I used to really believe this. It was quite comforting to think that some divine hand was pulling the strings around me, guiding me to some magnificent fate. It allowed me to move with great confidence, convinced that the universe had my best interests at heart. But then I ran into a rough patch and I couldn’t understand why the divine hand let me down, had sent me to a place that did not push me forward, that seemed to throw me into the dark forest. When I emerged, I had lost my belief in the divine and felt entirely rough-hewn.

This is a weirdly complicated sentence for what seems to be a fairly simple thought – which is that sometimes it pays to be rash and/or indiscriminate.
But the thought bounces hither and yon.
Like, what is “let us know” doing in the middle of this sentence?
And what is rashly related to, grammatically speaking?
Is this fragmented phrasing suggestive of his fighting heart that would not let him sleep?

And I bet mutineers in shackles don’t sleep so good either. What I love about this sentence is that it has the flavor of nonsense. Like it sounds a little bit like the jabberwocky. Soley based on sound, the mutines in the bilboes could easily be in the Jabberwock’s forest.

I wonder if this was a common phrase of the time – an idiomatic but commonly recognized image – or one that Shakespeare invented. If he invented it, it is a funny moment for this series of sounds. I know the image makes sense – especially since Hamlet is talking about his experience on a boat – but the sounds have a silly quality. I don’t object to silliness one bit. In fact, I applaud it mightily.

But if it is silliness, what is it trying to accomplish? I suspect it’s Hamlet embroidering the story for Horatio – performing it, really.

The most succinct description of insomnia ever.

When it happens to me, it is a bit of a battle.
“This thing is worrisome!”
“It’s fine. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
“But I need to figure it out now!”
“There is nothing you can solve now. You have to let it go for a few hours and then when we wake up, we’ll tackle it.”
“But what about -?”
“Sleep is the only answer.”
“But I just have to think about this one thing.”
“That thing you already thought about 16 times? Yeah, I think we can safely say you thought about that already. It’s sleeping time.”
“But.”
“Sleep.”
“But.”
“Sleep.”
And so on and on.

I have a tendency to read multiple books, plays or stories at once. I watch several TV shows. It generally seems normal to me to bounce around from narrative to narrative. But it suddenly struck me that when I do that, my brain has to retain the circumstances of many stories at once. When I dive back into a novel, I usually take no time to acclimatize. I almost never really want to see the “What happened last week” teasers on TV. I just remember the circumstance usually.

These moments are rather uncharacteristically vague for Shakespeare – and for Hamlet. “So much for this” (What was the this?) and now for “The other”?
We can guess at what these two things are referring to but there isn’t any real evidence for what the this and the other are referring to.

Perhaps this is to suggest an intimacy between Hamlet and Horatio wherein they share private chat that even the audience is not privy to. They can speak in code. The way that the Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks characters do in Broadcast News.

 

Is there a resource for finding the origins of phrases? Many times, the origin – or the first known use of something – is, in fact, Shakespeare.
This one, though – seems like it might go way back – while simultaneously feeling incredibly contemporary.
“So much for him” often gets a laugh in Claudius’ speech at the top of this play.
So much for so much for so simple and so elegant.

And that, my friends, is an EXIT line.
I mean. Just – classic, perfect exit line. A bold assertion! A strong declarative that suggests a future! And I’m off!

I wonder what the dog’s day would be like, though.
I mean – most dogs, their ideal day would involve running around, playing catch, chewing on some bones, maybe rolling in some mud and just generally having a fabulous time.
It’s possible, sure, that the killer dogs might enjoy killing a rabbit or something. But I don’t really know dogs like that.

Cats will mew, though, for sure.
No matter what Hercules says.

Someone dear to me will often say, “it doesn’t matter” when I express sympathy for something that has gone awry in his day. And then it is a very short journey from “it doesn’t matter” to “nothing matters.”
I believe this is one of the language tells of someone who is depressed. Someone wrestling with depression is much more likely to say something like this than someone who does not wrestle with the dark fog.
There are other phrases as well – and they tend to group under a self-oriented negativity. They use more I centered words and blame themselves for everything.
I say they – though surely I have had my own depressive periods wherein all this was true for me as well.

It would be such a long list if I tried to sum up all the people I ever loved. It would cover pages and pages. I find myself suddenly quite comforted by that fact. Sometimes, the world seems dark and unfriendly – particularly when the news is so dire. But – to think of trying to list every person I ever loved is more overwhelming even than the current horrors. I have been lucky to have so many people who are dear to me.