If I could go back in time and ask Shakespeare to write another play, I’d have a few requests – but one of them might be the play of Hamlet but from Laertes’ perspective. I mean – here he is asking for three times the woe to fall thirty times on Hamlet’s head and his perception of Hamlet’s deed is not actually wrong.
Hamlet did do something terrible that made Ophelia go crazy. And he didn’t even seem sorry.

We’re on Hamlet’s side, of course, because we have all of his information and we see things from his point of view and he’s articulate and sensitive and smart. But Laertes has quite a journey too – he’s just on the edges of this story. And it ends with as much tragedy as Hamlet’s story. The Tragedy of Laertes.

Fuck yeah, Laertes! You tell him!
This is probably why Shakespeare made the priest such a dick so that we’d be on Laertes’ side to read the priest the riot act. And getting Laertes riled up by this churlish priest is useful because it means when Hamlet reveals himself in a minute, in a pretty churlish/dickish way himself, Laertes will be amped up and already furious.
Shakespeare doesn’t need the priest to be a dick for Laertes to mention his sister – he could just as easily say something like “Lay my sister in the earth” but he does need to get Laertes good and furious so he and Hamlet can have a dramatic grapple in a grave.

This is (mostly) a very sweet blessing.
Violets springing from one’s body is lovely and poetic.
But I’m hung up on unpolluted.
It’s hard to imagine that this “unpolluted” quality is unrelated to the virginity, maiden thing. Like – if she’d done the dirty deed with Hamlet (which maybe she did – we don’t know) then the violets would be like – nah. We’re good. This lady had sex – so no springing forth here.
Theoretically, the sense of pollution could be any sort of sin – but really, in young women, the only sin anyone really cares about is whether or not they had sex. Much to my frustration and dismay.

There is something about the way Laertes says this that expresses his love for his sister. It has a softness, an affection for both her and the earth. It is a beautiful way to say this.

The priest, who is an asshole who would rather throne stones on her, would say “Throw her in the ground” “Toss her into the grave” “get the body in the dirt.”
But Laertes finds a way to express the moment to bury his sister with care and gentleness.

I just learned that migraines are the number 2 largest disabler of people around the world. 47 million people have migraines and yet research into them is woefully underfunded. Apparently in the US, there is $20 million dedicated to migraine research. And while that seems like a big number to me – it is nothing like the funding for less pervasive diseases that afflict fewer people. I think I remember a $200 million number. You could make a Hollywood Action movie for what we spend on a migraine research.
And the American Disability codes have no code for migraine? Is that true? I mean. Wow. Come on guys. This is ridiculous.

This is an interesting repetition. Usually a repetition happens within the line and this one sandwiches a line from Hamlet. But because Laertes doesn’t hear Hamlet – it really is an internal repetition for him. That is, as far as Laertes is concerned, he just says this line twice in a row.
Is he asking different people or asking the priest twice, one more forcefully than the other?

Before I saw a military funeral, I don’t think I was particularly inclined toward ceremony. I did not quite see the point of burial rites of graveside services or any of the rituals to mark the passing of a person.
But I get it now. It’s powerful. Ceremony marks the passage clearly and definitely. It is over. The life lived has passed and it has been marked.

I’ve been told that anger is not a primary emotion, that it is often a mask for fear or sadness. But as someone who avoided anger for most of my youth, I have come to really admire anger, to respect speeches of fire and to appreciate how anger can energize.

I have doused numerous speeches of fire in my tears. Sometimes it feels as though I could drown myself in the tears – but then my partner will offer up his hand to punch and if I’m ready – the tears start to dry up as my anger begins to ignite. Making the switch from the moist tear soaked environment to the land of fiery speeches and cathartic kicks and punches is how I know I won’t cry forever. And the fire does FIRE. It fires one up. But it is hard to blaze in a rain of tears.

What? You can’t say goodbye to the Queen, too?
I guess in the middle of a patriarchal expression of grief wherein you denigrate the woman within, it’s a little hard to acknowledge an actual woman, especially the woman who just told you that your sister is dead.
But, man – I mean – can a Queen get a little respect around here? Might it be possible to, like, at least say adieu to her too when you’re leaving?
But that’s the thing – in the patriarchy, only men are really PEOPLE. They are all that matter. Ophelia only matters as the daughter of a man, the (ex) girlfriend of a man and the sister of a man. In and of herself, she’s not that important.
And I fear this is true of Gertrude, too, a little bit. I don’t like to think that way. I love this play. I love my man, Shakespeare. But this is a patriarchal moment to be sure.

And here we have a line that I always understood completely differently because I had not looked at it closely. I thought he was saying his tears were just gonna come. That is, “the woman” is just gonna “woman.” Tears will be tears. Boys will be boys. The woman will be out. In other words, the tears must flow.

But I see now that he’s talking about the tears he’s crying in the moment. He’s already crying and when these tears are gone, all that is womanly in him will be gone. He’s expunging all femininity as soon as he stops crying. It’s almost as though he feels as if he’s been possessed by a woman and she is leaking out of him, out of his eyes and when he’s cried it all out, she will be gone.