Sitting at the bar, perched on a stool, the glass streaked with the streams of beer that have traveled to and from a mouth over a long conversation, he wonders now how to address his companion. An intimacy has sprung easily between them. They’ve laughed over the foibles of their friends. They’ve traded complaints abut their bosses. They’ve rolled their eyes over their troubles with women. What’s that guy’s name? That would be the easiest title to use, to simply say, “So, Jim. ..” but he cannot remember his name or even if he ever asked him what it was. There has been a kind of formality to their intimacy so he cannot be satisfied with “buddy” or “pal” or “Man” and especially not “dude.” He thinks he might make a joke of it and make a little bow before him to call him “gentleman” or perhaps he won’t address him at all.
He hears himself telling a long story in which he talks to himself, one where he says his own name in jest several times, as in “That’s tellin’ him, Ray.” And “Come on, Ray. You can do this.” He knows that on some level he is telling this story that his companion will offer his own story like this, wherein he will say his name in jest. He almost does. He tells a self-deprecating story about himself about trying to psych himself up but he never calls himself by name, no, unfortunately, he calls himself “Jackass” and “Nimrod” so the name remains a mystery.

This sentence starts so clearly, singing with multiple ss
But then goes down many a twisted baffling alley
Before sort of half arriving at the consequence.
It’s the sort of sentence one has to read a few times – one has to parse it a bit to get at the meat of it.

Polonius is a master at saying simple things in complicated ways.
My question is, though, what triggers the speechifying in this guy?
Does he do it when he’s been called out?
Does he do it when attempting to improvise?
When he’s not sure how to explain something?
When he’s impressed with himself?
I know someone who loves to explain how things work
He’s almost never long winded until he gets started laying out how a steam engine works – then he can speechify for long long periods of time.
Polonius talks a lot, to be sure, but he can be direct, he can use short sentences. It would be interesting to work out why he chooses one over the other.

I would have thought that catching someone’s drift was a peculiarly modern idiomatic way to understand them but like many “modern” things, this one may have begun with our man, Shakespeare. I don’t have any evidence for this but is it not impossible that Shakespeare kicked this particular idea off?
Someone’s “drift “ caught on
While a “Fetch” did not – at least not in this context.
It does make SENSE though – the little lie acting like a stick in a game of fetch sending a dog chasing after something if only in a game.

Guessing another’s questions, anticipating their concerns, intuiting their wondering, knowing before you know – is the kind of predictive behavior that indicates how much we human beings can understand each other. Many times, we can find ourselves baffled by what other people say or do.
But it strikes me suddenly that the counterpoint to that is how often we CAN understand exactly why someone did something or said what they said –
How often we can predict the next thought or action.
I’ve been reading about how autistic people see the world and some of them really struggle with this very thing; they cannot conceive of what another mind might be thinking. I think it’s got a title, something like “Theory of Mind” but whatever it is, it keeps them from being able to predict your question, your thought, your response – even to the most obvious actions.

Laertes, then, is too free. He has an incendiary mind and savagery in his body. Whether or not these are his actual faults (breathed quaintly) or forged ones, is still not clear to me.

I will say that a Laertes struggling to oe’ermaster a quicksilver brain and a body built to break the world around it is a more interesting Laertes than one who is virtuous and checked up on by an overprotective parent. A Laertes who has to fight to keep his temper, who has to work at being politic and civil is a Laertes with demons. That’s a Laertes worth putting opposite the prince at the center of this play.

I had a dream last night that my friend was putting jigsaw puzzle pieces together in such a way as to create a new puzzle. He’d gathered many puzzles together and was putting them together in blocks of color – taking nature scenes and photos and turning them into abstract squares of color and line. I was about to tell him he was doing the puzzles wrong before I realized that his way was better, that making his own picture was creating something beautiful where there was not something before. The jigsaw pieces meant something different to him than they did me. I was attracted to what one was SUPPOSED to do with them but his meaning was better.

