There must be some good graphic novel version of this particular line of thought. Hamlet’s madness lying in wait for him until shortly after his father’s funeral (and his mother’s wedding) and then pouncing! Hamlet fights back, and in the process, loses many things. His madness takes him over and breaks up with Ophelia, kills her father and leaps into her grave to challenge her brother. Meanwhile, poor non-mad Hamlet cowers in a corner, bound and gagged. It’s not clear when mad Hamlet is banished and non-mad Hamlet is released.

The faction that is wrong’d – what a group to be a part of!

Faction is a funny word too – as if all the people who have been wronged by Hamlet (i.e. Hamlet’s madness) have banded together to form their own political party or rebellion. They’re getting together at the “Hamlet wronged me” Club and then Hamlet turns up and is like, I gotta join this club!

What would a cartoon of Hamlet’s madness look like? If his madness is thus personified, what is it like? Clearly, the picture that Hamlet is painting of this split self, this madness that took him over, features a madness who does terrible things. Is it a kind of devil? A mischievous Puck?

Is it a Richard the Third or an Edmund the Bastard? An Iago? Or an Aaron?

That is, is it a purposeful villain or an accidental wrong-doing sprite?

Madness, as it appears in other characters, seems to largely involve singing and rhyming. Not just in this play either.

I’m not sure how much singing actually happens in actual madness. The madness I’ve witnessed featured almost NO singing and the singing I’ve witnessed has tended to be in non-mad situations. I have sung TO the mad in attempts to soothe them – but the mad almost never sing back. The only exception that comes to mind was a woman in my grandmother’s Alzheimer’s unit. She sang pretty much anything she wanted to say. She didn’t sing songs so much as intone her desire, “Where is my pillow please?”

She also stripped off her top without warning with some regularity and attempted to eat her lunch topless. Personally, I’d have let her eat naked if it made her happy but they frown on that sort of thing in geriatric care units.
Anyway – that was her madness. It didn’t do people wrong so much as make her awkward to share a meal with.

Hamlet seems to be having his own philosophical discussion with himself. He makes his proposition of himself being removed from himself – then questions himself as if he were his own Socrates.

When I started this project, oh lo those many many years ago, I thought an opportunity to play him could legitimately be in my future. Was it ten years ago now? I had no idea which way the wind might blow. I wanted to play him, that I knew – but since then, I have done very little performing. A show here and there sure, but not so’s you’d see someone with access to a show budget giving me the chance to take on the role we all long to play.

And I may be too old now. I already had the gender against my odds – but now I’m not only a woman but a woman who is older than the character by more than a year or two. But. I’d never say never. Never is a big word. I’d say probably not Hamlet in this lifetime.

Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes?

Yeah. Kinda.

I mean – if it’s not Hamlet – then who did wrong Laertes?

I mean – I get Hamlet’s attempt to disassociate himself from his actions here – but he’s essentially trying the Shaggy defense here.

“But you stuck your sword in my Dad’s guts.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“There’s a witness.”

“Wasn’t me.”

“You confessed.”

“Wasn’t me.”

“You dragged and hid his body.”

“Wasn’t me.”

Is saying “this presence” a way to avoid naming Claudius specifically? Like, would he have to name the king in a collection of people otherwise? Is “this presence” a way to not say, “The King, the Queen and all these other people here”?

I like “this presence” as a collective of people. It’s more potent than “group” or “crowd” or “people” even.

I would almost like to call an audience “this presence” – because their presence is what makes the especially significant – how they are present tells us so much about them. It somehow sounds more alive than audience or the public or spectators.

I have just noticed that he’s speaking to Laertes with the formal “you” – so while he may be giving him a directive, he is using a highly respectful form of address. Certainly, as the Prince of Denmark, he is entitled to call his peers “thou” – but he doesn’t in this instance. This may, in fact, be a sort of standard formal request for pardon.

He’s not kidding. He has done Laertes wrong. Like – there’s not even a question. He has unquestionably behaved badly.

Sometimes characters do things that could be justified from some other perspective – like, sure, I broke your sister’s heart but it was for the greater good or whatever.

In this case, he behaved like an ass at Ophelia’s grave and that would SEEM to be what he’s apologizing for – being a self-important narcissistic selfish ass – but he has ALSO killed this guy’s dad in a kind of ignoble manner – which is probably the worse sin. They both know that. And maybe they are pretending to talk about the grave leaping when they are, in fact, talking about the murdering.

It’s interesting how demanding this is. He doesn’t ASK for Laertes’ pardon, he expects it. He’s using the imperative. It’s almost an order or demand. He doesn’t say “Please” – he doesn’t qualify this request in any way.

He asks for a pardon the way a lot of people order coffee. “Give me a cappuccino.”

But then, he is a Prince. He is not built to ask for things; he is built to command.
That he should want a pardon for himself is probably a bit of a hit for his princely status.