I’m copying down these words, as I do when I’m writing these little bits of whatever they are. And as I’m copying them, I’m sort of nodding along, going, “yeah, yeah, this line’s so good,” singing along to it. Its music is so familiar to me. I can almost hear the Ophelias I’ve known speaking the text.

I’m tapping along to the ladies most deject and wretched, humming to the honey of his music vows (so sexy this line and exactly what love language feels like) and I’m jammin’ on the old tune – the noble and most sovereign reason like sweet bells jangled –
And then suddenly the needle on this familiar record scratches.
Because I know this line, I could sing along to it and I know it as “Sweet bells jangled out of tune” No comma. Out of tune, not time. What?!
Now, “out of time and harsh” makes a great deal of sense and I see why an editor would make that choice – but because this is a song I could only sing along with when its playing, not one I could conjure unaccompanied, I’m not sure where the speech in my memory went after the jangled sweet bells. Is the speech always like this? Did I simply learn it wrong? Hear it wrong? Or is this an editorial leap? A particularly radical new reading of this line? Have I misremembered this line? Is it one of those that is always misquoted? The way people think “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.” is “O Yorick, I knew him well.” Or the way they think “Lay on, Macduff.” is “Lead on, Macduff.”
And it’s funny that this happens on this sweet bells bit – because the effect of it is a bit like a melody, either out of tune or out of time, depending on how you see it.

It is pretty remarkable that Ophelia says, “Th’expectancy and rose of the fair state” right here, right in front of the king who took that fair state from him. I mean, there aren’t a lot of references to what is, presumably, Hamlet’s true right to the throne and the fact that sweet, meek little Ophelia is one of them is really something. Especially with the king behind the arras. 
This vision of Hamlet is pretty flattering. He’s the glass of fashion? Truly? Do all the young men of Denmark wear what he’s wearing?

Mould of form? Nice. Sounds like he was made with a hot bod.

Th’observed of all observers. . .well – that just means everyone’s watching him, doesn’t it? I want it to mean that Hamlet is the keenest of observationists, that he doesn’t miss a trick. . .but the construction won’t let me really do that. 

What I am baffled by are the “The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword.” I thought, for a moment, I had it – thinking that the possessives were about the eye – that he has an eye that is all three of these things. But there is a comma there, after “scholar’s” (not that I trust a comma to tell me much but. . . for argument’s sake.. . .) Then I thought – well – is it the Courtier’s eye, the Soldier’s tongue, the scholar’s sword? That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, given that soldier’s are not generally known for their speech. If that were the case, wouldn’t it rather be, the courtier’s eye, the soldier’s sword, the scholar’s tongue? Or is this construction as disoriented as Ophelia is after dealing with Hamlet?

It is a rather curious construction, in any case, and not one I’ve noticed elsewhere. Lists? Sure. All the time. Lists that seem to shake out of order? Not so much. 

My first few years as a teenager featured many visits to the youth mental hospital, where various friends had checked in.

So many of them, smarter than the rest of us. So many minds, sharp as tacks, quick as a trigger. It was hard to imagine that something was wrong with their remarkable brains.

It’s funny that we call it mental health when it is often the emotions that have run out of control. In the environment that many of those noble minds grew up, their emotional volatility was the only sane response.
There was a sense, then, that the noble minds walking the halls of Charter Hospital were the best, the brightest – the most sane in an insane world. They were non-conformists. They were the kind that had mohawks before mohawks were seen on socially acceptable public figures. They had mohawks when mohawks still signaled punk and still signaled, “Fuck you, everyone.”
Some of those grew up to become lawyers and college professors and army officers (I’m not kidding) but we lost some of those noble minds along the way, too.
One of them, one who never went to the hospital, who kept all of his quickfire musings close, who didn’t act out so much as act in, well, we lost him later. We lost him when we thought he was all settled in with wife and child and fancy job.
And his was one of the noblest.

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a Department of Heavenly Powers that covered mental illness and if you prayed to it, it would respond?  

It would be an old school 50s style office with a stenopool and everyone in Heavenly Power suits. 

