Answering your own question, are you, Ophelia?
Ask a madman a question, get a mad answer, I guess. But – this is where I’m not entirely sure why Ophelia asks for the meaning of the show – since she’s clear on what it was. She’s got it worked out pretty well, so her question might reference some other “this” entirely – an action perhaps, a gesture.
She’s like, “No, Hamlet – it’s not mischief. It’s a plot summary. It’s a dumb show. We all know it’s not miching mallecho.”

Except of course it is mischief – but no one knows that but Hamlet and Horatio.
Even Claudius doesn’t seem to figure out the mischief bit. He just gets hit with it – straight into his conscience, straight into his guilt ridden guts.

The structure of the exercise (I invented for myself) is that I write in response to the lines, that I skip the stage directions and just use the dialogue. That structure was challenged by this particular chunk of text – these particular stage directions that come before this line. I toyed with changing my rules simply to accommodate them. They aren’t just simple stage directions. They are, in effect, a whole mini play. I’ve seen entire evenings of theatre that are less scripted, less of a show than this.

I’ve sometimes taught this chunk of stage directions as an introduction to the play. It is not insignificant – the passionate action, the protestation. . . this is not in the realm of “They fight” or “Exeunt.” There’s a lot here.

But in the end, I’m sticking with my structure. . . because artistic ritual and structure are what keep me going and if I go around breaking my own rules, I’m not sure what I will live by.

But to Ophelia – what is she responding to? This little dumb show is pretty clear. It’s not like they’re watching some avant guarde piece and the meaning is obscured somehow. Or maybe it is performed as an avant guarde dumbshow – maybe somehow the story, so clearly set down here, is obscured by the performance. I have seen that happen many times before.

Timeline check!
Event 1: King Hamlet’s death.

One month later (according to Hamlet’s soliloquy – can we trust it?)
Event 2: Gertrude and Claudius’ wedding
Which was a month from this moment of the play within the play?
That would put the enactment of King Hamlet’s murder on the calendar two months after his death. Or is it four months? Because I might trust Ophelia’s timeline more than Hamlet’s on this point and she’s saying it’s twice two months, which would seem like two times two months.
Is it possible that Hamlet is exaggerating the timeline?
Could it be two months between the funeral and the wedding and another two months since then?
And at what point in this timeline does the ghost show up? And why does the ghost show up? And why does he wait so long? He doesn’t show up at his own funeral or his wife’s wedding – no, he shows up when Denmark starts preparing for war.

How long is it from the start of this play to this middle point?

The repetition of the I/Ay sound here is interesting to me. The audience, not seeing this page, might hear these two sounds identically, despite their divergent spellings and meanings.
It could suddenly make Ophelia a little playful – if she’s saying I instead of Ay. Who, I? I, my lord.
Could Ophelia be merry? It would give her a nice bit of shading. I suppose, too. Hamlet could hear her “Ay” this way if he wanted to. It might be a fun catalyst into the jig-maker line that’s around the bend.

I’m having a hard time focusing on this line because in this café where I’m writing, several groups of acting/writing groups have descended and are all talking merrily. It’s like, they’re all in rehearsal AND about to perform so they’re amped up to eleven. Actors vibrate at a fairly merry level or at least a loud level on any day – but on a day that they’re doing a first rehearsal AND a performance? That’s a group of performers turned up to eleven.

I’m starting to understand why so many theatre folk do these 24 hour play festivals – or 48 hour or whatever this is. It’s like a shot of cocaine. The high of creation coupled with the high of performance all in one go? It’s probably more like crack.
When it comes to pure adrenaline, this is the shit.

But – somehow – I’m not drawn to these sorts of events. I care too much about crafting a thing and making something with care and thought and what not. The adrenaline rush just isn’t enough for me. I understand it – if I were doing it, I’d be merry, too.

But I’d be exhausted afterwards, like I took some serious drugs. And I might have as many regrets.

At a dinner, I mentioned that I work as a Shakespeare Consultant. A man, much older than I, got excited at this mention because he teaches Shakespeare. It was clear, very quickly, from his questions and responses that he expected me to not be up to much. Once he heard my actual credentials, he became less interested in hearing about my experience and more interested in proclaiming his own credentials.

He picked up the thread only to let it go, it seemed to me, because he preferred to explain things and he understood that he might be out of his depth explaining things to me. Which was a good move. And he left the women at the table to pick up the thread he’d pulled on and investigate it further. And in a funny turn of events, I found myself explaining a few things to my dinner companions, despite my general antipathy toward explaining and teaching in a social setting.
This was mostly due to some other explaining that was being attempted by one of the other guests. And the explanations were so ridiculous that I just had to pull out a few knowledge cards just to refute them.

And that’s when I realize – oh, right. I know a lot of things. And while I don’t often have occasion to pull those things out, I actually have a pretty full deck of facts and experience.

Maybe no one expected a tutorial on the printing of quartos, using sugar packets as a visual aid, at dinner but that’s what they got. What that has to do with “what is,” I’m not entirely sure. But what is, my lord, is what is, what went through my mind as I thought about what is.

Many a woman I know has tried this strategy – this, “I don’t know anything. I certainly am not thinking, no, no, no. Nothing to see here. What? Me, think? No way.”
When you’ve been boxed into a corner by language – when some dude has suddenly become sexually inappropriate.

When he starts making innuendos and pretending it was you who’s thinking dirty so many will try to remain flat and neutral – to play all innocence, to claim that not only did we not get the dirty joke but we’re not thinking at all.

Is she saying “Ay, my lord” like, “I know what you meant, I get it”?
Or is she saying it like, “Okay, fine, go ahead and lie in my lap”?
Poor Ophelia surely has no idea what she’s supposed to say in this situation.
Here, they are, all broken up, and now he’s all calling her attractive metal and wanting to lie in her lap.
Surely, even the most obedient girl (which she is) won’t have any idea which way the wind is blowing in this situation.

It must be so hard to negotiate dating a prince – or at least dating a prince when the prince might have the authority to imprison you for displeasing him. It takes tact to refuse any man but to refuse a prince takes mega-tact.I’m thinking now of that book I read about the American woman who, more or less, joined the harem of a prince. It was compelling reading. She went of her own free will, went with her own desire, found herself coveting the prince’s affection just as much as all the other girls, her American irony and cool, notwithstanding.

And the extracting of herself from that position? Tricky. Very tricky. Saying no once you’ve said yes being an even more difficult task than simply saying no all along.

In a way, this moment is Ophelia at her bravest.

T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
Today, one man breaking up with a woman in an unpleasant fashion doesn’t seem the worst of things. I know it feels like the end of the world when it’s happening. I’d be woe-ing it up if it happened to me today – but of all the things one could see. . . it’s a little on the lighter side.
I mean, just in the last week – a man went on a shooting spree, killing everyone in his path. Two hundred Nigerian girls have been kidnapped and disappeared into the dark reaches of trees. Hangings, stonings, war, torturing, all wretched beyond comprehension.

It never does to play the comparison game – the my heartache is bigger than yours thing never pays.

But today I can’t help but think of all the other people who could be saying a line like this. Witnesses to murders, victims of rape, all of us loaded up with the abundance of awful images and stories from the news, filling up buckets of woe.