I told a story this morning about a man I drove cross-country with. In fact, I told a story about telling a story. The first layer of story is the one that happened when we were rehearsing and performing Hamlet. It’s a story that was potent at the time. It was the story I told because it was still working in me, because it was still warm. It’s a story I told when I trusted people, when I was willing to be vulnerable. So I told this story to the man I was driving across the country with. He had some Buddhist inclinations, this guy, he seemed a live-and-let-live sort of person. But he heard me tell this story, probably still wet with pain, and he got mad. There was some moral turn he objected to, some rule he felt I’d broken. And he didn’t speak to me for the rest of the night. Because of my story.
And today I told the story of telling the story and it seemed a little crazy, that guy’s response. In retrospect, it seems clear that my story struck a nerve, something in him. I think something had happened to him that mirrored what had happened to me and so the story struck a match. But I find I don’t have much need to tell the original story or the stories around the story. Sometimes the journey of a life is letting go of stories.

It’s very easy to SOUND deep and philosophical, isn’t it?
Just ask with the right tone and you’re on your way –
“But what IS time, really?”
“What IS a juice box really?”
“What does madness really mean?”
And if you answer that answer with the same answer – bonus points for sounding like you’ve said something while saying nothing at all.

All day I’ve been doing my best to remain neutral about a show that I have a strong opinion about. When talking about art with young people, I try not to color their experience with my own too much. It seems the best way to help them toward their own experience of art. But remaining neutral when my emotions are hot takes work. It takes a kind of discipline – a steeling of self – a pulling back of my will. While I’m busy remaining a neutral, impartial facilitator – inside me, there is an imperious little girl standing on a table, shouting, “This show is craziness.” She points at the show in a “J’accuse” fashion and shouts, “Mad call I it! And I do not care who knows it!”

The doctor sits down across from his patient’s parents. He adjusts his tie, clicks his pen, clips and unclips the papers in his clipboard and gives his diagnosis. “Your noble son is mad.” He says. And the mother lets out a cry of despair. She had hoped for a reprieve – a case of temporary manic episodes or odd behavior due to exposure to cantaloupe. She does not want her son to be mad, no, not her only son. Her husband takes her hand and holds it. He tries to comfort her. He is actually grateful for this diagnosis. Perhaps, if they know what it is, there is something to be done about it. A diagnosis can be one step closer to cured. He would rather not pretend that nothing is wrong. He hopes to acknowledge what is wrong and figure out a way to deal with it. He imagines that they will have to learn to dance with madness, get to know it as they once knew their son.

So WIT is this person, right – a very clever person – and his soul is brevity. His essence is succinct pithy direct hits. At his best, his most true, he is brief. His arms and legs are tediousness – as are the outward flourishes – which raises some questions for me about this WIT person.
One: Are his outward flourishes his gestures? And are gestures tedious? What does a tedious flourish look like?
Two: His limbs are tedious? To whom? Is it tedious for him to have a body, to lift his legs to walk, or raise his arms to lift his child? Or tedious to watch him plod along or repeat that nervous tic?
Three: It sounds like this wit person might have some difficulties. What do those look like?
Or else, despite how good this language sounds, this sentence may not really make much sense.
It’s still funny though. It’s funny for a guy who’s already talked way too much to wax poetic about the value of brevity, before declaring, with too many words, that he will be brief.

Some people love Shakespeare for the poetry, some for the tragedy, some for the comedy, some for the complicated human heroes, or the calculating villains. Me? I love the pedants. Just cannot get enough of the pedantry. This line is as full of genius as a “What a piece of work is a man” or an “All the world’s a stage” If not more so.
In addition to being a gorgeous demonstration of who Polonius is, the rhythm of it makes it poetry – albeit, very silly poetry – but poetry none the less – and Polonius seems quite pleased with himself for inventing it. He has no reason to bring up why day is day or night night or why time is time. No such question was on the table until he brought it up and dismissed it. He has created a poetic construction only to knock it back down. The language of this guy winding up to tell a story is extraordinary – as if anyone was going to expostulate what majesty should be in this moment. We’ve just sent the ambassadors off and Polonius has already told the King and Queen what the next item on the agenda is. There is no reason to say any of this. This bit is pure character and it is gloriously full of it.

If we are to trust the verse, Polonius chimes in with this as soon as the king has welcomed the ambassadors home. Polonius doesn’t give the king time to see the ambassadors out or wait for the king to turn to him and ask for his news. He gives his judgment on what has just come to pass. It could be read as a comment on the good news or as a compliment for the king’s handling of it. If it’s a compliment, it could be seen as slightly condescending to a king – a sort of “Good job, King!”
It is interesting that the king does not speak again for quite a few lines after this. I’m wondering how he takes this bit of commentary from Polonius.

Until just this moment, I’d thought that Polonius’ news being fruit meant that it was going to grow up out of the feast, like the fruit of labors or something becoming fruit but it just occurred to me that it’s much more logical for it to be the order of dishes served at a feast. At some formal dinners I’ve been to, the fruit course finishes the meal. In some cultures, it’s not just for formal meals, but a tradition for most dinners. Knife, fork and fruit signals the end of the meal. Polonius’ news is likely that pear, that knife, that plate. Which makes me wonder about the norms for meals in Shakespeare’s England or Hamlet’s Denmark. Did Shakespeare have fruit after his meals? Or did he just know some Danes who always pulled out the berries after a formal dinner?

When you get on a plane, the complicated boarding system almost seems like an old school hierarchical admittance system. First the rich, then those who might need assistance moving, then those with children in strollers before these rows of these people, then those rows of those people and so on and so on until the plane is full.
This line makes me imagine a theatre with a similarly complex, ordered admittance system. The ushers welcome the ambassadors first, then the politicians, then those that bought their tickets through a third party, those who were given them for free by the company, rows K-M will be the people with friends in the show, rows N-P potential backers, Q-S: the people who don’t really want to be there, T-Z, those who just stumbled in off the street.
And you know – I’d sort of love to play with some organizing principle like this when admitting an audience. It would need to be the right show, of course- for the context to have any meaning – but it would be fun to bring an audience into a theatre like they were getting on a plane, unless of course it was just annoying, like getting on a plane.

This line is so easily edited that I think it almost always is. I certainly would make that choice of excising the middle, qualifying clause if I were trying to cut some time off the Hamlet monster. And almost everyone is looking for ways to cut time off this baby. Very few people want to produce a four hour Hamlet and maybe even fewer want to see a four hour Hamlet. Qualifying clauses that only slightly disrupt the meter with their absence go first.

I like this clause, though. I picture Polonius’ brain, a mass of grey matter, capped with a hunting hat, a rifle strapped across its side and a safari mustache across the frontal lobes.
There it is, sniffing at a trail of policy – following it along through the wilderness, picking up paperwork and edicts as it goes. Behind it, his assistant carries Polonius’ many trophies of policy – important, sealed, official documents, certificates, medals of honor, balanced ledgers.