I think I know a fair amount of things and maybe most importantly, I have a sense of what I don’t know, as well. It is destabilizing to see that something you thought you knew is actually something you DON’T know – but that’s where the real wisdom lies, probably on that line that lies between what you know and what you don’t.

It’s funny to think of one’s skull as something that belongs to them or once belonged to them. It feels much more as if it is the person or at least a part of who that person is or was. I think of my skull as such a key part of myself, it is almost impossible to imagine it as a possession. But it is an interesting thought experiment to consider my possession of it as temporary.
It might actually help me take my migraines less personally. If the skull is just mine temporarily, the migraines are just a mismatch between tenant and landlord. Or just a miscommunication between two different inhabitants of the same space.

I wonder if there were any female tanners? And I wonder at what point jobs like that became gendered. Like, I think at one point – it was just that working people did whatever there was to do to make a living. Women farmed and sold things and probably tanned hides but it would seem by Shakespeare’s time, craftspeople were seen as male. There are no lady mechanicals, for example.
But when and how did that switch get made?

This is a very macabre way to ask this question.
It would be less so, perhaps, to say, “How long until a man is naught but bones?”
Or nowadays we’d say, “How long is the decomposition process?”
But Hamlet has rotting on the brain (“There is something rotten in the state of Denmark.”) and, perhaps, given how recently he’s seen his father’s ghost, he might also be wondering what his dad will look like the next time he sees him.

Ground is such a great flexible word. First, it is one of those words that just SOUNDS right for what it is. It is earthy and round and gritty. Second, it is so rich in possible meanings. Earth and cause, reason and probabilities are all connected to Earth, probably – that is metaphorical things on which something stands are also grounds. And as a verb, it turns something to earth.
Also it is very pleasurable to say.

It’s such classic comedy structure.
“It was so strange.”
“How strange was it?”
“It was so strange. There was a punchline at the end of it.”

It was so hot.
How hot was it?
It was so hot, pets who went out became roasted hot dogs with relish.
Ba dum bum.

We’re always looking for these kinds of answers when it comes to mental health. Why did it happen? How? What caused it? We look for a clear cause and effect. But it is rare that such a thing exists, I think. The clown’s answer to this question is actually the most accurate. A person goes mad because he goes mad. Sometimes there may be mitigating factors – but mostly it comes along like the weather, without much warning and sometimes destructively.

Hamlet is a pretty good straight man. He knows how to feed the clown his set-ups. I don’t think that is definitely what is going on here – but I do think that Hamlet has a comic sense and an ability to enjoy others’ comic sense and provide the necessary prompts to get the full effect of a joke. I mean, he does not have to ask “Why?” He could just let that statement roll on by but instead he asks and gets us all to the punchline.

This is actually a pretty smart question. It might seem to be just part of the vaudeville routine – but it’s a pretty clever fact finding inquiry, too. Like – what is the story that’s gone out about why Hamlet’s been sent to England? What is the propaganda that Claudius has put out? What are people saying?

Probably, before cameras, royals could conceivably walk around in relative anonymity if they wanted to. Just take off your crown and you have an instant cloak of relative invisibility. I mean, we see Henry the V do it in that play. Here Hamlet can play dumb about basic Denmark facts and presumably the grave-maker is none the wiser.
How would he recognize a prince? By his portrait? Probably not in person. There not being much call for the overlapping of gravemakers and princes usually.
There are no photos, no videos – just paintings and drawings and engravings, which, no matter how artful, don’t necessarily make their way to the eyes of the people.
I think if I were a royal, I’d take great solace in being able to throw off my royalty for a moment and just wander as a human. I’d probably also have to be a male royal to make that really work, though – as ladies didn’t have quite the freedom of movement that I’d find optimal. Maybe, if I had been a queen, I’d have periodically dressed as a man to go out exploring.