The Hamlet Project

This is where it is most convenient to use the Royal We. He COULD just be talking about himself – but he could ALSO be implicating Gertrude in the blame portion – when “it will be laid to us” maybe he’s really suggesting it will be laid to her.
Certainly only a fool would believe that Claudius has let Hamlet roam free out of love. Who would he think he’s fooling? Has he been playing the “I love my nephew so much” card with Gertrude this whole time? Did Gertrude buy it? Was she convincing herself that Claudius hopped into Hamlet’s rightful throne out of love?

OR is Claudius trying out on Gertrude the rhetoric he’s planning on using on others later?

People are always trying to blame parents for their children’s behavior. Certainly, when children are young, this makes a LITTLE bit more sense. A LITTLE bit. Theoretically, there can be some controls on young children’s behavior, though not always. Once the child is grown, though, once the child is in his 30s, it might be time to stop blaming his parents for his actions. It may be that they did terrible things to him as a child that led him to do terrible things – but there are many people who had
terrible things done to them as children who don’t do terrible things. Likewise, there are people who do terrible things who had perfectly fine childhoods.
This speech here just feels like excuse making for the terrible thing he’s about to do…this idea that the blame will fall on him is pretty ludicrous.
And he’s the king. So what? Ain’t a chance it could touch him.

Yeah. Not really. Really he is just a threat to Claudius at this stage. Though, in the end, he is not wrong – with all of the stuff that happens – the entire kingdom of Denmark does fall apart. But that’s not Hamlet’s fault so much as it is Claudius’.

1) He tries to have Hamlet killed by England – which backfires and kills Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
2) He tries to have Hamlet killed with a poison pearl in his drink which backfires and kills Gertrude.
3) He tries to have Hamlet killed with an anointed sword (or rather he agrees to Laertes’ plan to have Hamlet killed this way) and while it technically works and it also backfires and kills Laertes.
So pretty much every death from here on out (with the exception of Ophelia’s and the King’s) is a result of trying to have Hamlet killed.
So really, it’s Claudius’ liberty that is the ultimate threat to all.
But also – I love this sentence. It’s so obviously meant to mask his own fear – the repetition of all and everyone – the way he hides himself in the royal we and in the middle of the list….it’s just a beautiful construction of a man trying to hide his true concern.

Claudius is no dummy. He knows Hamlet was after him when he killed Polonius.
And he probably knows why, too.
But it is funny that his first response to hearing that Polonius has been killed is, “It might have been me! I just narrowly escaped death!”
It’s not, “Oh no! What? My good dear advisor is dead? Murdered? What?”
No – it’s, “It could have been me!”
Savvy and self-involved – always a winning combo in a king.

I love how hippies used the word “heavy.”
It’s fallen out of fashion – you don’t hear so much “That’s heavy, man.” Or even so much singing of “He ain’t heavy.”
“Heavy” these days is mostly used as an obnoxious euphemism for fat. (I’m inclined to use fat, myself, and in an act of political advocacy, I try to say, “a gorgeous fat woman” or that “beautiful fat man”) If we’re going to use euphemisms, I prefer “Person of Size” or “Attractive Person of Size.” Heavy feels like an inaccurate measure – as a fat person can be quite light. And we don’t call a skinny person “light.” Also – it’s a measure of something we’re not in the middle of experiencing – not unless the fat person is actively sitting on us. (Something I recommend all fat people do to anyone who calls them heavy.)

But a hippie heavy is one of my favorite uses of “heavy.” Its spirit is a little like this line here…giving a sense of being weighed down. My favorite hippie character is from an 80s show wherein the hippie character, Neil, was quite fond of saying “Heavy.” Like, when catastrophic things happened, he’d say something like, “That’s heavy, man.” Usually in his case, it was an extraordinary understatement.

The house blows up?
Heavy.
His friend beheaded?
Heavy.
Neil is the best for things heavy.

Hamlet does pretty well. I mean – even when a person knows nothing about Shakespeare or Shakespeare’s plays – he still probably knows Hamlet. He probably even knows a line from Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy.

Hamlet may be dead by the end of the play but his name, story and words live on and on and on – Hamlet is intertwined with the culture. He is everywhere.

I have been thinking about the names of the King and Queen. In the text, their lines are marked by KING and QUEEN – not CLAUDIUS and GERTRUDE.
They are rarely called by their names. In casting my memory around the play, I couldn’t think of any instance of these characters being called by their first names. But here we are – Claudius calls the Queen Gertrude here. And not just once – several times.
It is interesting that though Hamlet is the Prince, he is almost always referred to by name – while his mother and stepfather/uncle are almost always referred to by title. One might be inclined to think that Hamlet’s title is less powerful than the others – or that we are meant to relate to him more because we so often hear his name.

I think, too, about how I KNOW that these are the names of the King and Queen so their names are meaningful to me but there are times when I’ve taught the play and the students almost never see these names. I remember saying something about Claudius and they said, “Who?”
There are ways to cut the play wherein you’d never hear their names.