I have just noticed that he’s speaking to Laertes with the formal “you” – so while he may be giving him a directive, he is using a highly respectful form of address. Certainly, as the Prince of Denmark, he is entitled to call his peers “thou” – but he doesn’t in this instance. This may, in fact, be a sort of standard formal request for pardon.

He’s not kidding. He has done Laertes wrong. Like – there’s not even a question. He has unquestionably behaved badly.

Sometimes characters do things that could be justified from some other perspective – like, sure, I broke your sister’s heart but it was for the greater good or whatever.

In this case, he behaved like an ass at Ophelia’s grave and that would SEEM to be what he’s apologizing for – being a self-important narcissistic selfish ass – but he has ALSO killed this guy’s dad in a kind of ignoble manner – which is probably the worse sin. They both know that. And maybe they are pretending to talk about the grave leaping when they are, in fact, talking about the murdering.

It’s interesting how demanding this is. He doesn’t ASK for Laertes’ pardon, he expects it. He’s using the imperative. It’s almost an order or demand. He doesn’t say “Please” – he doesn’t qualify this request in any way.

He asks for a pardon the way a lot of people order coffee. “Give me a cappuccino.”

But then, he is a Prince. He is not built to ask for things; he is built to command.
That he should want a pardon for himself is probably a bit of a hit for his princely status.

This line tends to be said in a sort of philosophical manner, like zen, like “when I find myself in times of trouble – let it be,” sort of thing. But I wonder if it might be a little less static if before this line Horatio makes a move as if he’s going to go stop this nonsense, given how fatalistically Hamlet is talking. In that case, “Let be” is one final plea to keep Horatio from interfering, rather than a monkish philosopher king intoning wisdom with his legs crossed and his fingers in a yoga pose.

Nobody has anything when they leave. No one takes a percentage of their stuff when they make their exit – so given that we all have it all on the table, it doesn’t matter when we go. We take the same amount with us whether we make our exits early or late. It’s really just a matter of what gets left behind.

I could probably cobble together a whole personal manifesto from lines in Hamlet. But use all gently. The readiness is all.

I mean, Hamlet’s talking about readiness for death here – which is not what I mean when I think about this line, when I use it in a theatrical sense or a Feldenkrais sense. When I think of readiness as a value, it’s about potential, about the ability to move in whatever direction the art demands or that the body wants. A piece of theatre with a coiled up spring ready to be released is my favorite.

 I will watch a state of readiness for a good long while. It is much more interesting to me than something complete. The theatre that is a well oiled machine, a well-rehearsed execution, a flawless demonstration – none of that satisfies me. Readiness is what I want to see and then I want to see it released.

And in Hamlet’s case, the release is death. But it’s the readiness that is the play.

In other words, we all gotta go sometime. And a lot of times, these lines sort of elide into only that sentiment – but there’s a development here that’s possible.

There can be optimism sprinkled in. As in: Listen, at least if I die now, I don’t have to worry about it coming later. If it’s not happening in the future, it’ll be now. And if it’s not now, it is definitely coming for me later. There’s something to work through – and I appreciate the sort of sestina quality of this line – circling around itself to say something both different and the same.

Not having had any significant religious training, biblical references tend to sail right by me. This line, for example, was, to me, about Hamlet identifying with a small insignificant creature, that when it goes, is particularly special. But no…. really, this is a line about God’s will being God’s will – that even something as small as which sparrow falls out of a man’s hand is guided by God’s hand. And also – the bible goes on about these sparrows that the “you” is more valuable than a whole bunch of sparrows. Which is kind of weird, I think. And explains why Christians tend to have this whole superiority over nature thing.
In any case – this line is such a direct reference to the bible, there is no question. All these years I was thinking that Shakespeare is just using images and poetic language in the middle of this bit – this sudden out-of-the-blue image – but no, it’s more like a supporting biblical reference to a case he’s making.

This is pretty much the same as Romeo’s line about defying you stars. It is a rejection of fate, of a pre-written future. And augury, apparently, comes from divination from the flight of birds. So – once the future might have been determined by which way a flock might have taken to the sky.

I defy you stars.

I defy you birds.

I defy you winds.

And here’s a great example for why you might want to actually listen to women. Like – if this intuition you’re having, Hamlet, would trouble a woman – you might want to, um, trust it. A woman’s trouble might have kept you alive, you knucklehead. Misogyny kills men, too. Even in fiction. If men in these plays didn’t dismiss their own instincts, their own emotional truths, their own sense of the room, as woman stuff – if they didn’t dismiss their tears as woman-ish and such, they might survive all these tragedies.

Patriarchy makes the tragedy almost every single time.