Ah. Yes. The soaking up of reflected glory. Sponge is rather a perfect metaphor for this. This is something we often see in assistants who enjoy the reflective power of their positions. You see it in all those Insider Hollywood stories. (Episodes, The Player, Entourage, The Comeback) There’s always that assistant who disappears into their boss – one who does his dirty work for him, who approves as s/he think he would approve or dismiss where s/he thinks he would dismiss. They can even look alike as the assistant, the sponge starts to soak up so much that his/her natural look is obscured by what it has absorbed.

It would be fun if Rosencrantz were played by Spongebob Squarepants. And maybe Patrick could be Guildenstern. I’m not familiar enough with the Spongebob universe to work out who the others might be. I mean – because SpongeBob is the hero – he probably should play Hamlet instead – but in THIS scene… it might be really fun to have Rosencrantz be an actual sponge.
Or maybe it needs to be object theatre – and Rosencrantz is played by a sponge or a loofa or a shower puff – something close to a sponge but not a sponge – and Guildenstern is played by steel wool or a bar of soap or a soapdish. Hamlet is maybe a spatula? I don’t know. I’d have to audition some objects. Something different from Rosencrantz and Gulidenstern. But of the same universe.

I used to take pride in this sort of thing. I could listen to someone’s secrets for hours and never reveal my own. Not to them, not to anyone.
But at a certain point, I realized that keeping my own secrets secret was hurting me more than protecting me. If I chose well, I could reveal myself to a friend and feel a profound relief, sure, on one hand, at having burst the bubble of silence – but also a real connection with someone, a mutual sense of knowing and sharing. It was a risk to share but that risk offered reward I hadn’t even been able to imagine. I risk more often than I horde now. I have learned how to reveal in safe places.

It feels laughable now but I was once fully convinced by the magical thinking of things like The Secret. I believed FULLY in the “leap and the net will appear” philosophy. But then I leapt and leapt and leapt and no net appeared and I ended up pretty bruised and broken up. There is value, sure, in optimism. It feels better, for one, than bruised pessimism. But…the whole hog, full force, throwing one’s self off of cliffs? It’s not a good idea. Be careful.

And in the super cheesy pop culture version of Hamlet, this is where the music swells and we hear Kansas singing, “Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.”
And Hamlet turns up the volume on it every time Rosencrantz tries to talk so Rosencrantz has to shout over epic acoustic guitar.

It’s amazing how quickly we acclimate to technology and create new forms. I tried to post a gif in a blog post last night – and failed – but I was struck by how quickly gifs found their way into the culture. When JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter, the moving photographs in that world were pure fantasy. Now…we see moving photographs all the time. In gif form. They may not be in picture frames yet but I bet that’s coming.

Anyway, I was thinking about all this because I had several gif ideas in response to this line. Instead of thinking words – I thought…Gif.

A gif of the beginning of The Monkees Theme song with “Here we come” written across the bottom.

A series of gifs of troops rising over a hill in just about every war movie (with a hill) ever made.

A gif of King Arthur galloping over a hill clomping his coconuts together in Monty Python’s Holy Grail.

A series of gifs of kids flooding into schools or out of schools – anything with hordes of kids moving from one place to another.

In the future, there will be gif artists. There probably already are.

And due to the way gifs tend to capture moments of pop culture, it’s possible that already people are writing their film or TV scenes with the future gifs in mind.
It is the era of the Gif now.

And suddenly Hamlet starts behaving like a king. This language has a king’s distance
A king’s formality
A king’s tendency to speak of himself in the third person.
It’s interesting timing.

It’s funny. A lot of guys who play Hamlet played Romeo earlier in their careers. I wonder if any of them get to this line and suddenly feel tempted to say, “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?” instead of “noise.”
Probably not. But this, “But soft, what…” is a lot less famous than that other one is.
It’s also a moment alone – just like Romeo.
It’s a “shut up” to himself.

I always picture Hamlet stuffing Polonius into some structure that’s a bit like a Murphy Bed. Maybe a Murphy Bed.

But it’s a thing that is long and folds into the wall and Hamlet places Polonius’ dead body on it and gets him all nestled in his closet or Murphy Bed or ironing board cupboard and then shuts it up. Literally up. And I imagine Polonius’s body in there – not as the grotesque and morbid horror show that I think I’d see if I actually found a bleeding dead old man in a cupboard but like a peaceful creature in a womb.

And where do these images come from? It is just the nautical sense of “safely stowed”? Is that where I invented a whole (strange) sequence for myself? Possibly.

God night, Denmark. Good night, castle.
Good night, ramparts. Good night, vassal.
Good night, Player. Good night, Ghost.
Good night, drinkers. Good night, toast.
Good night, Rosencrantz in your good night pants.
Good night, Guildenstern, with your loyalty dance.
Good night, Pirates. Good night, graves.
Good night, soldiers. Good night, knaves.
Good night, good night, in the hall.
Good night, good night, good night all.