So the story here is that Laertes is so good at fencing that anyone who steps into the “ring” with him becomes a clumsy fool.

This makes me think of an incredibly cool French woman I know. And I actually know quite a few incredibly cool French women – but this one, for some reason, always triggers incredibly clutzy behavior in me. I spill drinks, drop food, lose the ability to bring my fork to my mouth. She is somehow grace personified and I become ineptitude. But it is curious that I feel not the slightest bit of judgment from her when this happens. She’ll just hand me a napkin and continue asking me respectful interesting questions.

One thing that the current moment has taught me is how easily some people are manipulated. I have seen men especially vulnerable to this sort of flattery. The fragility of masculinity is such that any bolstering or diminishment of its symbols is extremely effective.

Hillary Clinton told us 45 could be baited with a tweet and she was right. Today I read about him blocking a veterans group and Steven King on Twitter. Which, sure, I guess that means they’ve challenged his masculinity sufficiently to have him (or his staff) shut them down.

But simultaneously, that display of loyalty, the “which of you doth love me most” cabinet meeting shows how any flattery of 45s masculinity can secure the most loathsome sort of folks a seat at the table. 45 has surrounded himself with Iagos, Claudiuses, Aarons, Richard the Thirds, Gloucesters and Cassiuses. 45 is not only Roderigo and Laertes and Clarence and the little princes and Lear but also Bardolph, the gravediggers and the Dauphin. He is Leontes. He is Lear. With much shittier language. He is toddler Lear and baby Leontes.

In the process of trying to put together a piece about my generation, I kept running across how cyclical the world can be. I discovered that pretty much every generation got called the Me Generation in their youth. One article I read pointed out that maybe it’s not that the generation is narcissistic, it’s that young people tend to be narcissists and so as we age, we perceive them as such, seeing those behind us as uniquely selfish when we ourselves were the very same when we were their age.

The Genius note on this line features a photo of Norm from Cheers. I enjoy that. It’s partly why I love Genius – it has that mix of high and low brow – just like Shakespeare.

Genius began its life as RapGenius and that spirit still runs through the enterprise but maybe the rap side doesn’t show up on the Shakespeare as much as I’d like. I want more gifs. More memes. I should probably do that myself – but I don’t really think in a meme/gif way. I also don’t think in Tweets somehow. I’m not, like, bite-sized, I guess.

It’s always more complicated than that with me. I love the picture of Norm on the Genius note but I start thinking of Normans and I want to add Norman Rockwell and then I want to look up a list of all the other famous Normans and the joke is long dead before I get there.

What the? Why the immense mythologizing of this random French dude? I mean, I know Claudius is trying to build up Laertes and he’s doing it by building up this other guy who once spoke highly of Laertes – but we assume Laertes knows this guy – because he says, “Lamond” but it’s such an odd thing to do. It’s an odd odd way to flatter – to speak about a third party in such an extreme way. And to go on and on about him. Is this some common trick of rhetoric that seems weird now? Most contemporary productions cut this scene way down but why did Shakespeare put it here? That’s my question.

Man-horse.
Horse-man.
Grown together as one creature.
Incorpsed is an amazing word. Especially since it has corpse in it.
I expect this is also where we get incorporated –
Incorpsed –
In the body.
Intertwined corporeally.
Horse man
Man horse
Who leads who follows
Two minds as one
Two bodies as one
Two natures as one
Two natures in one nature
Of course – in this case it is clear who leads and who follows. It is the man who brings the horse to wondrous doings, not the other way round. It is the horse that is such a good follower that they seem two minds, two bodies, two natures in one.
I think rather that one has so dominated the other that his will is no longer visible.

The Enchanted Saddle

Once upon a time there was a witch. She had a pretty good witchy life, witchy food on the table, witchy friends and she got up to her witchy business without much interference from busybodies. One day, however, a young man rode by on his horse. He was dressed in fine fabrics and trinkets hung from him like ornaments on a tree. As he passed the witch’s hunt, he spotted her tending to her hedges and he shouted at her. I won’t repeat what he shouted because it was rude and does not bear repeating. But needless to say, the witch did not take kindly to be shouted at. She did not take kindly to rude people with too much authority and too much entitlement.

