The Hamlet Project

I came across this line on a day wherein I both packed and unpacked my suitcase in the space of an hour. Packing stresses me out. Even when it’s already decided. I just – worry, I guess. Is it all going to fit? Am I late? How will I get all these things collected before the deadline?

98% of my nightmares are packing dreams. I have things to pack like apartments or rooms or my clothes or something and there is a deadline – like a plane waiting. And I am always sure I will miss that deadline as I race around the space trying to collect all the things, which seem to multiply as I collect them

Hamlet’s mixing his metaphors quite dramatically in this passage, it would seem. We’re doing all this mine talking – sweeping, martial-ness, military and explosions, etc – and now suddenly – crafts – which are usually boats. So …is the metaphor mixing reflective of a state of mind? Hamlet’s pretty clear and consistent most of the time.
As for this metaphor, is it expressing a kind of delight in confrontation? A joy in the battle? One craft traveling along refusing to budge when the other comes straight at it?
No one’s coming straight at anyone in this play, though. It’s all skirting around the edges. Digging beneath, spying and surprise.

Very crafty warcraft there, Hamlet.
Is this a strategy that actually works, though?
Can you dig under a mine and set up a whole other mine? I mean – it’s a great metaphor of beating someone at their own game…but practically…if someone has set up a mine for you, they probably won’t go near it again – cause they know a mine’s there.
Or is that Hamlet’s gonna get there first and dig below where they’re gonna dig and when they start digging, kaboom!

Ah, language! You are so changeable – so slippery sometimes.
I mean, here’s the source for a saying we hear everyday but today we say “Hoisted with his own petard.” And when and how do these tiny shifts happen?

Also? We have here an editorial choice between “engineer” and “enginer” – which may be a matter of spelling and pronunciation on one hand but also a matter of meaning on another. Without consistent spelling at the time when Shakespeare’s plays were printed, we can never really know for sure if Shakespeare meant “engineer” and “enginer” now. I know what an engineer is – and have no idea what an enginer is. Which is why, if I were editing, I might just go with the word more people have a sense of the meaning of. But – apparently enginer might have metaphorical connections, military connections to the ghost being called a pioneer. (Often printed as PIONER) See – we have these tricky extra e’s that either obscure meaning or enhance it.
And with language, we are always hoist with our own petar. Language will get us back every time we think we’ve built it flawlessly.

I have been making myself anxious about this conference in Montreal. There is not much to do to prepare for it so I am making preparation by getting nervous. It is possible it could change my life. It is also possible that it will have no impact. There is nothing I can do from this vantage point at any end of the spectrum. Whatever wheels are set (or not set) in motion, I must simply turn the key and let it work.

Hamlet understands precisely what Claudius is up to with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. It is interesting how accurate his sense of this plan is. Is it because he understands how Claudius thinks? Or has he been doing some spying himself?
The former is a little bit more interesting – because if Hamlet fully understands Claudius’s plan to have him killed in England, he might have a bit of Claudius in him himself. He is – after all – related. There are likely familial traits and ticks – things they have in common.
It might be really interesting to see a production where you could really see the family traits in them…where there were obvious habits of mind, body, rhythm.
So often we think of Claudius and Hamlet as so very different from one another – but what if they were more alike?

This is an interesting reveal –
We (the audience) know what Hamlet doesn’t trust Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he’s let us know in previous scenes – but this is not a truth he’s shared with Gertrude before now. It’s like he’s turned some truth corner or a trust corner – and his former attempt to play the game just falls away. It’s like – at some point in this scene – he just decides to start trusting his mom. And it would appear to be when she tells him she has no breath to tell anyone anything. That would appear to be all he needed to stop scolding and start laying down some truth.

Punctuation questions again. I feel like when I hear/see this performed it is almost always spoken with a period. I’d need to do a more thorough edition comparison – but it may well be an editorial choice to make this a real question.

The difference in meaning would be significant. One assumes that Gertrude does, in fact, know about the trip to England – the other leaves it more open. I don’t think Gertrude probably knows about the underlying purpose of the trip to England but it is clearly a bit of a sore point between everyone.
Hamlet may have a sense of the intended reason for the trip but this question could be a probing of the levels of awareness Gertrude has.
“You know that.” Assumes knowledge.
“You know that?” Assumes nothing.