This is how a brother speaks to his sister –
With thews and bulk
And waxing temples.
Like father, like son, I suppose.
No plainspeaking runs in this family –
It’s either overblown, convoluted speechifying
Or nothing at all.
(Although occasionally, upon dying or in the face of tragedy, the words boil right down.) This line is usually cut
because – what? What are you trying to say Laertes?
He breaks it down
Eventually
But he starts here
Is he attempting a really broad innuendo?
Something about wide-ness and growing and opening makes me think maybe he’s headed gingerly in that direction.
It’s actually quite impressively confusing.
If someone said it to me,
I’d be making one heck of a confused face in response.
Laertes
Think it no more.
I can’t decide if Laertes’ advice is terrible or actually pretty astute.
None of us knows how much Hamlet loves Ophelia
Or even
If he does.
And many a girl I know
Has lost her heart and faith to a man she gave everything to and then regretted it after.
A little temperance in love
A little healthy suspicion
At least in the beginning
Might actually be just the cushion a besotted girl needs as she’s falling
Or else
Laertes has here set off a chain of distrust
That leads to the downfall of them all.
For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour, Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more.
A toy in blood?
I picture a white stuffed kitten
Paw deep in a pool of blood.
Or a tiny wind-up boat
Sailing through veins and arteries.
None of which would seem
To indicate affection.
Is a toy in blood meant to suggest lust?
I can’t quite wrap my head around it.
Violets and perfumes and fashion –
These words cleave together,
Can suggest the fleeting quality of something precious,
Something to be enjoyed quickly before it changes and is gone.
But a toy – – –
A toy in blood
I suppose one can toy with blood with touch –
The way a touch can bring blood
Rushing to the fingers
Particularly with the more sensitive parts of the body.
One could send blood hither and yon
Perhaps very quickly, with fleeting connections
Between them all.
And, sister, as the winds, give benefit And convoy is assistant, do not sleep But let me hear from you.
I had to look this one up in the notes.
But I wasn’t convinced. I’m still wrestling with this instruction not to sleep.
Especially as it’s followed by an assurance that she won’t.
Yes, of course, the winds speed a boat along
Assisted by a convoy (which I think of as a gang of trucks –
Is it the same with boats? Do they call each other over the CB radio too?)
A gang of boats, traveling together
making trouble on the seas
or in the seas
or in this case
helping out.
I guess I can see that this is a way to say
“Write me at your first opportunity”
but it sure is a complicated and confusing way to say it.
What does it say about Laertes that he uses such odd phraseology?
It’s like part image, part obscurity, part awkward construction.
Some people are a little awkward.
I saw a groom at a wedding
Who had the air of a 13 year old growing into his body and just
Learning how to talk to girls.
Maybe Laertes is awkward with his little sister
The way that groom is with everyone.
Farewell.
My, my, people say goodbye to each other a lot in this play.
I’m wondering. Will I write a new thing everytime?
This is still only Act 1. The very beginning of scene 3.
I know I’ve written at least 2, probably 3, 4
Farewells already.
Maybe I’ll just keep count
Of how many goodbyes get said
Throughout this play.
My necessaries are embarked.
Everything I need is on a boat –
Sea, sky around it
Surrounded by blue.
I have my anchor
My compass
Pen and paper for the log
Another suit of clothes
Toothbrush
A book
When I take a trip
Sometimes I think I need
So much more than I do.
Hair product
Contact lenses
Laptop
Ipod
Books upon books
Gifts
Funny socks
Different shoes for different occasions –
The necessaries so dependent on the activities in store.
I once went to a fancy wedding without fancy shoes –
A terrible oversight. The bride had to drive around the local village
To go shoe shopping with me.
I didn’t even have some at home that I’d forgotten to pack.
They were so far beyond my normal necessaries
I had simply not thought of them.
When I pack for a wedding this weekend,
I will pack the shoes first
Because they are the necessaries.
My dread lord, Your leave and favor to return to France, From whence though willingly I came to Denmark, To show my duty in your coronation, Yet now, I must confess, that duty done, My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.
Now there’s a practiced speech.
He is politic and clear –
Eloquent in his long cliffside path
Winding from top to bottom
Along the seashore
Safely.
He has looked down at the pounding surf
Seen the gaping ravine on the other side
Negotiated the boulder in the middle of the road
While edging his way home.
He would be an excellent politician
One with pointed rhetoric
With directed desire
Striking both submission and strength
In the same note.
Later in the play he will rally the people
Around him and his cause
He could quickly turn the tide if he wanted.
Perhaps he’d have made the best leader in the cast, here.
Better than incomprehensible killing Claudius
Better than introspective, wavering Hamlet
Better than Gertrude, with her shifting loyalties
Better than Polonius who can’t shut up
Better than the original Hamlet – the old, war-like one, with his shining moment
Glowing from his ability to kill.
If there were an election for the King of Denmark
Despite the fact that I’d want Hamlet the younger to win,
Because I love him and think he’s a great guy,
I might choose Laertes.
Because a politician should be good at being a politician I suppose.
The Hamlet Project 