Practically, now, how does the ghost travel so quickly underground? And why?
Are there tunnels for the dead? Like, sewers for corpses to move through
During the morning. Morning is clearly a threat to them so that perhaps they must
Hide themselves from the sun’s rays, like vampires.
Or has the morning made the ghost lose corporeality, turning him into a mist that flows from place to place, yet that can still speak (albeit in a lot less articulate way than the corporeal ghost).
Perhaps the dawn turns the ghost into a mole
Or a worm or a beetle
Or some tunneling creature and he ceases his martial stalk to become a scuttling earth-dweller making its way through soil and sod and stone.
But he’s one with a megaphone or some kind of strange amplification system that transforms his voice from the squeak of a mole to the imposing haunting voice of “Swear.”
The mist is my favorite solution because there’s a sort of uncontrolled dissipation in a mist. It can’t stay in one place; It has to move hither and yon with no authority or ground of its own. Water underground might have the same sort of movement quality, in that it cannot stop moving with gravity and geology and open pathways until contained or absorbed or collected somewhere. I like the idea of the king slipping away into something more elemental.

How does Hamlet’s relationship with his father’s ghost change so fast? Before he calls his dad an “old mole” he’s been silent and awed, trembling perhaps before the heightened rhetoric of his ghostly father – then once the ghost’s voice comes eerily up through the ground, he becomes irreverent and affectionate somehow. A mole conjures no really fearful quality (even for a Small Mammal-phobe like me). A mole is blind and cute and I picture one cradled in the palm of a hand, even a very old one, with grey whiskers, perhaps a long beard, still, harmless. Perhaps even more than harmless.

And isn’t it sort of condescending to say something is well said when you’ve just said that very thing yourself?
It’s like when a child learns to talk and we praise him for the very thing he’s repeating, when really we just said it ourselves.
Dramatically, this scene makes sense in performance. It’s satisfying to see Hamlet treat the scary ghost like a cute old spirit, like Casper, not a poltergeist –
but I can’t figure out how to explain this shift.

They haven’t heard much, have they? Mostly, they’ve seen.
All they’ve heard from the ghost is “Swear” – which is not much to speak of.
Unless –
Is Hamlet, perhaps, concerned that they have overheard his chat with his dad?
Does he suspect they’ve been eavesdropping and caught wind of all the news?
Is it possible they HAVE been eavesdropping?
They were only steps behind him when they followed.
That is quite a long scene for them to catch up so much later.
They’d have every reason to listen in. They’re concerned for Hamlet’s safety,
They want to be assured he will not be tempted to the flood or something.
They could, in fact, have heard and perhaps Hamlet is rightly concerned with their silence. Is there any evidence for them NOT hearing the big reveal?
I’ve never seen it played that way
But I’m curious about what would shift if Horatio and Marcellus were witnesses
To the ghost’s news.
There is such a lot of eavesdropping in this play already, it’s not impossible for there to be a little more, is it?

Why do these gentlemen need to swear over the location of the ghost’s voice?
Is it so the ghost will hear?
He seems to hear them fine.
Is one spot of ground more sacred than another?
Are the ley lines better suited for swearing wherever the ghost
leads them with his voice?
What is the value of shifting ground over and over for this swearing?
Why tunnel underground to call up above?
What does the ghost get out of it?
Besides maybe the pleasure of messing with a group of people.

During my most miserable time there, I had a dream about a plant. My plant was wilting and drying out in its home under the stairs, in the dark. I was doing my best to care for it but it was almost impossible in the environment it was in.
I knew I was like that plant, planted in the wrong place. I thought about cacti attempting to grow in rainforests and water lilies trying to grow in a desert.
So I shifted ground.
I’d believed that it shouldn’t matter where I was, I wanted to bloom wherever I was planted. I’d spent so many years uprooting myself, I thought I would do well to send some roots into the soil where I was, even though the soil wasn’t rich with my kind of nutrients.
So I shifted ground.
I thought in coming back to my home garden, the one where I’d bloomed so brightly years before, I would once again burst with growth, push forth brightly colored flowers, shoot green stalks skyward. Yet, this old familiar garden was crowded. There was no room to grow. Or perhaps whatever nutrients enriched this soil before had been depleted.
I am hesitant to shake this familiar dirt from my roots, afraid that all of these re-plantings will not serve me but ground that will not grow things must lie fallow sometimes and plants wanting to bloom again need the best light, the best water and the best ground. Shift now.

1. Once you find out the translation of this bit of Latin, can you keep the Beatles song “Here, There and Everywhere” out of your head?
2. Why is Hamlet speaking Latin right now? He’s not trying to impress anyone, I would imagine. Do the rest of the people in this scene speak Latin? Hamlet’s a scholar. Horatio is too. So that’s two. Does the ghost? Marcellus? In the midst of a moment when a ghost is throwing his voice all over the stage, why throw in a Latin phrase?
3. Was this maybe some popular Latin catch phrase that everybody used? Like a Renaissance “Isn’t that special?”
4. Normally, the characters that toss in a Latin phrase or two are high on the self-importance scale. Holofernes. Polonius. The occasional high falutin’ fool. Hamlet’s wordy, for sure – but pompous? Maybe.

This is a strangely preliminary step toward swearing, especially for people who have already sworn (at least by their estimation.) Swearing, being a verbal act, consenting being the same. It’s like promising to promise, agreeing to agree, assenting to assent. But maybe Hamlet has a more serious oath in mind, the kind with blood and bindings, maybe an ancient ritual thrown in? Maybe he means the kind of swearings that tend to stick because they had a stinging stick at the start, the pain of which you’ll remember later if you think about breaking it.

Do they? Gertrude can’t hear this fellow in the closet. It is entirely possible that no one can hear this ghost but Hamlet. There’s no indication that they are responding to what the ghost says. They’re listening to Hamlet, watching him talk to the floor, the old mole in the earth. In staging it, probably a group of people hearing a spooky voice is more interesting than one but I’d like to try both. What if this line isn’t a statement of fact – but a hope – as in “You heard what I heard, right?” as in an unasked question, an attempt to reaffirm what one hopes is the truth. As in, “you love me” as in, “It’s not going to rain” as in, “It all works out in the end.”

Pulling on the reins of the old mule that has become my career, I shuffle my feet through the mud. I’ve run out of carrots. I used to feed that old mule little bites of sweet young carrots plucked from the ground by their leafy ferny greens. I’d give the mule a little bite, then tie the carrot to a string which I dangled well in front of us and off she’d go, slowly, of course, but surely.
But the same carrot will not last longer than a day. It will start to lose its fresh appeal and if I don’t give that old mule her carrot at the end of the day, she would be petulant and moody and not follow the next day’s carrot. But. This ground is dry and brittle. I haven’t seen vegetables poking their heads from the ground in ages. We move slowly. I can’t persuade her to go any faster than she feels like. Which is not very. But I pull on her lead anyway, hoping to convince her that the next step is better than the last.