But she did not shout back at him, no, no. She quickly spoke a charm that halted the horse right where it stood. She giggled as she watched the man try to goad his horse into moving, to no avail, and then she slowly walked into her house. By the time she emerged, the man had dismounted and was looking anxiously around his horse for some small clue as to what prevented them from proceeding. The witch made her slow way toward him and chortled as she went – inwardly, of course, she knew how threatening such men found a laughing woman. She was a witch, she knew how to be careful. As she approached, the man looked up and saw her.
“Damned horse,” he said. “Won’t go for no reason at all.”
“I think it’s the saddle,” said the witch.
“The saddle?”
“Yes,” said the witch. “I took the liberty of bringing you an extra one that I happened to have lying around, taking up space. I wonder if you’d like to have it.”
“I don’t have any small change,” said the man.
“Oh no,” said the witch. “You misunderstand. It’s a present. I will give you this saddle on only one condition.”
“What condition is that?” asked the man, suspiciously.
“That you shout no more at the women that you see. Young or old. Fair or foul. If you take this saddle from me, you agree to such a bargain.”
“Fine,” said the man, who had gotten a look at the saddle and found it to be quite remarkably well made upon inspection.
“Do you promise?” asked the witch.
“Yes, yes,” agreed the man.
“Then it’s a bargain,” said the witch, as she watched him remove the old saddle.
With the new saddle in place, the man hopped astride his horse and the witch whispered her counter charm to get the horse moving again.

The man rode along, quite satisfied with his new saddle and pleased to have gotten it so cheaply. He had not gone far when he noticed a young woman picking flowers by the side of the road. He shouted his approbation of her body as he passed and she blushed in a way that he found very appealing. She seemed to speed up her task and he thought to himself, “I’d like to catch hold of that girl,” so he stopped his horse and began to dismount. He pulled his foot from the stirrup and began to swing his leg around but found that he could not. He tried with the other leg but that too failed to clear the horse.
“No matter,” he thought to himself, “I’ll just hop up and off.”
But when he pushed with his arms, he found he could not raise himself up from the saddle.
The girl had long since hurried away and still he remained, trying ever more desperately to unseat himself from his saddle. When he looked down, he could see that his body had begun to lose its edges, such that he and the saddle were one thing. He cursed and shouted but the more he shouted, the more firmly attached he became.

Finally, he gave up and turned his horse to return to that old woman’s house. The horse, however, had other ideas and the man was no longer its master. The witch, having burdened the horse with a man grown into his saddle, had also charmed the horse to understand its freedom as soon as the man set the enchantment into action.

And for the rest of their days, the horse went where it chose and the man just had to follow.

1) Claudius was in the wars, too? We know about Hamlet Senior and his sledded pole-axe. But Claudius was in battle?
2) Against the French? When did the French and the Danish get into military scuffles? This is not current, obviously, since Laertes was off to France at the top of the play.
3) But at one point, the Danes were fighting the French on horseback. I guess each nation has its own specialty. The French are good on horses? This seems weird. How did THAT come to be? Or is it just something Shakespeare made up? How about some nitty gritty literary military history? I’d like to know where all this is coming from.

I have timeline questions. What else was happening two months ago? If Hamlet can be trusted as a time resource, we assume that Gertrude married Claudius a month after Claudius killed Hamlet Senior. At what point AFTER that wedding does this play take place? And how long do the events of the play take to occur? How long does it take to get to France and back? And was Laertes in France when this supposed gentleman from Normandy showed up? Did the gentleman of Normandy arrive at the same time as the murder? That’s my question. If even such a person exists. It is a curious time to choose, given the circumstances.

While I wouldn’t trade the age I live in now for anything (No age has yet been better for women, not that this one is super great but) I do see the appeal of a time when one could know the age of a person simply by what they wore. Ah, sables and such! That there is a man in his settled age! Ah, a ribbon in his cap! That must be a light and careless youth! One look, I’m done! I know so much, just by the clothes!

In our age of freedom, though, you need to look more closely to determine someone’s age. A grandmother might just as easily wear her hair in pigtails. A child might be dressed in a business suit. A man might dress as a woman. A girl may dress as a boy. A person may just in an non-gendered way entirely. We can no longer make any assumption about anyone – even what might have been the most basic understanding before. I firmly believe that looking closer is a better way. When we look without thinking, we inevitably leave someone out and lose sensitivity. But I do understand the longing for seemingly simpler times.

The question though is – simple for Who? Only those who could easily conform. So…in the end, I’m happy to not know a person’s age by their sable. Maybe their age is none of my business.