Curious construction. Why is this question:
“What do you call the play?”
Wouldn’t it make more sense to say, “What is the play called?”
Does he think Hamlet wrote it?
Did Hamlet suggest that he did?
Or is there some implication of a pet name for the play? Like the play’s actually called Death of a Salesman but I like to call it Uncle in the Closet.
Or, like, the play’s called Macbeth but I call it The One with the Witches. JK. I call it Mackers. JK. I call it The Scottish Play. JK. I just call it Macbeth. Seriously.

Furthermore –
Why does Claudius use the formal YOU here?
For that matter, why is EVERYONE in this scene speaking formally?
Is it because it is a public event?
Or because it is happening in front of actors?
Is it because they’re all nobles talking to each other in front of the artist class? Very Curious.

I read a feminist defense of the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” The song had been accused of being a little bit “rape-y” in the last couple of years due, mostly, to the line, “Say, what’s in this drink?”
There are those, now that they’ve read the defense, who are joyously shouting vindication for the song. And those who are finding other details still on the sexist side.
Is there offense in it? It depends.
Certainly it was written in a much more sexist time than our own and is clearly a product of its time. Which doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it now. Ultimately, for me, like Shakespeare and other classic texts, it comes down to how it is performed.
If Bill Cosby sings this song to a woman, like, say, Beverly Johnson (or ANY woman) it does feel VERY rape-y.
Which doesn’t mean he shouldn’t sing it with Beverly Johnson. It would be the creepiest, most uncomfortable and interesting “Baby, it’s Cold Outside” ever.
When Luke Wheeler and Rayna James on the TV show, Nashville, sang it to each other, well, that’s just fine. Those two characters were hot for each other and in love. We want to see a nice sexy duet like that.
It all depends on how into the gentleman the Lady is and how uncreepy the Gentleman is. Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zoey Deschanel sang it, it would have a sweet quirky niceness.
But if Deschanel sang it with Christopher Walken in Deerhunter mode? Creepy. Scary. Not okay. But again, interesting!
It’s always always interpretation.

And then there’s the fun gender reversed way.

There’s something interesting about framing the plot of a play as an argument. It implies certain amount of inherent conflict in the work. What is the argument? Thinking Man against the obligation of Revenge?
But of course it is not that simple if it’s even that at all.
Does this notion of argument come from rhetorical training and history?
In that Q2 talk from the Free Library
Lesser posits that the To Be or Not to Be speech is actually classic abstract rhetoric structure and content. What is the Central Question? To Be or Not to Be.
Point 1: Suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Counterpoint 1: Or take arms against a sea of trouble.

It is essentially an argument. Not really a soliloquy. It does not feature I at any point. It does not feature any of his actual circumstances. It does not ask the audience to solve it.
It is a very good argument, of course but an argument. Is a plot an argument?
Sometimes it is, yes.

We had a long hard discussion last night. Hours and hours of sorting through, figuring it out, working it out. Mostly, we managed without too much heat or anger. But I notice that one of the things that gets me hottest is a misattribution of what I said. Even if the sense is similar, I will get touchy if I am misquoted. I want my words, not those! Those words aren’t the ones I used! They’re not what I meant!

I have nothing with this answer, either. Or this question. Or this line. I have nothing, really in general. Full up on exhaustion and disorder, it’s nearly impossible to access the creative response in myself. I search and search within but I have nothing with this answer.

I have a lot of anxieties and worries and concerns and a sore back from moving and practical concerns like where to put my guitar. But I don’t have anything of merit for this. And I guess that’s what the king’s saying, too.

“I got nothing for this, Hamlet. You’re not giving me anything to work with.”

I love the way this line has a quality of being a public pronouncement sort of question. It’s not like, “Hey, Hamlet, you doing okay? I know you’ve been under the weather. How’s it going?”

It’s very formal and public – giving Hamlet a title and using the good old royal collective we/our/us.

If this question were asked without Hamlet in the room, it might be spoken with some concern, like, “How’s Uncle Charlie doing? Any news?”
But as it stands, it seems to be a question TO Hamlet, who is in the room – and also the first line after a Danish march and Flourish, featuring Trumpets and Kettle Drums.

After that arrival, one might expect a king to make a pronouncement. Something like: “I hereby declare that every Tuesday shall be Bring Thy Nephew to Work Day!” or something.

But no, rather than declaring war on Norway or announcing diplomatic progress he asks his nephew how he’s doing as if it were a pronouncement.

It would be almost impossible for the madness of royalty to go unwatched, given how closely watched they are in general. Whatever a royal person does he has a multitude of eyes upon it. In some cultures, royals get no privacy whatsoever, not even to take a shit in peace. There is someone with you at all times.

That would make me mad pretty darn quickly, I can tell you. With never a moment on my own to collect my thoughts, I would be a raving lunatic in a matter of days.

And maybe that explains why there has been so much madness in the kingdoms around the world – they were watched to the point of madness and then watched through madness and so on and so on.

Kings really can make some good declarations, can’t they? They want. They receive.

We have left behind the kingly model of leadership in this day and age – but many things still feature the echo of that kingly impulse. A film director can be very like a king – creating entire worlds with his words, hundreds of people all gathered around to please him. And theatre directors can take on this persona at times as well. Broadway Producers will tend to only hire the most king-like directors to bring work to the stage.

CEOS in some companies. School Principals. There are worlds of people who can still say, “It shall be so” and make it so it shall be.

Aside from the murdering and the dictatoring and the sending his stepson to be executed and speechifying, Claudius isn’t a terrible leader.
Here, he asks the opinion of his advisor – something that many a modern leader fails to do.
Very few things drive me crazier than shoddy leadership. This makes me particularly nervous when I’m leading myself – as I fear nothing so greatly as making the same awful mistakes the leaders I’ve known have.
I do think Claudius might actually have some decent kinging skills in his way. He makes some giant mistakes. But don’t we all?
(not the murdering part, obviously.)

This often works for me! Traveling abroad seems to swiftly bring blurry things into focus. The adjustment that it takes to simply buy a stamp in a foreign land works wonders for the whole self. Everything boils down to its essence. How do I ask for what I need? How do I communicate what I want? There’s no time to worry about my existential angst when the whole world has shifted around me.

Add to that the seas?
The sea, the sea, the movement of the sea, the blue, or green of it, the lulling magic of it, the calm of the horizon of it where blue meets blue.

I could sit by the sea for weeks, I think, and work through every problem I ever had. The magic is trebled by the possibility of swimming in that sea or wading in it.

When I travel abroad to a place by the sea, I can’t even remember what it felt like to want to throw in the towel. It is all so simple by the sea in a country where you do not speak the language.