What if Hamlet were in his rightful place as king and made this pronouncement? What if the law of the land suddenly outlawed marriage? There would be no more marriage. Those that were already married would be grandfathered in, but their marriages would be a relic of the old laws.

What would people do? Would marriage disappear or would it just go underground? How deep is the compulsion to hitch up? Would underground churches spring up? Underground city halls? I would be curious to see the society without marriage. What would it look like if being single were privileged over marriage? Like, if you got a tax break for being single and health insurance and the right to live in the country you wanted to live in.

As a king, you could make this kind of grand social experiment, really see what happens, what might be the results of an entirely radical pronouncement. It’s actually surprising that kings didn’t make these sorts of rules more often.

Why, I have had none yet!
And I may never.
Something I am not entirely sure how I feel about.
But I have been witness to many marriages and also many divorces. I grew up in one. And watching a dear friend be run through the rack of divorce definitively puts me closer to this declaration than at other times. And when I watched my friends get married on the heels of the law finally catching up with the world and making sense, I slipped easily to the other side – to a world of “Everyone should get married! Let’s marry everyone! This is so lovely!”

As a child of divorce, I am on one hand, terribly cynical about marriage and on the other, impossibly romantic. I am partnered with someone who has been through the wheel of both marriage and divorce and if he ever had that romantic idea about marrying – it was ground out of him through the turning of the divorce wheel. And so the balance tips away from romance.

Another friend is waiting for her partner to propose. They’ve already agreed on the marriage. They need it to stay in the same country with one another. But he wanted to propose and she wanted him to have that experience if he wanted it. So now she’s waiting anxiously. Mostly because she’s worried about the paperwork.

There were a few years there in which I was going to weddings all the time. It’s slowed down now. And the divorces are kicking in. And the deaths. I expect there will be at least a FEW more marriages, though.

Love does tend to make people mad. In both senses of the word. Crazy, yes. And also, angry. It’ll pull the mad right out of you, even if you think you have none.

But for me, at the moment, it is not romantic love that makes me mad. No, no, the love that mads me is my damn love for the damn theatre. It hath made me mad, over and over again. Today it hath made me mad that no one can really make a living doing it – no one but a small handful of artists and a world of administrators. It hath made me mad that the most creative and innovative work is made on the backs of people who can’t afford to have children or get health insurance (until recently that is.) It hath made me mad that everyone is so enamored of the glamour of Broadway that they cannot see the theatre in front of them without putting it in a Broadway frame. [“That was as good as Broadway! That show should be on Broadway! This is like Broadway, but different!”]
It hath made me mad with its persistent sexism and racism, with its ableism and ageism.
It hath made me mad with its sunny lies about how great its doing, how well it is, how it’s got some great projects coming up.
It hath made me mad with its promise of inclusion and diversity and the reality of just the most beautiful people making their way to the jobs.
It hath made me mad with its extreme extroversion, with its gladhanding and self-congratulation.

It hath made me mad by not being all that I’d hoped, all that I thought it was, all that I’d imagined.

I’ve mostly moved away from teaching young people. These last two days, I’ve been back in the teaching trenches.I wondered, when I stepped away from it, if I would miss it. I thought maybe I was just burned out – depleted from all the conditions surrounding the work – but given some time away, I would perhaps find my love of it again.

Turns out, I haven’t. Turns out, I’d be very happy to leave it behind me entirely. At least that’s what today’s classes seemed to show me. Two out of three classes were great, ideal examples of the form and its possibilities – but that third one kicked my ass and I suspect that even if it had been GREAT, I wouldn’t be sitting here wondering if I should get back into classrooms on a regular basis. 
No, I don’t miss it one bit. I’d like to find my work in studios now, in quiet places, with quiet people, making art and not discipline.
Teaching in school? Go to, go to. I’ll no more on’t.

