The Hamlet Project

Everyone made a big deal about Hamlet being in love with his mother. The Freudian interpretation of this scene is really hard to shake, despite the complete lack of any textual evidence for it. There is nothing in this scene that suggests an incestuous bond between Hamlet and Gertrude.
Now, if someone wanted to make a case for Hamlet being in love with his FATHER, for that, there’d be no shortage of evidence. This description of his father’s face is as rhapsodic as any lover’s atomization of their beloved. This is a man who loves his daddy. A lot. And I know he’s dead and we all tend to romanticize the dead – we look on them with a rosy colored, golden tinged retro lens. But this is a fairly extreme example. I mean, EVERY GOD had a hand in the making of his father? So many he doesn’t even name them all? Jove, Mars, Mercury, Hyperion and More?!

And, yes, he is likely exaggerating in the hopes of making his mother feel bad – but really? The ENTIRE PANTHEON? Hamlet Sr. must have been one handsome man.
Even the language about this is sensuous. “New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill”? If Hamlet wants to kiss any member of his family, (and I’m not saying he does – I’m actually pretty sure he doesn’t,) it is his dad.

Tiny little girl with ringlets and scuffed patent leather shoes
She sings to herself and kicks her feet
There is nothing she likes better
Than hanging out on the foreheads of kings.

Sometime I wish we still thought of images of people as counterfeits. I feel like it would go a long way toward reminding us that we are not the pictures of ourselves. The way things stand, it feels as though our images are more real than ourselves. The photographs we collect and post and share and edit and control start to BE us rather than representations. To think of our image as not a representation but a fake – an attempt, not a success…well, I feel like it would do us good.
When someone says, “Oh I saw your photo on Facebook!”
I can say, “Oh, that counterfeit?”

Others editions have “tristful” visage instead of “heated.”
I’m guessing one is a Q1 or Q2 and the other is the folio? Heated does rather follow the glowing face a bit better, I suppose. It starts with just a little bit of heat – a little glow – to become heated. Tristful is a fun construction – a fun word. A little Italian, a little English – all sad.

But heated implies anger, tristful implies sadness – in both cases, heaven’s face is upset about Gertrude – as upset as the end of the world apparently.
Which, come on, Hamlet – is a little bit melodramatic. If I were Gertrude, I’d be like, “Come on, Hamlet. Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it’s not the end of the world bad.”

See now – I think a rhapsody of words sounds pretty good. If someone described a poem I wrote as a rhapsody of words, I’d be flattered. It sounds like a sensual journey with language, an ecstatic experience. But of course Hamlet cannot mean that here. Context is enough to tell that. Genius suggests that a rhapsody, in this case, is a jumble. In which case, it might not be so nice.
I like, though, the imagery of words getting all mixed up just simply due to one woman’s vow. I mean – such power! As if all the oaths got together, hanging out at the oath conference (AKA the Body of Contraction AKA contracts) and then Gertrude’s wedding oath shows up and they start to riot – ripping one another apart until you could not tell one from another. Total word pandemonium.

Marriage vows seem much more aspirational than true. Everyone who says them wants them to be so (probably) and they MEAN them to be forever but the person who makes a marriage vow is not the same person 7 years later, for example. Most of the cells in a body will have completely turned over from when you said, “I will love you forever” to when you struggle to remember how, 7 years in.
No one MEANS for them to be false. Though, certainly it is as much of a gamble as what the dicers do.
The strangest vows are the ones that are not promises of feeling and eternal love but the ones that set out promises of behaviors or hopes for the future. My favorite vow was made by a dear friend to her (already) husband at their (Third) wedding. She said something like, “I don’t promise to never break something that is precious to you.” – a clear reference to some beloved object that had broken earlier in their relationship. The oath went on, though, to promise a compassionate and loving response to the anger that such a thing will inevitably trigger. It is more intention than vow, I suppose – but sets nice groundwork for that future moment when they are both standing over some broken things and afraid that the broke thing might break more than the thing.

Is this blister meant to suggest some kind of STD?
Is it syphilis that gives you blisters?
I mean I suppose this is a classic horror genre metaphor. You show us a sweet fresh-faced girl, all white dresses and sunny rosy disposition, wearing a flower on her brow (what is it, like a headband with a flower or something?) and you go in for a tender kiss, brush the flower aside and BLAMMO! Horrible festering sore right underneath.
And then, to really push the idea to its logical conclusion, she should open her mouth and have, like, spiders pour out of it – because really, she’s dead. She’s a zombie. A demon. All wrapped up in a pretty package.
It’s not, like, just that the sweet little girl had some clarifying headgear that gave her a forehead blister under that flower. No…it’s…horrible! The worst! A blister! On her FACE!

That’s the thing, though, isn’t it?
The people who bang on and on about virtues (or in this day and age, they say, “Values”)
Those people are almost always the ones who prove to be hypocrites.
The ones who shout about purity are never pure.
The pure don’t need to talk about it.
If you’re concerned with other people’s virtues, generally it’s because the state of your own are so compromised you have to put up a big loud smokescreen.

I saw a headline recently that revealed that a loud and blustery anti-gay politician was caught trolling for young men. (Suffice it to say, he was a man himself and therefore exhibiting the very trait he had so denigrated in others.)
Generally if someone is obsessed with some kind of “virtue,” I just assume they do not possess it and very possibly and probably, posses its shadow side – its vice.

I’ve had it with modesty.
No one is ever concerned with men’s modesty.
It is always always a woman’s “virtue.”
Fuck fucking modesty.
Or if we’re going to have it – if it is something we’re going to value,
Then we’re going to have to think about how men are going to exhibit modesty.

Keep your legs together, gentlemen, at all costs. You don’t want to send the wrong message.
Don’t talk too loudly or laugh at volume.
Keep your voices soft and pleasant.
Are you used to sharing your opinions?
It’s time to pull those back. Modesty means offending no one
And opinions are risky that way.
In fact, to be safe, only speak when spoken to.
That’s the most modest way.
Don’t let any flesh be exposed.
I mean, sure, your face and neck, ears
Maybe your hands are going to have to be seen
But no more ankles. No more calves –
You will have to cease wearing those revealing shorts and t-shirts.
What are you trying to do when you show us all that flesh?
Modesty, gentlemen, is a virtue.
The less we see of you
The less we hear of you
The better.