I’ve almost always interpreted this scene as an overprotective father attempting to extract some information on his mostly virtuous son – but reading this line today, reading “another scandal” as an actual scandal, rather than a fictional one just put on him by Reynaldo – I suddenly have a lot of questions about Laertes’ virtues. Has he already run into scandal? Is this fictional one that Polonius is suggesting to Reynaldo the second one Laertes might have? There is a suggestion from Ophelia that Laertes might need to watch out when he preaches, given his own moral standing.
I like the idea of a scandal in Laertes’ past, I confess. It makes him more interesting if, when we meet him, he’s just begun recovering his reputation from a mishap. He becomes a sort of prodigal son making his first journey back out into the world. His return to France becomes a much more significant event than a simple kid going back to a life abroad. It’s a kid with a real need to prove himself again, to truly get permission to leave. It’s a kid who has something to prove to his father – even when his father’s dead.
“Another scandal” might be quickly dismissed but if it’s weighted with the image of Laertes splashed all over the tabloids for getting caught with a prostitute, for example, it makes both Polonius’ trust and suspicion a lot more interesting.
Certainly Laertes is a guy who ACTS first and thinks later.
First, start a coup – THEN reconsider.
First, go after the king, then poison your sword for the prince.
Kill the prince, then confess your crime.
Another scandal.

Someone please explain to me how seasoning the accusation of a kid going whoring will make it less dishonorable. I’m all for shades of grey, for ambiguities, for moral wiggle room but this one seems pretty cut and dried. You’re either paying women to have sex with you or you’re not.
A “Yes, but she was a high-class hooker, not a street hustler.” doesn’t really get you off the hook, it just proves you have more money.
“Yes but he only goes whoring when he’s out of town feeling lonely.”
“Yes, but he’s only on occasional John, he’s not a regular.”
“Yes, but he’s a very respectful buyer of women’s bodies. He always makes sure he leaves a nice tip.”
I just don’t quite understand how Reynaldo could temper this particular “slip.”

There’s a little man in charge of the course of my life and he stands by a mile-marker with his clipboard and pen that he clicks back and forth.
I run at top speed up the road, heart pounding, breath heaving, all cells pointed ahead to go go get there, farther than ever before – ready to push past the sound barrier, the limits, the stops – but as soon as I get to that little man with his watch and his pen and his clipboard and mustached. I am stopped in my tracks – like the Time Bandits running into that invisible boundary to the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness. Nose slammed into glass, body stopped short. He puts his hand along the barrier, looks down his nose at me and says, “You may go so far” and I trudge back to the start, slowly now and limping, preparing to make another run at that track.

All the things a father can worry about when his son goes to Paris:
Those college kids get up to so much mischief! – What with the keg parties and the profanity and the getting into fights and what not.
And the drabbing, of course, these kids and their drabbing.
Wait, what?!
First, of all, a drab is a whore – which I do not understand because whores tend NOT to be the most drab women in the room –
Painted, bright, gaudy, visible, yes. Drab – no.
Where did this meaning diverge?
Second: Is drabbing an acceptable behavior for a young man of this era?
Reynaldo has some question about this, but Polonius isn’t too worried. I guess he sees drabbing as a way for a young man to sow his wild oats?
Maybe, in a society that places such strict limits on a woman’s sexuality, drabbing might be the only way to get some action before a wedding.

I guess then my question is: What are the sexual mores of the Denmark that Shakespeare’s created?
Are they Renaissance England’s?

Maybe not – because a study of marriage at the time would indicate that ladies and gents got busy before marriage quite a lot. Shakespeare’s wife was quite pregnant when they married. Are Hamlet and Ophelia lovers or sweethearts?
Hamlet’s awfully keen on sending her to a nunnery. And Laertes is pretty interested in Ophelia’s chastity. Ophelia’s songs later in the play might indicate a loss of that chastity, if you wanted to read them that way.
I feel like the acceptability of drabbing in a culture would directly relate to the status and acceptability of women’s sexuality in the culture.
If this Denmark puts the hard thumb on sex before marriage – whoredom thrives.
If Denmark figures people will, of course, get into some hanky panky sometimes, whoredom would be a lot less acceptable.
In this current American culture, whoredom is fascinating to a lot of people and certainly is not in any danger of disappearing. But it is not thought of as the honorable thing to do, not part of a young man’s wild oats, not standard frat boy behavior, not generally talked about in open conversation and certainly not something a father might wish his son to be labeled with.
Fencing, though – that’s funny. Because fencing has become sort of refined sport. There would be no shame in getting caught fencing in public.
Just hilarity.