Occasionally, even Fortune needs to bring her shoes to the cobbler to be resoled. She walks a lot and can wear out a pair of shoes like nobody’s business. Those unfortunates destined to be the sole of her shoes will find that their tenure in the position will be rather short but perhaps that is a mercy. After all, the space between Fortune’s foot and the road she treads on is a small one and one that involves a great deal of pressing. On days that I feel sorry for myself, I imagine I am under Fortune’s feet but then quickly realize how much further down Fortune could bring me.

This is the safest way to greet a pair of people. Refer to them together and neither one gets preference.

Lads, though, you gotta be careful with lads. Here, in the hills, lads pretty much just means boys. Like, actual boys, like kids. So a greeting like this could either be condescending or affectionately familiar.

In the UK, lads have their own culture. Lad has found its way into an adjective, showing many men to be laddish – which, sure, could mean boyish but not in the red cheeked, child-like way. We might call a lad a frat boy here in the States, also a word that would suggest childishness but tends to refer to a rather boorish behavior. Lads drink too much and make too much noise at the game. They travel in packs and tend to not be terribly respectful of women.

But you know – people use both boys and lads to show affection to a group of men. My grandfather went out once a week with the Boys – even once they became the Romeos (Retired Old Men Eating Out.) I think Englishmen hang out with the lads down at the retirement home but I’ve never heard an American man talking about the lads. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard an American use the word lad without some affectation – without pretending to be posh or English or some combination of the two.

A case could be made for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern being any variety of lads.

What has Rosencrantz done to make Hamlet say this? It’s not as if he’s not realized Rosencrantz is there; He just greeted them with “My excellent good friends.” Plural. So it’s not as if he’s suddenly surprised to see Rosencrantz. He’s just asked Guildenstern a question but he doesn’t wait to hear Guildenstern reply, his attention suddenly turns to Rosencrantz and then to them both.

Has Rosencrantz suddenly gestured in a “What am I, chopped liver?” sort of way? Has he pulled Guildenstern out of the way? Has he made a funny noise? Thumbed his nose and stuck out his tongue.

I do want him to have done something. It’s just more interesting than a generic “Ah.”

If I were Guildenstern, I’d be pretty pleased that my buddy. Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, asked how I was first. I’d be all, like, proud and ready to spill all my stories. I’d be preparing to tell him the story about my grandmother and the knitting club. I might even share some of my romantic troubles with him, cause you know, he cares, he asked me first. Right? I mean, Suck it Rosencrantz. I’m winning this one.

So many of my dearest friends have moved away. I moved to this city because it had the highest concentration of excellent good friends. It was its chief recommendation. I had some great years with those excellent good friends, years when the friends became more excellent and the friendships more good.

They didn’t leave all at once. Almost every year there is another departure until only a few remain. They left, almost universally, with husbands – or men who would become their husbands. They left and got houses and children. This year, I’m due to lose another friend, with her wife and they will likely get a house and a child.

Unfortunately, all these excellent good friends get their houses in different places. If they would only concentrate in one city again, I might move again just to be surrounded, once more, with excellent good friends.

I’m writing this on a brief pause from sitting by my grandfather’s deathbed. I read this line and felt my lips rise up in distaste. Today of all days, I don’t want to think of the old as tedious fools. Today is a day I want to honor the life of one is who is very old and who is ready to go, to honor all of those who somehow managed to hang on, tooth and nail, to their lives. It’s remarkable, really, and a privilege to sit by the bedside of one who is going. But I can’t lie. It is filled with tedium, as well. Not from him. The man is not tedious but the sitting in a room, waiting and not waiting and not wanting to be waiting but waiting none the less – that bit is tedious. But not like any other kind of tedium. It is different than a tedious Sunday afternoon before dinner when there is nothing but quiet in the house. It is a tedium full of potentiality, the way a film set can be tedious or the hours before the election results are revealed.
It is a tedium I better get quickly back to and a tedium to contribute to. I play the fool in this moment. It does help. And I’m the youngest.

We don’t do nearly enough leave taking these days. I can’t think of a single instance in which I have ever said or had occasion to say, “I take my leave.”

And unfortunately, this lack of discussion of leave taking means this joke can fall a little flat on contemporary ears. If I can call it a joke – it’s more a witticism and a boldly rude thing to say, I guess. Anyway – it all leads to this little lemon drop at the end of this sentence and points to just the kind of mad Hamlet is hoping Polonius will think he is.

Why particularly does Hamlet want Polonius to think that he’s suicidal? What advantage does he gain? Or does he genuinely feel this way? Before he meets the ghost, he’s definitely got suicide on the brain, he wishes the everlasting had not fixed his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter and does not set the price of his life above a pin’s fee – but after the ghost, he’s a little giddy, more energetic, not so morose. One would think he becomes more intent on murder and less intent on self-slaughter and maybe this whole “except my life,” “grave,” and “to be or not be” stuff is a smoke-screen, to help throw the politicians off his trail, to seem as if nothing has changed when everything has changed.

I introduced most of the characters of the play to my class today. They didn’t have many questions. Many of the logical things are logical and the outrageous things are meant to be. But one student asked me, “Why is there a gravedigger in the play?”
I let him answer his own question but it is a good one and the presence of a gravedigger before you understand the story is provocative. What is a gravedigger for but to dig graves? And his presence, at the ready to do his job brings a certain ominousness to the proceedings.
Do we need him now?
Is it time for the gravedigger to appear?
It might be interesting to start a production with a gravedigger, make it clear what his position is, and have him idle at the side of the stage, or rather, at the ready, like a vulture waiting for someone to die so he has a grave to dig.
This seeming non-sequitur of Hamlet’s might be fun provocation of the gravedigger, who might get his shovel ready to dig and then realize it’s a joke. The mention of a grave is like that a bit, it stimulates the gravedigger in the audience’s mind. The words create the grave that Hamlet walk out of the air with and suddenly, in the audience’s imagination, there exists such a thing as Hamlet’s grave and a part of us is waiting for him to end up in it.

1. I learned from a Smothers Brothers song that crabs walk sideways (and lobsters walk straight) so I’m not sure what this backward walking crab is all about.
2. Do the old really want to grow backwards? As much as I get the occasional anxiety around getting older (“Ack! I’m almost 40! Am I having a baby or what? It might be too late. . .”) I also don’t much envy those that are younger. The anxiety of youth can’t be beat by the experience of age. At least I don’t think it can. Or can it? See, I’m not quite old enough yet. I still wonder, still question, am still so unsure. But would I be willing to grow backwards? Only if I could take all I learned with me because if I had to go backwards without it, I’d just have to make the same dumb mistakes all over again. Would Polonius want to be Hamlet’s age again? Hamlet’s reported to be, what, 33? Polonius is the parent of similarly aged children, making him at least 53. Would he take over 20 years off of his experience to scuttle backwards like a crab?

Some truths might be too painful to write or rather, they might be too painful to HAVE been written, that is, too painful to read. I was asked to write someone’s story for her, which I did – but reading it for her was hard and overwhelming and I fear may have reinforced the trauma or reignited it. Maybe she oughtn’t to have read it. Maybe it should have been for other people – the ones who need to know about it, the one who have done her wrong. But it didn’t seem right to publish her story without her permission, without her looking it over and sending it forth.
So now the story rests in in limbo doing no one any good.