• Candied tongue licking absurd pomp? Wow. It’s so vivid really. I picture a crystallized tongue lapping at the gold trim of an ornamental uniform, like on a cumberbund or fringe or an epaulette.
• Crooking the pregnant hinges of the knee – Well, well, is the knee pregnant because the flatterer is so often upon them? Are the knees swollen from kneeling? It would seem the owner of the candied tongue might be sucking up in a quite literal way.
• Horatio is once again connected with thrift. Thrift, thrift, Horatio!

It’s actually pretty remarkable that Hamlet is just straight up calling Horatio poor. We can call ourselves poor but it seems somehow uncouth to call others poor – even if they are. At least not to their faces. At least not to one’s friend’s face. Why this is, I’m not sure.

It’s not as if it’s not true. The poor are poor. And yet it somehow gets framed as a moral failing, that poverty is somehow a judgment on the poor, not simply a matter of circumstances, birth and social conditions. So you don’t call someone poor for the same reason you don’t call someone fat. Because it’s not good manners to point out someone’s failings. (The fact that both poverty and size are often a matter of circumstance and not morality is another point entirely.)

Reading Scarcity, it became clear what a world of circular reasoning we’ve been living in around poverty. There have been those that assume the poor are poor due to being forgetful or short-sighted with money. When in fact it’s the reverse – that anyone becomes forgetful and short-sighted when facing down scarcity.

That’s pretty much the same revenue I have!
I’m just like Horatio!
I guess that’s good news because he is the only clear survivor of this tragedy.
(Well, presumably Osric, Bernardo, Francisco, Marcellus, the priest and the gravediggers make it as well. Not to mention Fortinbras and his crew.)
But – Horatio is the only major character to survive this.
I guess it’s good to have good spirits. I’d like some actual dollars to feed and clothe me, too, though. I’d actually very much appreciate it. I might even risk not making it to the end of the play for some added revenue.

I find flattery confusing.
I am not immune to it.
When someone flatters me, I blush and giggle like a school girl.
That is, if I buy it.
If I don’t buy it, I’ll either give a cold hard stare or a cool impassive “Thank you.”
But a good flatterer flatters with the truth – or the kernel of a truth.
Someone with flattering skill will butter you up with your own sauce and you’ll like it, too.
The artless flatterer will be obvious about it – flatter you for something you know isn’t true or overdo the kernel, if there is one.

The real flatterers that I watch out for now are the ones who really mean it. The ones for whom flattery is their first language. The ones who build me up beyond reality, the ones who are convinced that I will change everything, that I’m a savior, that I’m different from everyone else. This sort of flattery screams caution to me now – because those that would build me up quickly will just as quickly tear me down.

My feeling is that Horatio and Hamlet are not so close at the top of this play. There’s a distance between them at the beginning that vanishes right here. Or rather has vanished at some point prior to this scene.

Something has passed between them that has assured Hamlet that he could share this deepest secret of his father’s ghost with Horatio. He’s told him of the circumstances of his father’s death and he trusts him rather deeply.

I almost wish that Shakespeare had written us these conversations. I’d love to see a friendship bloom. We see them dissolve so often. I’d like to see one grow. And I’d love to see what Horatio said (or didn’t say) to so clearly earn Hamlet’s trust.

Is Horatio lurking? What is he DOING? And is this normal behavior? Is that how Hamlet knows to call him? Or is he calling him out at a distance? Why is Horatio here but not here? He’s nearby but not inside. Has Hamlet said, “Listen, wait here for a minute while I talk to the players. I have some advice to give them I want to talk with you?”

There’s something about Horatio’s instant availability that gives him a vampire vibe. Like, he wasn’t there and the suddenly he is. This might also be that I’ve seen a lot of tall men play Horatio. He’s played a little like Lurch sometimes. Just standing by the door, ready for the master’s call. And a little bit creepy.

Do the players really need three people to hurry them along?
Or is Hamlet just trying to get rid of them?
Given that he immediately calls in a different friend, it would seem that he wants to confide in someone and he doesn’t want those two hanging around spying. And having three people standing around hurrying you along might, in fact, make a group of players move a little faster.

This is my actor’s nightmare. The curtain time has been moved up, so there’s no time to prepare. Meanwhile, we’re working with brand new text that we haven’t really had time to memorize adequately. And the stakes are high – the entire royal family is about to watch this hurried, un-ready performance. My heart beats faster just thinking about it.

What would happen if he wouldn’t? Like, what if the king were like, “I’m not really into the theatre. And actually, you know, I’ve got some business of State to get done tonight. You know, some king stuff. So you all enjoy the play.”

Would the play go on without him? Would Hamlet just cancel it? Would he reschedule it for a time he could make sure the king will see? What if the rest of Hamlet were Hamlet trying to get Claudius to come see his show? It would become a marketing drama, rather than a tragedy, perhaps. Maybe years would go by while Hamlet tries to get the King to watch this thing. He brings in critics to talk about how great it is. He has a bunch of postcards made and he leaves them everywhere the king happens to be. He stages pop-up teaser performances in the throne room.

In the workshop I was just teaching, we were trying to think of a good word to use when someone made a mistake in the game. Ideas of Huzzah! And Zounds! Were floated. But actually, I think How Now might be great. It’s a pretty versatile pair of words. Used in a variety of contexts, a flexible little iamb or troche, depending.