I made the mistake of trying to be helpful on the Feldenkrais practitioners Facebook page and was instantly confronted with someone’s hate. I think she literally used the word “hate.” And, you know, everyone’s entitled to their opinion – but when talking with strangers on the internet, it might be nice to hold back your hate. If all you’ve got to say is that you hate something, you can just get thee in. We don’t need you out here hating.

The first clown thinks he’s so smart – like this is the most brilliant riddle but…gravemakers don’t really “build” do they? I think there are a lot of fallacies in this riddle. The second clown’s answer is actually better. Because a gallows is built. A grave is dug. It is more an act of destruction than construction.

I’ve always heard this as the first clown calling the second a dull ass. But I think now that this dull ass is a metaphorical ass – an analogy – not specifically the dull ass belonging to the second clown – but your dull ass as a generic kind of ass.
This is supported by his use of “thy brains” but the dull ass is “your dull ass” and the generic your is a speech pattern of the clown as in “your water” and “your whoreson dead body” – neither the water nor the dead body belong specifically to the man he’s talking to – but are a kind of colloquial way to describe a thing.

I mean, yes, he is likely comparing the second clown’s brains to a dull ass – but I think it might have less to do with how stupid he perceives the Second Clown to be and more to do with ceasing the efforts of trying to think. He has, after all, already liked his wits so he’s not entirely disrespectful of his fellow gravedigger’s intelligence. Anyways – this may be a dull ass that I’m cudgeling but I think this line is often why the Second gravedigger is played as the dumb one. It’s a facile choice based on the appearance of “dull ass” in a sentence.

The day this line appears is known as Indictment Day. All day on Twitter – folks have been wishing each other Merry Indictment Day. Last night they recommended leaving cookies for Mueller and looking for him in the sky as he sailed.

Today many are saying this process is proceeding the same way prosecutors normally tackle mafia cases. That it starts with the little fish and the net gets bigger and bigger until they catch the whale.
To’t, y’all. To’t.
This is the first moment I have felt even cautiously optimistic in a year.
To’t.
*
Ah, the sweet sweet hope of this moment. The indictments have come and gone and while we watched many dominos fall – none of them saved us. None of them.

A life in Shakespeare can sometimes yield some funny crossovers. I learned Titania’s “forgeries of jealousy” speech to perform for my friend’s students. So a week later, I see “unyoke” in this line and I’m instantly with the ox who has stretched his yoke in vain. So the ox and the second clown become sort of merged in my mind, just because of the commonality of yoking. Which – I’ll be honest – I don’t have much other experience of, or have much occasion to talk about.

I was crushingly sad yesterday. I’m still a little hung over from that sad. I wondered at one point if this was perhaps a modified post-show blues. I performed a speech a few days before and I had a visceral jolt in returning to performing – the high, the pleasure of having Shakespeare’s words in my head and in my body. When I was so sad yesterday, I thought maybe it was just my body’s way of saying, “I missed that. When will we do that again? To’t again, come.”

Why? Because he was clever and came up with a different answer than the one you were looking for? Because of your made up inference that the gallows is better than the church?
Now, of course, we don’t expect a gravedigger to be an expert teacher but this kind of questioning reminds me of the kind of questions new teachers will sometimes ask before they learn how to ask open questions. They will ask a question that is not unrelated to a “What number am I thinking of?” type of question. “Uh, 9? Are you thinking of 9? I don’t know. “

Ah, but he did not say this. He said nothing of the kind. He did not mention the church at all so you are bringing in information that is outside the parameters of the riddle.

You can’t change the parameters of the riddle like that – not in mid answer! That’s against the Riddler’s Code! If there were such a thing.

I beg to differ, clown. The gallows does well to one person and one person only and that is the gallows maker. I cannot believe that death is the best thing for he that is condemned to it. And most nations around the world agree. Mine is one of the few still in the dark ages in this respect.

The desire to see a criminal hanged is understandable but it does not benefit the criminal in any way – nor does it benefit the society that does it to him. It just codifies and ritualizes murder. I’m not absolutist about a lot of things but I think murder is murder, whether a criminal is doing it or the state. And murder will inevitably stain the hands of whomever commits it – even if you offload the stain to an executioner, the stain spreads to the one who condemned someone to die, the one who failed to defend him from it, those who accused him, the ones who made the laws that condemned him, the witnesses, the ones who enforced the law. Spreading the stain does not make it any less horrible. The stain’s reach is infinite.

I wonder what our world would be like if we interrogated our wellness as much as we interrogate our illness. Like instead of moving on when someone says they’re doing well after being asked how they are, to ask “How are you well?” “How so?”
We usually only do this when someone says they’re terrible or mad or sad or “not great” or whatever variation from “fine” we happen to run into. What if things were reversed? What if we investigated fine-ness and well-ness and came to understand what factors created such blessed states? Would it be a more beautiful world? Or would we just lie and say we weren’t well so we didn’t have to talk to one another.