This is the much more useful (and also more terrifying) mirror as compared to Snow White’s stepmother’s mirror that can only tell you who is the fairest. Which is absolutely useless information. And bound to be inaccurate. There is no such thing as The Fairest. There is no Objective beauty that can be calculated and delivered. And even if there was objective beauty, it would be horribly useless to know.

I hate this fairy tale now. I loved it as child. But I see now how insidious it is. It sets up a reality in which the only value of women is their beauty and then proceeds to give us a woman who is only ambitious for being the most beautiful.

It’s really fucked up. Especially as the mirror is usually depicted and experienced as male. So it’s not even the judgment of the Queen herself as to her beauty – it’s whether the male gaze of the mirror still finds her the most attractive. Puke.

Anyway – that mirror is useless. But this mirror Hamlet is proposing would be very interesting to have around. It could reveal your actual biological insides – which, while gross, could be interesting and useful for diagnosing disease. It could reveal your secrets – even the ones you keep from yourself. It becomes this extraordinary tool of self-knowledge where you see your real motivations, your real obstacles, your real limitations as well as your real talents.
Fuck being Fair.
Let’s get this inmost part of you mirror.

No matter how uninspired you feel.
No matter how much you wonder why you ever set yourself this ridiculous task, this outrageous ritual of writing everyday.
No matter what voices kick in to tell you what a waste of time your writing practice is.
No matter what interesting conversations surround you.
No matter how much a walk around the block suddenly seems like a better idea.
No matter how shitty the words.
No matter how pointless the exercise.
No matter who calls or texts or writes.
No matter who shows up.
No matter the weather.
No matter all the better ideas or errands or tasks.
You shall not budge.

My dad was in a community theatre production of Guys and Dolls when I was a kid. I loved going to his rehearsals with him. I don’t know how old I was but it was younger than 9. I loved the songs, the rehearsal atmosphere, the dancing. We listened to the soundtrack a lot. I was a particular fan of Adelaide’s Hot Box numbers and would sing, “Take Back Your Mink” at top volume quite often. I also loved “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” which I was sure was “Sit Down on Your Rock In the Boat.” I figured the rocks were the chairs in the boat.

I had no context for the song’s religious qualities. I don’t think I processed that the boat was going to heaven – nor did I care much about the devil threatening to drag the singer under. I was mostly interested in the “Sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down” repetition. I found those sit downs very exciting. And then at the end, you were meant to sit down on your rock in the boat.

I still think of this boat this way – a boat with no seats, just rocks for everyone – and the singer is just a misbehaving adult that everyone wants to just sit down on his rock in the boat. Like the kids in my class who couldn’t be compelled to stay at their desks. I know this song is about something else entirely now but because I learned it at such a young age, my old version is forever emblazoned on my imagination.

Perhaps this is why I have avoided marriage and motherhood. Once you cross that threshold – your own identity gets lost in the reflective identities.

I just read an article about how many men reacted when asked how they’d feel about taking their wives’ names. They were horrified and were quite clear how it would make them feel weak and secondary to their wives – that they would suddenly just be somebody’s husband rather than themselves. Yet somehow these same men expected their wives to be weak and secondary to them – to become somebody’s wife instead of themselves.

Gertrude is defined only by the men she married and the man she gave birth to. That’s it.
Aside from the Queen.
But she seems to be Queen in name only. She does not seem to have any power of her own. She is only Queen because she is married to Kings.
First Ladies would seem to have more power and authority than she has.
Hell, Osric seems to have more power than Gertrude has.

Ah. I think I’ve got it. I was struggling to understand why Hamlet suddenly starts swearing by the Rood here when he was not sworn by this particular thing before. But now I think I’ve got it. It’s a pun. Rood really sounds just like Rude. If you don’t see it written (as an audience at the time definitely wouldn’t have) they are interchangeable. In a discussion about appropriate behavior – that doubleness of Rood/Rude comes in quite handy.

The lock broke at the building I’m staying in. When they fixed it, my key no longer worked, no longer did what a key is meant to do.

Sometimes I feel like that key – slotting in to that same old lock – but no longer able to do what I’m supposed to do.

Unlike the key, though, I have more than one slot – more than one purpose. So if one ceases to work, I’m not rendered useless.

There’s something about this banter that calls to mind the rhythm of a romantic comedy. It is more Beatrice and Benedick (or even Cybil and Bruce from TV’s Moonlighting) than Mother and Son. Perhaps the rat-a-tat quick wit exchange is another reason people slip into the strange Freudian analysis of this scene. This exchange – it’s not erotic in any way – but traditionally exchanges between men and women of this nature tend to show up at the beginning of a romance, which is very definitely NOT happening here. But we can hear a little of Kate and Petruchio in it. Or at least I do. Maybe the queen does too, which may be what motivates the “Why, how now.”

Walked right into that one, Gertie.
I mean, really, even if we set aside a possible complicity in his murder, her hasty marriage to her dead husband’s brother could not help but be offensive to Hamlet, Senior. As far as Hamlet’s actual father goes, Hamlet himself has only offended him by not revenging his death right away. He’s about to turn up actually – to scold him on that point.
But offense is funny. It’s a word that shows up a lot in this play. It’s how Claudius describes his crimes as well.
It’s funny in the world of murder and revenge that offense takes on as much weight as it does in the contemporary world, offense is most often used in the context of small slights, of language that feels disrespectful. It’s gotten rather a lot smaller. It retains its former power only in the formal language of courts and law enforcement. But mostly we only talk about offending someone when we’ve told an off color joke.

The tricky thing at the top of this scene is to have Hamlet’s behavior somehow work Gertrude up into such a state that she fears for her life and calls for help. Does that begin here or is this line a simple, if mildly frustrated, “What’s up, Mom? Why you calling me so hard?”

“Had I three ears I’d hear thee.”

It’s interesting how there appears to be an ongoing bit of magic in repeating a name three times. There’s almost an entire horror genre that uses this idea. Candyman? Bloody Mary? Beetlejuice?
I play a game called Name Three times that has no mysterious dark magic in it – except for magically waking up a group of people and getting their synapses firing a little bit more together.
And like any repetition in performance, this repetition is an invitation to play. You feel some drive to differentiate them or make some meaning of the repetition. To just say mother three times in the same tone would be almost avant garde. OR just boring. There was a guy who made monotone Shakespeare shows. He was/is an avant garde theatre dude and his gimmick with the plays was to do them without doing them. It was just boring, after all.