the house. That may be part of the reason it has an idiomatic flavor.

Like – why would anyone shoot an arrow over the house? Is that something they do in archery practice?

And is he intentionally shooting the arrow over the house or was he aiming at the house and over shot?

I have questions, obviously. I mean – the hurting of his brother is obvious. Hamlet feels he’s hurt him accidentally. He couldn’t see where that arrow was going. He just fired it (over or at the house) and it hit Laertes. Whoops! Sorry man. Didn’t see you back there. 

There must be some good graphic novel version of this particular line of thought. Hamlet’s madness lying in wait for him until shortly after his father’s funeral (and his mother’s wedding) and then pouncing! Hamlet fights back, and in the process, loses many things. His madness takes him over and breaks up with Ophelia, kills her father and leaps into her grave to challenge her brother. Meanwhile, poor non-mad Hamlet cowers in a corner, bound and gagged. It’s not clear when mad Hamlet is banished and non-mad Hamlet is released.

The faction that is wrong’d – what a group to be a part of!

Faction is a funny word too – as if all the people who have been wronged by Hamlet (i.e. Hamlet’s madness) have banded together to form their own political party or rebellion. They’re getting together at the “Hamlet wronged me” Club and then Hamlet turns up and is like, I gotta join this club!

What would a cartoon of Hamlet’s madness look like? If his madness is thus personified, what is it like? Clearly, the picture that Hamlet is painting of this split self, this madness that took him over, features a madness who does terrible things. Is it a kind of devil? A mischievous Puck?

Is it a Richard the Third or an Edmund the Bastard? An Iago? Or an Aaron?

That is, is it a purposeful villain or an accidental wrong-doing sprite?

Madness, as it appears in other characters, seems to largely involve singing and rhyming. Not just in this play either.

I’m not sure how much singing actually happens in actual madness. The madness I’ve witnessed featured almost NO singing and the singing I’ve witnessed has tended to be in non-mad situations. I have sung TO the mad in attempts to soothe them – but the mad almost never sing back. The only exception that comes to mind was a woman in my grandmother’s Alzheimer’s unit. She sang pretty much anything she wanted to say. She didn’t sing songs so much as intone her desire, “Where is my pillow please?”

She also stripped off her top without warning with some regularity and attempted to eat her lunch topless. Personally, I’d have let her eat naked if it made her happy but they frown on that sort of thing in geriatric care units.
Anyway – that was her madness. It didn’t do people wrong so much as make her awkward to share a meal with.

Hamlet seems to be having his own philosophical discussion with himself. He makes his proposition of himself being removed from himself – then questions himself as if he were his own Socrates.

When I started this project, oh lo those many many years ago, I thought an opportunity to play him could legitimately be in my future. Was it ten years ago now? I had no idea which way the wind might blow. I wanted to play him, that I knew – but since then, I have done very little performing. A show here and there sure, but not so’s you’d see someone with access to a show budget giving me the chance to take on the role we all long to play.

And I may be too old now. I already had the gender against my odds – but now I’m not only a woman but a woman who is older than the character by more than a year or two. But. I’d never say never. Never is a big word. I’d say probably not Hamlet in this lifetime.

Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes?

Yeah. Kinda.

I mean – if it’s not Hamlet – then who did wrong Laertes?

I mean – I get Hamlet’s attempt to disassociate himself from his actions here – but he’s essentially trying the Shaggy defense here.

“But you stuck your sword in my Dad’s guts.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“There’s a witness.”

“Wasn’t me.”

“You confessed.”

“Wasn’t me.”

“You dragged and hid his body.”

“Wasn’t me.”

Is saying “this presence” a way to avoid naming Claudius specifically? Like, would he have to name the king in a collection of people otherwise? Is “this presence” a way to not say, “The King, the Queen and all these other people here”?

I like “this presence” as a collective of people. It’s more potent than “group” or “crowd” or “people” even.

I would almost like to call an audience “this presence” – because their presence is what makes the especially significant – how they are present tells us so much about them. It somehow sounds more alive than audience or the public or spectators.