I like the fact that there is a special folding technique for this writ.
It’s like Hamlet has to do a kind of bureaucratic origami in order to really disguise it. The king’s seal – sure.
The right address – okay.
But the folding!
The folding.

Now – I know that when Hamlet says purse, he probably means a tiny little drawstring bag to keep money in. It’s the sort of bag one could tie to one’s self, I expect. But I would love to see a Hamlet with a purse in the way that we think of it now – like a handbag or a pocketbook (as my grandmother would have called it). A Hamlet with a (modern) purse would be a very interesting Hamlet.

But just writing this now, writing all the words for a bag that women carry, I’m struck by how each of them has come to have a layer of condescension over it. The bags women carry inevitably seem to absorb quite a bit of misogyny in the journey. I think this is why, even when I carried a purse, I was wary of calling it one. But here’s Hamlet talking merrily of keeping his father’s ring in his without the slightest suggestion of embarrassment.

Also, let’s think about pocketbook for a second. I mean – why does pocketbook sound like a joke? Because older ladies say it? It’s two great things in one. Pockets! And books! And pockets are extremely political. The choice to leave pockets out of women’s clothes? Sexist as hell. 

Anyway – that’s maybe why I want to see a Hamlet with a modern purse – because I’d like to reclaim purse for all of us.

Sure, yes, heaven sometimes seems to organize things in an orderly fashion. It sure feels like magic when things line up in extraordinary serendipity.

But serendipitous moments are pretty rare. Most of the time, our lives are pretty messy. Most of the time, the gods seem to be organizing the earth the way a teenager organizes his bedroom – that is, barely.

I picture a god just tossing an idea in a corner when he’s done with it and being surprised when he discovers it again buried under a t-shirt.

Hamlet does do a good job of imitating Claudius at his wordy best. Though this commission is actually a lot more straight forward than most of Claudius’ political speechifying. The as’es are hilarious – of greater importance the more there are, of course – but they are actually pretty clear. England better kill those message bearers because of X, Y, and Z. As, as, as.
Also – I love the little hints at the history between those countries – how at odds and how tenuously at peace they were.

I write all the time. Every day. It is my practice. And I share it, too. Most of the time, there’s no response at all. I “publish” something and nothing changes. I don’t actually know if anyone’s read what I set down. Recently, a comment here on this blog made me realize that at least one person was actually reading it and paying attention and thinking about what they found. I was shocked to see this small thing making an effect on someone.

I am pleased to be read and received. I am pleased with my words making an emotional impact on someone or making them think.

But it is really something to imagine that one’s words could have the power to kill the way Hamlet’s rewritten commission does. I wouldn’t want such a power but it is QUITE a strong effect.

This is much more complicated than its face value. I mean, it’s very simple on one level: he tried to forget how to write like a bureaucrat but it was helpful in this instance. Very simple. But also complicated!

What is this reference to statists? Is he using it as it’s used now? Is it a dig at Claudius? Or some other oppressive government? He does not see himself as a part of the statists but shared a belief with them. So I have questions about that. And forgetting this learning makes me wonder how or why he learned it. Was there legitimately some training in that writing style? I was joking about it in the previous post but now I’m not so sure there wasn’t some. Where did he unlearn this style? At Wittenberg? And what made him try to unlearn it? This makes me wonder the exact trajectory of Hamlet’s education and how much of it was related to his royal duties and how much was his own interest.

He probably really knows how to do this. Probably there’s a whole course in royal training school where they teach you how to write commissions. You don’t need to learn to write essays or read novels but you will need to learn to write commissions and other such royal decrees. Proclamations are their own workshop.

Royal Syllabus:
In this course, we will learn to write commissions, decrees and missives. Pre-requisites include: Proclamations, Handwriting, Seals and Posture.

The they is the villanies, I presume and it is they who have set the play in motion. The villanies wrote the scenario, the villanies started the plot.
Hamlet was hoping to make his own work, from his own brain – but all these villanies kicked into action and his play was tanked before it could even begin. Before he could even work out how he wanted to begin, he was forced to react to the villanies before him.

This is probably how a fish feels, caught in a net. All around him, the lines of betrayal, lumped in with old boots and tin cans, plastic bottles, syringes and crill.
I imagine a sunfish Hamlet calling to the Gods, “How came I to be thus be-netted?”

Is Horatio reading the commission?

Did Hamlet lose him by giving him his death warrant reading material? I mean – if someone handed me the death warrant he’d discovered for himself, I might find it hard to resist perusing – even if I had been instructed to read it at my leisure later. I mean – it’s a death warrant! You don’t see a lot of those. Not unless you’re an executioner.