This isn’t explicit in the text but for me, this alludes to a kind of cutesiness – a little girl persona that pretends that everything is so adorable and slips into the pose of a finger on her lower lip, a head tilt to the side and a disingenuous “I don’t know” in a small baby voice when asked a question.
I’m not keen on all the misogyny in this play and in this scene especially but I confess to hate this type as much as Hamlet seems to. Girls trying to seem cute and adorable make my skin crawl. They make me want to shake them and say, “Grow some ovaries, girl, and be a damn woman.”
Our culture is always telling boys to grow up and be a man. We should probably quit doing that or popularize the same for ladies.
First up to get some womanly arts: Ophelia.

Does she? We don’t see much jigging or ambling from her and no textual evidence of lisping. Maybe that’s why this line is almost always played as a general you – because it’s hard to picture Ophelia doing any of these things.
I would, though, like to see someone experiment with taking this as direction for Ophelia – finding opportunities to jig and amble, and if not to lisp, well, to try some cute-talk or baby voice. Maybe just that up-talking thing that is so popular these days could count as lisping. Though listening to Ophelia uptalk her way through the play might be impossible to bear.
Maybe if she just did it to Hamlet and talked like a normal person to everyone else.

I am not a fan of make-up. (Except when I’m onstage, then I love the ritual of it.) I don’t wear it everyday and will often catch myself getting all judgy of women who wear a lot of it. However, this criticism of Hamlet’s rankles me a bit. Because if Ophelia’s wearing make-up, odds are good that she’s wearing it for you, Hamlet. Because her only value is her “fairness,” her beauty. Having been prized solely for our beauty for centuries it seems particularly cruel to give us a hard time about attempting to highlight that beauty, to hedge our bets, to do whatever we can to up our assets. 

In some circles, even now, wearing make-up is not a real choice. To refrain from wearing it would be a clear rejection of the culture a woman might be in.

I grew up surrounded by women who only wore make-up when they felt like it – so it was easy for me to make the same choice. But I recognize that that is not so for everyone. I read an article about shaving legs and all of the complicated feelings it can generate. The author points out that as long as the dominant culture makes it clear that anyone who doesn’t shave her legs is deviant, than whether or not to do it is never a Real choice. 

So it is with make-up sometimes. And I try to read it culturally rather than personally. And wear it when I want to. No matter what Hamlet says about it. 

I wish Ophelia were a painter and that Hamlet were talking about her work. It’s pretty likely he’s talking about make-up here – but I’d love a narrative in which Ophelia makes really scandalous artwork and Hamlet’s heard all about it. Marcellus went to that Out There Art Gallery Downtown and he happened to notice the little card next to a series of really twisted paintings.

He was stunned to see that sweet little obedient Ophelia was the person behind those big canvases of bodies twisted and torn open.

He’d never expected that she might paint a nude, that she’d even ever seen a nude, nonetheless paint them in such surreal and violent positions. He couldn’t help but tell Hamlet about the show when he got back. In part, he’d thought he must have known. Surely her boyfriend and seen her art work! But no – it was all news to Hamlet, too. He’d thought about going to see them himself – when all of this death and marriage struck – and he let it slip. Now, here, as he breaks up with her, he suddenly remembers. 

So many leave takings without actually taking leave! So many farewells. 

And when he does actually exit, he gives her no farewell. 

The repetition of this nunnery stuff is challenging my writerly impulses. How much material can I generate on nunneries? I fear I may have reached my threshold and yet there is still more nunnery to be encountered ahead. This one is the only one with speed. . . so it makes me think of getting to a nunnery in a hurry – but otherwise. . .creativity TAXED. I can feel how much Hamlet is beating this nunnery drum, can see why we usually call this “The Nunnery Scene.” He is relentless in returning to this idea. And I suppose, as a concept, it makes a lot of sense to Hamlet. He may not want to marry this woman anymore but he probably doesn’t want anyone else to, either. A nunnery is a perfect, elegant solution to that problem. It’s a hassle free way to cast off a girlfriend. I’d like to see a scene in which a woman breaks up with a man and suggests he go become a monk. And quickly too.

Certainly I wish some of my exes had done that instead of marrying and breeding.