Hamlet talks about love
The others talk about duty and honor.
Hamlet tells them he will requite their loves
They tell him they will honor their duty to him.
He’s going to correct them in the next line
Remind them that it’s love he’s talking about
Not duty
Or honor.
As the prince, I guess, he has the freedom
To love whomever he wants
But those he loves have to be
A little more cautious about that line.
It’s actually a little sad though
That Hamlet loves and is met
With honor and duty
Which he requites with love.
While it certainly is a privilege to be able to express love
Where another cannot,
Is it not painful to be always loving first
To be making the space for love
To be bringing love out into the open
And never receive it?
This has no significance anywhere else in the play.
Barnardo
Longer, longer.
Just when you think the day is enough
No, no – it must extend, extend into the night
Until we are working nonstop
For hours upon hours.
At an artist talk last night,
The director extolled the benefits of being irresponsible
He asked “Who will corrupt our youth?”
His actors, he says will want to work
On their parts at 3 am and
All he wants to tell them is
To get drunk
Get laid
Take an actual break, kids!
Some people get better at working
Others get better shirking
But in a world in which we work 24-7
We all feel like we’re shirking at some point
Sometimes all the time.
My lord, from head to foot.
Transformation
Understood
Through the body.
I cannot point to my thought
I can’t gesture at my feelings
I can only show you my head
In a different place on my neck
My neck related to the shoulders
And so on and on.
You will see the change
Or maybe you feel it.
Armed, my lord.
To have arms –
Well, that’s lucky
Arms and shoulders and wrists
And hands
All the territory of arm.
I’m grateful to be armed
Even when my recalcitrant wrists won’t bend
In quite the way I’d like
Even when my shoulder clicks when I turn it forward
Even when the flesh on the top of it
Flops just a little bit and makes me self-conscious
Even so –
I am armed to hold people that I love
Armed to comfort
Armed to gather things and carry them
Armed to carry
Armed to lift
Armed to open doors and windows
Armed to dance.
That’s well armed.
We do, my lord.
We are human doings, really.
The spiritual teachers will remind us that we are
Human BEings. They suggest we give up our human doing-ness
To simply be human beings.
Being is good
Certainly.
But we’re born doing
We’re born moving.
I learned today that babies never stop moving
They are constantly in motion
Constantly discovering
Constantly making connections
Between one thing and another
Between a hand and a mouth
Between a foot and the floor
Reaching for a bright object
Learning to crawl in pursuit of a toy
Learning to stand in order to reach up
Even in the womb, we’re told.
They are directing their own direction
They move in response to the world around them
To light, to sound, muffled by the protection of the mother
But they’re
Pursuing something too
Something ineffable
Something only they know.
It was about to speak when the cock crew.
What was it going to say?
Before that cock-a-doodle do
What was that ghost king about to utter?
It’s artful suspense building for one
But what what what
Would he say to this motley crew of watchmen
Hanging around with his son’s friend?
Would he tell them his story?
Instruct them as he would his royal dead subjects?
Charge them to bring him his son?
What if he’d given Marcellus the task of revenging his murder?
I mean, it really is a son’s job –
But how likely is it that his son
Would be wandering around the parapets in the middle of the night?
If you want to get that message out,
I’d think you’d go straight to the source right away and stop
All that wandering around the walls.
He knows how to go inside; he shows up
In his wife’s bedroom later.
Maybe he’s just out for a walk
And when the cock crows,
He’s just about to say,
“Good evening, fellas!”
‘Tis here.
Where is the answer?
Here.
Where is the truth?
Here.
Where is the comfort?
Here.
Where is the mystery?
Here.
Where is the struggle?
Here.
Where is the peace?
Here.
Where am I?
Here.
Well may it sort that this portentous figure Comes arméd through our watch so like the King That was and is the question of these wars.
See, it all makes sense
An ancient quarrel is unearthed
And so, of course, is the man.
With the land bestirred,
He who once ruled it
Must return to watch,
To be once again the guardian to his people.
Even if he didn’t rise from the grave,
The population would have to revive his image
To help them through the challenge to their borders.
This will not be the story of one man and his father
No indeed, we have not yet even heard the man mentioned.
This is a war drama, a ghost story
A tale of a land wronged
And a ghost come to right it.
So it would seem.
But this political story will very shortly become
Very personal
And this very simple explanation for the kings’ ghost,
His wardrobe,
His war-like stalk,
Will no longer seem so logical.
I think it be no other but e’en so.
It can be no other way but this
It’s got to be that
But
Be that as it may
This truth
Even so
This truth
Sure has a lot of negating words in it.
What think you on’t?
Set your mind atop this idea
Settle it in, like a bird on its nest
Turn it around and around
Til you find the right spot
Don’t sit too hard on it
Too much weight will break the shell
But fan your feathers over it
Spread your thoughts wide
And something will hatch.
The Hamlet Project 