And when you made a request like this, it would go in through the department’s in-box as a Sanity Request Form (SRF,) where a secretary would pick it up and carry it to the filing room. The file clerk would then search for the person in question. (Denmark, Prince of, Hamlet) He’d hand the file to the secretary who would then deliver it to the Sanity Officer’s desk. He’d open it, (This one’s not so thick, is it possible he’s not really mad?) and read it over.

He then makes his recommendation to restore or not restore sanity to the subject. This recommendation is handed to the board, along with the file where the committee of Heavenly Powers of Restoration will vote on approval (or not) of the officer’s recommendation. If the vote is to restore, they feed the file into a little time clock device and pull the lever, at which point, sanity will rain down upon the subject like a refreshing summer rain.  

I read an article about Virginia Johnson – of Masters of Johnson – of the human sexuality research – subject of the book and TV show, Masters of Sex. In the article, the author of the book quotes Johnson as having a realization late in her life. She says something like “I guess I did love him.” Which, we’re given to understand, from all these many sources, might have been a difficult task. Dr. Masters being something of a prickly pear. A brilliant pear but prickly none the less. In watching the TV show, there’s a sense that she can’t help but want to help him. That she’d be more likely to pray for the heavens to help him before praying for herself. Maybe because she loved him. Or maybe because she believed in his work so completely. Or both.

Anyway, I understand both these varieties. I guess I do love my own (only slightly) prickly pear and would be very much inclined to pray (if I were inclined to pray at all) for the heavens to help him before I asked for their intervention of my own behalf.

I ran into several people yesterday as I was out taking care of theatre business. Both chance meetings resulted in invitations that would be good for my career. It occurred to me that due to poverty and my freelance career that I have been spending more and more time at home. And that being at home isn’t the most effective place for a career in the arts. It is the cheapest place. And the most comfortable. But it is not the most effective or inspiring or stimulating or useful. Except for when it is.

Also, there are a lot of lies in this play. This one might be the most direct and obvious.

As a young person, I was enamored with a kind of truth. The truth, beauty, beauty truth kind. The romantic truth, the truth hiding behind everyone’s masks, the one everyone was denying as they drank their wine coolers and pretended to enjoy one another’s company. The one that hid behind the thing that led them to do things that they didn’t want to do, that led them to attend colleges they didn’t want to go to and study things they didn’t want to study, the kind of truth that usually wore black and talked about the hard stuff. It was my own truth perhaps. I was enamored of my own truth, it was my North Star, my guideline, my compass.But all those people I thought were lying to themselves and to others have houses and steady incomes and families and will end their lives with grandchildren surrounding them, with extended families from here to there, with a legacy to leave.
Truth can be a cold comfort. 

With each word, with each sentence, you can see where the seemingly inevitable doom might have been averted. If there were tenderness in “I did love you once” it might be answered with tenderness, with “I loved you too” or “Don’t you still?” or “What happened?” or “I know.” Instead this line is both an acceptance and an accusation, that somehow Hamlet had been lying, had been manipulating her, that their relationship was all an elaborate hoax.And with this point of view, Hamlet can then accept that proposition, having been cast as a manipulative villain, he proceeds to really play the part. And the fact that he may be aware that he has an audience might heighten that effect significantly. The show always gets more intense when someone is watching. 

I’ve never been a particularly beautiful woman – nor have I cared to take that identity on. I don’t know what it’s like to identify as beautiful or what it’s like to manage all that comes with a lot of physical attractiveness. It seems to come with a bit of baggage (as does everything, of course.) But certainly when someone responds only to your physical beauty, it’s hard to know if they’re seeing anything more than an image.

Many people see beauty as something that they need to possess. When you’re beautiful, people will work to own you in some way. This line here makes me feel like Ophelia’s linking her beauty with truth and in a sense, defending her beauty. She’s acknowledging that she possesses it and defending its virtue.
I like to look at beautiful people as much as the next person but I wouldn’t say beauty comes with any particular virtues. It does come with privileges and it does come with risks.
I guess it would be good to have some honesty on hand for recognizing those moments.

It would be interesting to see an Ophelia flummoxed by “Are you fair?” like the way it might be confusing for anyone to be asked, “Are you beautiful?” Especially someone who was looking right at you.
If you say “yes” you’re vain. If you say “no,” you’re lacking confidence. It’s a trap question. It’s unanswerable. The only appropriate answer to this is a question that questions the premise of the question.