Sound the Rape Culture alarm! Ring the sexist bell! I can’t get past this line until something has sounded. I mean – possibly Hamlet is meaning that Ophelia specifically makes monsters of wise men but that’d be a lot for one mild mannered pretty girl to do. It seems a lot more likely that this is one of those “women turn men into monsters” situations. See, baby, you made me rape you with that pretty face. See, you made me a monster with your beauty, pretty girl. See, I’m not responsible for my actions because you showed up and disrupted my flow.
I don’t think wise men know what monsters women make men turn into. I think wise men know that respect and responsibility are a whole lot more wise than throwing up ones hands and saying, “I’m a monster! That girl made me do it!”

Wise men say, “If I am a monster, it is a monster of my own making. And while any number of factors may have encouraged my monster making, I always had a choice.”

A lot of my friends are married and very few of them married fools. Sometimes, though, marrying a fool does seem like a good idea. You’d have to be fairly specific about the KIND of fool you were choosing, though. A drooling fool could well become a disaster. But a clever fool might be fun – might be wise. A fool of the naïve variety might be sweet and keep your spirits up when the world had grown darker. A pretentious fool would be insufferable but a wise fool could keep you on the up and up, if you listen to him. Everyone is a fool in their own way and if you love and marry the fool part first, you’ll be marrying the true person, I think. Love your fool. Your own and your partner’s.

It’s funny that we don’t use nunnery anymore yet everyone knows what it is, almost instantly. It is a much more descriptive word than “convent.” Nunnery makes total sense as a place full of nuns the way a monastery is a place full of monks. What happened in the language that we went with the less clear word?
Is it that convent sounds so much more sober? And that the nunneries in these earlier times actually had a bit of a reputation for being the opposite of what they were designed for? Maybe all the nuns who were into being quiet and sober and chaste and religious got together and were like, “We have to re-brand this thing. We’re getting exactly the wrong reputation with this nunnery thing. Let’s try a different word. Same job – different name for our home.”

How pure and chaste are ice and snow really? Any more pure or more chaste than water? And how interesting that both of these images are so cold. Is this where the archetype of the Ice Queen begins? Is it a glamorization of extreme chastity? Extreme purity? Is that what the attraction to women people call “Ice Queens” is?

I myself have never been an ice queen. I’m more of a warm cup of tea queen. Even when I was relatively chaste. I was as chaste as a warm cup of tea. As pure as a piece of toast. 
And for escaping calumny? I don’t know. I’ve dipped my pure toast in the occasional cup of tea, it’s true (Not often, it’s not so delicious.) Snow, though, when it gets dirty – it gets disgusting. I live in New York and the snow is so beautiful when it falls but days later it’s black and mottled and covered in cigarette butts.
I don’t see Ophelia going that way, though. She’s neither new-fallen snow nor dirty dingy snow. She’s probably like the rest of us, happily somewhere in the middle. 

Oh, Hamlet! You shouldn’t have! Really? A plague? I mean, wow. That can’t have been easy to wrap! Gee whiz, a whole plague. Now that is really special. No one else got us even just a tiny disease. And really it’s a gift that keeps on giving. It starts with us and then just goes on and on and on so that a gift for us becomes a gift for our whole community. My grandma gave us dishes but you, Hamlet, you so sweetly got us this plague.

Spring finally made its way here this week. At first its fingers couldn’t be really felt – at least not on me. I was warm, now, I noticed that – but winter’s freeze still had a hold on me. There may have been flowers and trees blossoming. Birds may have been singing. The ice cream truck blaring out its epic, loud “Turkey in the Straw.”
But I felt as cold, as frozen, as dark, as dreary as February, huddled in my bed.

But today – spring finally made its way in, it came in the door, sat down and made itself comfortable on the sofa – before it seemed to have just been visiting on the doorstep but now its poised to stay awhile and its taken winter’s favorite spot on the sofa. Winter’s wrapped itself in its overcoat and boots and scarf and taken itself, head hanging out the door.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the housebound Fool!
See this exclusive performance that so few have had access to. Select guests have seen the foolery our Housebound Fool can get up to in the intimacy of his kitchen or the hilarity that ensues in the living room when the fool is in good spirits.

For extra, you might even get the pleasure of seeing the Fool in his bedchamber. There, all manner of jests might be performed with bedding and undergarments, socks and pillowcases. All is fair game for the House Fool.

Pronoun red flag! Hamlet’s been thee-ing and thou-ing in the entire passage before this and then suddenly it’s “Your father”? Why suddenly switch to the formal form? But this also raises the question of why “I did love YOU once” that happens before which is also in the formal.

Maybe that’s the standard when you break up with someone. Maybe it’s a distancing effect. Maybe you quit saying thee, along with you pet names, Maybe you replace “Pookie Bear” and “thee- “ in the event of a break-up.

But really – this shift in case, does demand that we pay attention to it. It might help point to a shift in tone, a shift in focus. Some productions have Polonius or Claudius make a little noise before this line – like cough or drop something. Something that stimulates a dramatic change of thought.

This happens particularly when the Hamlet begins to get a little bit violent or a little threatening or dangerous. There are Ophelias who look pleadingly in the direction she knows her father is in when Hamlet tells her to go her ways to a nunnery.

I’m sort of curious about what would happen if you really pushed the formality on this line. Like, something that felt like an executive sitting at his desk, his fingers steepled, while he asks you where your report is.

And why have you come to join us today, Sister Ophelia? What compelled you to walk all the way here and bang upon our front door?

My boyfriend told me to.

Really?

He told me twice and then a third, fourth and fifth time, as well.

Your boyfriend told you to go join a Holy order and so you did.

Yes. He said this was the only way to avoid being a breeder of simmers. So, I decided to join up.

And are you in the habit of doing exactly as you’re told, Sister Ophelia?

Yes, actually. I mean this suggestion seemed a little unusual but I figured either Hamlet was crazy or he really thought this was a good idea. I didn’t like to think for him as crazy so I came here.

Well – happily, you’ve come to a place where doing what you’re told will get you quite far. We imagine you’ll have every success here. And perhaps eventually you might get so good at it that you might begin to tell others what to do as well.

You’ll take me then?

Certainly. I mean, we prefer for women to choose this life of their own desire but as long as you feel like you can submit to the will of God, I think you’ll be just fine.

Great.

And who knows, we may have just saved your sweet obedient little life, Sister Ophelia. Come on in.

There was a period in which I was convinced that all men were liars. This was mostly because the one that I fell for first was a bit of a player. Well, a player in high school. . .so a certain kind of player. He was a charmer. Handsome with a disarming smile. And when I realized he’d been flirting with me all summer, I sat up in bed with astonishment. I’d had no idea but when I thought back on it, it was very clear. I thought he was the first to ever flirt with me but I think now he was probably just the first I understood to be flirting.

And he teased me for loving him. And then he just stopped calling. The next time I heard about him was in a story about a debaucherous spring break experience. I believe it involved a puddle of his semen.

So I was a little bit primed to believe that men were not to be believed.

When really it was just boys. And not all boys – just the ones that were so good at flirting they could charm you into their cars when you’d definitely sworn you wouldn’t go.