Yeah. Fie upon it! Fie!
Fie on you, Art! You seduced me at an early age, opening me up to new perspectives and possibilities, not to mention new aspects of myself. You suckered me in with a promise of fulfillment and a life of ideas and making things. I fell for it, hook, line and sinker and now I’m lost forever. Toiling in the shadows for you, never recognized or seen. . .but ever there, at your dark service. Every day waiting for some glimmer of hope, for some crumb of sustenance and everyday disappointed again.

I never wanted a house in the suburbs, Art. All I asked for a life with you. And that is all I got. And this month when I yet again do not know how I will pay the rent, the work behind me lost to history, the work ahead, unfunded, I just want to throw things at you, Art. I just want to. . .foh!

In this day and age, whores are not particularly known for their words. It is a strange reference here, really: Whores and drabs being particularly known for acts of the body, not for the heart nor words from it.
Is Hamlet confusing whores with poets? Because poets do unpack their hearts with words sometimes – and beautifully so sometimes, too.

It is curious that a writer has chosen to call someone who unpacks one’s heart with words a whore. Because, theoretically, that is what the writer is doing and the words, are, of course, the MOST valuable, the most precious thing that might emerge from a heart.

And, of course, it would be a writer who would feel the futility of unpacking with words more than anyone. We hate the things we love the most. That’s how I feel about theatre, certainly. And when I unpack my theatrical heart for people who don’t appreciate it, I often feel like a whore.

So: okay.
But also, “a stallion”? In other editions, they’ll edit it to be a “scullion.” How is the most macho of horses another word for a whore? Or is it a word for a John? Has Hamlet switched mid-metaphor?

You know – normally I’d agree. I would stand up and be counted among the asses of America. But today I am finally tired of blaming myself. What if it’s not my fault there’s no place for my art in America? What if there’s nothing I can do to change the climate I live in?
What if I could lay the blame for the shitty culture I’m scrambling to make stuff in at someone else’s feet? Doesn’t mean I’m not still an ass. I’m an ass, sure. But it’s not my fault.

I just saw a rat scurry from under a van to a mini-van and in the direction of an ambulance. It is the middle of the day. And a rainy one no less. What is that rat doing on a busy city street in the middle of the day?

I don’t hate many people. I couldn’t think of anyone I wished vengeance on. The wrongs I’ve had done to me are such that vengeance would be overkill. I might get some schadenfreudic pleasure at some folks’ misfortune. I might really enjoy witnessing one or two people’s come-uppance. I have to confess, while I wouldn’t wish it on them (or would I?,) I might get a tiny bit of satisfaction.

And that rat running up the road right now has never done anything to me. But because rats scare me, I wouldn’t say no to a little bit of vengeance, you know, from someone with more fire than I.

But maybe, you know, that rat is running up the road for his own vengeance. That ambulance ahead perhaps ran over his brother and he’s risking the diurnal spirits to go and chew on its tires.

Is there anything else to say but how freaking fun it is to say this line? It’s just, like, dessert for the actor. Rolling your tongue over all these words, one right after the other, in such a natural build. It’s like getting on a kick-ass roller coaster. You don’t have to do anything once you’re in – just ride the words all the way to the top. And you ride them all the way to the top of the speech too.

What comes next MIGHT continue the ascent but it’s more likely the plateau, maybe that last little inch, followed by a moment of suspension at the top of the hill – right before that car takes a long fast drop down.

You know, it’s funny about Claudius. He’s clearly a villain. He knows he’s a villain. We see his villainy in action later in the play. But while he is villainous, he’s rather bloodless. His fratricide is with poison and through the ear, no less. It’s an exceptionally un-intimate way to kill someone and not at all bloody.

When he sets Hamlet up to be killed, he does it with paper. When he tries to kill Hamlet a second time, he does it with a poison pearl. When he’s wounded, he seemingly doesn’t attempt to draw his own sword, he asks for the defense of his friends.

And while we could see the act of leaping into his brother’s bed with his sister-in-law as bawdy, there’s just something about Claudius that seems more politic than sexy.

Which may be part of the reason he’s so hard to work up the energy to kill. He doesn’t act like a bloody, bawdy villain. He acts like a white-collar criminal, like a political scammer. He makes you want to confront him with paperwork, not run a sword through him.

Oh yeah. Getting juicy and fierce with the language now, Hamlet! Gotta love a good violent fantasy and it’s particularly awesome because he’s skipped the violent part and gone right to the intense leaving the bad guy’s guts around for carnivorous birds.
I mean we go from one bird – the pigeon (equivalent of being a Renaissance chicken?) to the guts of another – the vulture, if I’m not mistaken. And in between, the implication of some sort of violence that left the villain disemboweled.

It’s remarkable how satisfying this sort of thinking can be – imagining the grisly remains of someone you hate really can give you a charge. And if you imagine it as a benefit to other creatures (even if they are carnivorous birds) somehow you can eliminate the moral challenge of actually killing a person. It’s kind of pleasurably disgusting.

She was bigger than me. Taller. Rounder.
She was mean, too.
While we waited for the bus, her favorite past-time seemed to be taunt me. I did not enjoy the same activities as she did. We weren’t very compatible.
At a certain point, words were no longer enough. She began to threaten to hit me. I was very scared of this possibility but I was VERY self-righteous and proselytized for pacifism. I spent a lot of time at the Peace Center, where my Dad was the treasurer.

I thought believing in non-violence would save me from violence. It didn’t. She hit me anyway. And I just stood there and took it. Partly because I felt it was the right thing to do and partly because I didn’t know what else to do.

I was confused, later, when my mother offered another way to respond to this bullying, that I could, if I wanted to, hit a person a back. It hadn’t even occurred to me to do that. This is a solution I’d be much more likely to enjoy today. But then, I don’t remember that girl ever hitting me again so maybe being a self-righteous peacenik worked somehow.

I have a long list of people who’ve done me wrong – small slights or large ones . Depending on the era, I could fill in all sort of people for the villain’s role.

But I’m writing this on New Year’s Day and there’s something about the freshness of the date that makes it easier to let all that go.

And it’s also true how much time heals things, or if not heals things, then at least takes the sting out a bit.

Who does me those wrongs? I don’t feel like giving them the extra weight of my attention or light of my thought.

Is this a comic imagined fight? This language sounds reminiscent of Sir Toby Belch or Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Or Sir John Falstaff. We never hear serious characters speak this way.

It’s like, in this flight of Hamlet’s imagination, he suddenly places himself in a different play, a world of cartoon vehicle, where the answers to challenges are scripted and clear.