First: language question: Did goodbye come from God Bye? And what does bye mean? Or Did it mean.
Now it’s clear that bye is just a leave taking. I wonder if it once meant something else.

Second: This line makes me think of how impossibly awkward it can be to part company with someone, how hard it is to say, “Leave me alone” how hard is it to say, “This conversation needs to be over now.” There are times when it must be nice to be a king – to say simply, “You’re dismissed.” And you are free. I’m not sure how gracefully Hamlet’s managing it here.

Just not in my chambers.

Not where I am.

Not in those private spaces we might have used to pass the time.

Not in the parlor.

Not in the bar.

Not in the pool room.

Not in the chapel.

But you’re welcome. Roam around.

Just not where I roam.

If you’re not looking at them, one could forget that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are in this scene. They clam up when Polonius and the Players show up and only speak again to say goodbye.
There’s something a little sad about them waiting around on the edges, waiting for Hamlet’s attention once again, only to find themselves summarily dismissed. I almost want to re-punctuate this sentence to have Hamlet fake them out entirely – to approach them warmly with “My good friends-“ arms open, smile friendly, expansive physicality – and then, quick turn – “I’ll leave you till tonight.” Friendly fake out.

Follow that lord, and look you mock him not.
In one of my first clown classes, we did an exercise in which all the clowns were students in a classroom. Our teacher (the extraordinary Jane Nichols) played The Teacher. Our chairs were arranged in typical classroom lines. When we began, The Teacher was very stern with us. Then she told us she was leaving the room. She gave us three very important rules. One of them was “No swearing” – the other two MAY have been “No touching” and maybe “No throwing paper.”
Whatever they were, the instant we were left alone, all three rules were instantly broken. And broken with great relish and pleasure.
Now, in this instance it was very clear that we were meant to break the rules. We were clowns in a clown class – a basic part of an instruction is learning how to disrupt, to be disobedient, to break all rules but the rules of pleasure and confusion.
Hamlet might just be pulling a Clown teacher move here. Whatever you do, don’t swear. Don’t make fun of this guy.

When people hear that I spent a chunk of my childhood without plumbing, they’ll often say “But you had a well, right?”
Well, no.
There was a pump but the water wasn’t potable. We washed dishes with it and ourselves but for drinking water, we went to the creek.
I dreamed of a well out back and we’d turn a crank and send a bucket down, then bring it back up filled with water. Then it would just be a few quick steps back to the house.
The creek required crossing the front yard, going down the steps to the road, circling down the road into the little opening in the trees and up a little ways to a place you could get some depth. To a small person, it felt like an epic journey – especially once the bucket was full.

I would love to have this kind of repertoire at my fingertips – to be able, if someone asked, to suddenly do a show on demand. I’m not sure I’d even be able to do a show on demand that I did a month ago. To keep plays in one’s head, as if they were an album of songs that one could play on request? That would be extraordinary of course, also. Even when I was in a band and had an album’s worth of songs, I’m not sure I could have always played one on request without some form of rehearsal.
It took a few months to get an old show back up to speed recently. But it would be a dream to have a jukebox full of plays that you could just put a quarter in and get. Dreams of Jukebox Theatre.

Who were Shakespeare’s friends? The men in the company? Did he get friendly with patrons? Did nobles treat him in the way Hamlet does the first player? Did they see him as an intimate without any real exchanging of intimacy or names? Or was there intimacy? The Sonnets might suggest a complicated relationship between patronage and friendship.

Maybe friendships back in Stratford were a little less complicated. Maybe just saying hello to your neighbor on the way to church was less fraught with layers of status and power and need.

When did the language shift from hearing a play to seeing one? And how?

I understand that as a culture, there was a shift of the primacy of one sense over the other. We became a seeing people more than a hearing people at some point and of course the language must reflect that. But when? How? Did it happen on stage first? Did plays become more and more visual, demanding to be seen before being heard? Or is it about being seen at the play?

Even in the Elizabethan theatre, being seen there might well be a major part of the experience. Lights on, everywhere, watching one another as much as the play, the play compelled to be interesting so as to be more interesting than the people watching. Perhaps one went to hear a play because one really didn’t see it, one mostly listened while watching the crowd.

Maybe the switch happened when people started actually watching what was on the stage. Maybe it happened when they turned the lights off on the crowd and the lights on the stage and the work had to be something to see.

At the office holiday party last night, one employee asked another for tips on how to negotiate twitter. I too could use some tips so I listened closely to their conversation. All I managed to glean was that it was a good idea to follow Neal de Grasse Tyson. That was the solitary tip. I will go ahead and do that, sure. I already follow one Neil (@Neilhimself) and will happily follow another. Especially one so awesome. But still I only managed to dip my toes in the Twitterverse occasionally and it seems as vast and incomprehensible as the ocean. But with more celebrities.

After seeing the Magritte exhibit, we read more about him. According to one site, the English collector who commissioned three of his works, also gave him a place to work and live as he painted. This is a whole other brand of support for the arts. To invite an artist to live and work in your home?

It’s really wholehearted, this approach. And did he invite his wife as well? Did they see one another at breakfast before the days painting? Was there a stuff that tended to all? Was there an artist’s entrance, like the staff’s? I’m curious about the details, for sure. And also intrigued this month, in particular, the notion of not having to pay any rent is particularly piquant. To have a space to work and not to worry about how I’ll raise the money to live, well, that’s something.