On the episode of WTF I just listened to, Lewis Black discusses how he went from being a theatre maker to a comedian. He’d been a dedicated theatre maker – playwright, director, producer for 20 years and when he turned 40, he made a switch. He became a stand-up comedian.

And it was a successful switch for him. He’s found success in a new form. And he made the switch at the age that I am now. I’ve also spent 20 years in the theatre with only minor breakthroughs.

From the place he’s sitting now, this former theatre maker only wonders how he managed to stay in it so long. And he has a lot of zingers on the business of theatre making. (My favorite was one about the actual business of theatre being to say “no.”) He said he’d always had a sideways interest in comedy though when he turned to it, it was unexpected. He came to it as a writer looking for a stage and he found he could say what he wanted better in comedy than he’d ever could in theatre.

I listen to a LOT of comedy podcasts. I am mildly obsessed with comedic structures and ideas. Is it my turn to switch over at 40, too? I only have a few months of 40 left. I’ll have to do it soon.

It is funny how love goes sour, it is the sweetness you want to deny. You’d like to believe you never wrote those drippy love poems or sent those sentimental letters. You wish that song you’d written had not been for him. You want to believe you never thought you could die happy in a thunderstorm, struck by lightning, as long as you were with your love. All of the extremity, the warmth, the comfort, the passions, they all look different on the other side of heartbreak.

Never give up. Never feel discouraged. Never ponder throwing the towel in. Never wonder what that could mean for me, that throwing the towel in. Like, would it just be giving up art? But if I gave up Art, isn’t that everything? What would it all be for if it wasn’t Art?

Never get caught up in ideas. Never teeter on the brink of despair and contentment. Never wonder about my choices. Never envy anyone else’s. Never question my abilities. Never wish things were different. Never nostalgic. Never wistful. Never cynical. Never jaded. Never bitter. Never lonely. Never wrong. No, no, not I.

Seems to me that you’d need to really do something with these wells. I feel like they’re often elided into a cliché, into the rhythm of “Well well well,” like an arch-villain delighted to find the hero has stumbled into his lair. 

It is, sure, an answer to her question. But it is also a tremendous opportunity to investigate Ophelia’s appearance in this scene or to stall while he tries to work out his tactics, or to appraise what her motivations are, or to check behind stray arrases for fathers hiding. 

First: Nymphs and prayers are not usually coupled. Nymphs being quite Greek, quite pagan, quite nature cult and orisons being a sort of ritualized prayer, specifically Christian, I think? It’s a very interesting pairing.

Second: Why does he want her to remember his sins in her prayers? Does he somehow need her to absolve him? Or is he thinking of sins the two of them might have enjoyed in the past and he’s claiming them for himself? Is he asking her to pray for him? What would these prayers sound like in his imagination? 

“Dear Lord, please forgive Hamlet for scaring the beejeezus out of me in my sewing closet the other day and for acting crazy and for seducing me behind the chapel that time and in the gazebo and the library and so on. Oh and that one time, he took your name in vain. Well, I’m sure it was more than that one time, lord, but I only heard it that once. Let’s see – he’s maybe not honored his mother so much lately. As far as I know, he’s never committed adultery or murder or theft so I think he’s good there. Well, anything I’ve forgotten, lord, just go ahead and forgive him for that, too – because I’m sure he’d like you to.”

I can’t stop thinking about punctuation, apparently – or maybe, because this speech is so familiar, the punctuation is the new thing in play here. 

These editors have completed this sentence with an exclamation point; the seldom used exclamatory end stop somehow gets used here? 

Are they attempting to suggest strong surprise at spotting Ophelia? 

Why? 

Is it that Ophelia’s wearing a crazy party hat, a feather boa and a pair of overalls? 

Maybe not so fair now, eh, Hamlet? 

I’d like to see a Ophelia be something more than fair. 

This is a line that sounds really good but doesn’t really follow the previous thought – at least in my understanding of “conscience.” Maybe conscience here is more like consciousness? That the awareness that one mess might so easily lead to another, even bigger, mess might just be a factor of being a conscious thinking being. That makes some sense to me. 
However, if conscience is conscience as I normally think of it, that is, a sense of morality, of doing right by someone or something, of goodness, somehow. And yes, awareness of our actions, too, how they might not be good choices – well, in that case: Yes, conscience does keep many of us from doing many things, some of which might be called cowardly in certain societies, particularly ones with HONOR at the center. I think of that study of honor and revenge in Southern men. (Listen to a show on it on You are not so Smart) They found that in cultures with a high honor code, participants were much more likely to exhibit vengeful behavior.  It points to an interesting cultural conundrum that puts conscience and cowardice in the same boat, that makes conscience the enemy of bravery, that makes conscientious objectors chickens rather than brave people standing up for their beliefs, for another morality. Curious. 
And then many months later after I first wrote in response to this line, I discover this: Zachary Lesser’s take on this line in his discussion of the Q1. In it, I learn that my sense of conscience – as in consciousness – has been an explanation many scholar’s before me have used. But Shakespeare uses conscience in its moral sense in other places in the play – so there’s a whole world of religious sense of conscience and morals and this line becomes a lever to pry open a world of worlds behind the various editions of the play. Listen to the Free Library’s Podcast to hear more details. 

Me, I’m always trying to fly to new ills. Not these ones he’s specifically referring to, i.e. not to DEATH but the other devils I don’t know.

The devil I know is familiar and intractable. The devil I don’t is seductive and offers the possibility of change. The devil I don’t know is sexy and suave. Even the problems he brings me are interesting. The devil I don’t know whispers seductively to my wanderlust suggesting that it will all be better over there, that that place will change everything. He convinces me that the devil I know is a real devil and he, the devil I don’t know, will be different. He will treat me better than the other devil.

But, after years of listening to each new devil, I came to see how each new devil quickly revealed how much like the old devil he was. It’s really like there’s really only one devil who happens to be a master of disguise.

I can’t help but think about Backwards and Forwards with this bit. Because this is the line that really makes his case that Hamlet is not saying this speech for his own benefit. Because, the fact is, Hamlet has direct experience of a traveller returning from death. His father, who he saw interred a month prior, has shown up quite vividly before him. He’s had all kinds of descriptions of the “undiscovered country.” He’s heard about the rending flames, the horrors, the sin-burning, etc. So it is hard to see this bit as a real inquiring thought on Hamlet’s part. It starts to seem like poetic embroidery on a theme he is exploring for the benefit of his audience. It’s a beautiful poetic embroidery or maybe even the sort of embroidery anyone creating a fiction will do. When lying, for example, we usually keep talking to help make our case.