There are times when I wish I were a cartoonist. I’d create a panel for this line wherein a dialogue bubble would be at the top of the frame and a thought bubble would hover just around the subject’s head. He’d be kneeling in prayer and the dialogue bubble would feature some standard forgiveness prayer, while the thought bubble would feature lines like, “Am I really sorry? I’m glad to be the king! I’m a good king! I like being married to Gertrude! I’d kill him again, that bastard. He didn’t deserve her or his crown! Damn it. Forgive me for I have sinned – and what good sinning it was. No – wait, stop, I’m sorry, I don’t want to go to hell – that’s the thing. Do you think I could enjoy my life now and skip the hell part? Forgive me? No. Wait, stop. I’m sorry. I don’t want to go to hell – that’s the thing. Do you think I could enjoy my life now and skip the hell part? Forgive me? No. Wait. . .”

The qualified happy ending.
When I asked my former directing teacher what he felt was particularly challenging for his students, he said that they’re all convinced that everything should work out in the end. They’re pretty sure all will be well. I was one of his students once and I remember feeling this way. I was keen on unqualified happy endings. I liked a good clean wedding at the end of a comedy. All’s well that ends well.
Except even All’s Well The Ends Well doesn’t really end WELL.

There’s some evidence that as humans, we judge the quality of something by how it ends. We imagine we’d want a shorter life that ended well rather than a longer one with a terrible one. We judge the quality of a life by its final moments. Which is a bit silly – because very few people’s final years are their best – and very few people end with unqualified happiness.

So this one – this assurance that all MAY be well – well, that seems like a more useful idea. We don’t have to be entirely pessimistic and face down in nothing but darkness but we don’t have to pretend there’s no darkness either.
All MAY be well or it may not.
It’s the mature happy ending.

He won’t let many touch his steel stringed heart. It takes a practiced hand with lots of callouses to play those strings. The music that can emerge is beautiful but it takes an accomplished player to pluck it out.
What was his heart like before?
Were the strings pliant and flexible?
Could anyone with a bit of skill make them sound?
Was it all melody?
All harmony?
All music?
The heart at the center of the body resonating everywhere.

It’s interesting to plead for help and then ask for an assessment. Is an assessment a form of help? How?
Is it that the angels look into his soul and find either a) potential for redemption or b) irrevocable evil and he wants to know which it is so he doesn’t waste any time repenting in case it’s the latter? I mean, if he’s going to hell anyway – he probably figures, why lose out on the benefits of my crime?
It’s just – funny – I feel like you ask angels for help with mercy, with forgiveness, with finding the keys to your castle but for an evaluation? Not so much. Or at least I wouldn’t.

I had a Book on Angels years ago. I was in my late 20s and feeling very lost. I bought this book about angels and did all the exercises. I had a notebook in which I wrote to the angels and the angels wrote to me. I remember crying a lot because it felt like my angel said some things that really touched me and made me feel comforted and hopeful. I had, though, a simultaneous experience of feeling like I was probably just writing to myself and making myself cry by comforting myself in just the way I needed comforting. And I thought, well, I’ll just believe this for now – because it is helping me – and if this is a fiction – it is a fiction that will help guide me out of dark period.

I am still grateful to that angel, though. From this distance I feel, more than ever, that it was just a part of me, a wiser part of me, that the idea of an angel could help me understand.

It works this way for so many things, doesn’t it?
The harder we try to be free, the more bound we become. The harder we push, the less freedom we have.

The more fiercely we resist our fate, the tighter its hold on us.
Surrender is loosening the ties that bind us.
I feel this all the time in my Feldenkrais work – just trying and trying to get the movement right until I finally surrender and just rest a moment, then things click in to place. Or they don’t – and I do – and I don’t mind as much. Win win.

Claudius is an interesting villain.
He’s not an Iago or an Aaron, unrepentantly enjoying being a bastard. But nor is he a redemptive villain. He’s a guy who does a lot of terrible things and tries not to feel them or acknowledge them but he does have a conscience. It’s such a suggestible conscience. It gets stimulated by a show and then suddenly he feels his bosom as black as death.

In a way Claudius is the most contemporary villain in the canon. He does terrible things – is in relative denial about them – and then doubles down on his terribleness after a crisis of conscience. If this play were written today, he’d be the center of the story. He’d be the Walter White, the Nucky Thompson, the anti-hero of Renaissance Lit.

Why do we not put an accent over the ed in wretched?

I mean. I know, it’s just how we pronounce wretched in general – in anything. But in Shakespeare – to get the pronunciation of wretched, we put a little clue – a little accent to indicate its extra syllable sound – one that this word has naturally. However – with that rule in place, it makes me wonder if the absence of an accent in this scenario might be an indication of a different pronunciation of wretched. A one syllable version, for example.
How would an editor indicated an unpronounced ed – how would one indicate an un-emphasized syllable in a word that we usually emphasize?
Is there a symbol for that?
Probably, But most of us wouldn’t recognize it.

That’s the thing, right?
If you can’t do the thing, there’s nothing the thing can do for you.
If you can’t believe, belief can do nothing for you – no matter how much you hope to believe – if you can’t … you’re SOL.
If you can’t repent, repentance is useless.
To you, anyway. It might really pay off for some actually penitent person.

Claudius is thinking himself into a tight spot – circling around himself on a question he could not possibly answer. What can repentance NOT do? Many things, I imagine. But that’s the trouble here. Trying to figure out what you’re going to get out of repentance is not really the way repentance is meant to work. What can it not?
It probably won’t make your King or get you a bride. It won’t bring you fortune or fame.
Repentance probably has no tangible rewards.
Its rewards are on the inside.
It might set you breathing again – breathing more fully – it might remove that knot in your stomach – it might bring you peace. But if those are things you’ve ignored all along to become king – it will be hard to value them now.