The Hamlet Project

Right?! I mean – what is mercy for but to challenge the worst horrors? It is hard not to be moved by people who lean into mercy in the most horrific of circumstances. Whenever I hear of parents who advocated for the killers of their children – or of the way the Amish responded to violence in their community, I am always touched to the core. Not everyone has the heart for that kind of profound grace – but those that do are tremendous role models.

I don’t think this line is quoted much.
I get the sense that there’s not many opportunities for mercy out in the world of quotables. Mercy can seem dated somehow
But it is beautiful.

So we’ve got a curséd hand here, the hand of the king.
The proposition is that blood on the hand is thicker than the hand itself.
That it is, let’s say, twice as big as the hand.
Like, if you took the brother’s blood and pressed it into a hand shape, then put the hand made of blood next to the king’s curséd hand, the hand made of blood would be bigger.

But, we know, of course, that the hand is curséd because it is already covered in his brother’s blood, metaphorically – so the actual proposition here is that there’s more layers of metaphorical blood than there already are.

Maybe the idea is that it’s more than one brother’s blood – layering one after the other – making him an even worse murderer than he already is
and the idea being that, even if he were the shittiest shitty brother murderer, there’d still be enough heavenly mercy in the form of metaphorical rain, to be forgiven.

Which is a nice perk of believing in this sort of thing, especially if you’re a murderer.

Double Business Binding
is a syndrome I know well.
It is as familiar as breathing
– to feel pulled in two directions at once
– to know I need to do one thing
and simultaneously another
and while I stand there looking between them
trying to decide which one to do first
I lose the name of action
and neither one gets done.

If I had a publishing company
I’d call it Double Business Binding.

And now when I’m paralyzed between paths of action,
I will name it Double Business.
I will say to myself, as my head looks first at one, then the other,
“Ah, it’s Double Business.”
And perhaps it will help me choose.

Double Business also makes me think of this idea we talk about a lot in Feldenkrais wherein we try to do two things at once in the body, often in contrary ways. So while I want to reach forward with the arm, I end up pulling myself back with the pelvis – therefore creating two contradictory movements. Double business – going forward and going back.

In Feldenkrais, we call it cross motivation – but now I will call it Double Business and somehow that will make it easier. How, I’m not sure. But it will. Maybe I’ll just geek out and quote this line the next time I teach a Feldenkrais class – colliding my worlds!

I can’t really pray either
but in my case, the inclination is not so sharp.
The closest I get is the occasional, “Please, could I get this thing I want?” or
“Please can I avoid this impending thing?”
But I’m not sure that’s really prayer
particularly since it’s not to anyone in particular.
It’s just a general (probably) fruitless bargaining with the universe.
But – maybe that’s how religion got invented.
From general pleading for things to go our way.

I listened to a story told by a guy who grew up religious and then began to question. He talked about how he couldn’t talk with his parents about anything because the first thing they always said was, “Have you prayed about it?”
He said he said, “Let’s assume I HAVE. What’s the next step? What steps can I actually take to fix this thing? What would you do in my situation?”
And his parents’ only answer was prayer.
Poor guy was in a little bit of a similar situation as Claudius but for a very different reason. The impulse to pray being deeply embedded in him but at a certain point, no longer useful.

It’s probably not an accident that the first murder in the Bible is a brother’s killing a brother. While definitely not a good idea, fratricide doesn’t have the stamp of horror that murdering your mother or father or child might have. In a way, it’s primal in the sense of it going down deep – that we are perhaps, at our core, fundamentally at odds with our siblings – that murdering that person with whom you’re compelled to share so much – might just come naturally.

But this is really a Biblical reference, not just “primal” – it’s the “primal eldest” – that is Cain. Cain killed Abel…and presumably Claudius is the younger brother (by virtue of not having been King at first) so here the Danish Cain gets killed by Danish Abel.

It’s funny, too, that the offense has a curse upon it. Not, I don’t know, the man himself? It’s like Claudius is disassociating himself from his crime. It’s his offense that has the primal eldest curse upon’t. He didn’t do it so much as he’s in possession of the things that did. He doesn’t say, “I am rank. I did a terrible thing. I really screwed up and now I feel guilty.”

No, he does not. This is as close to a confession as he gets until the end of the speech – when he says, “I did the murder.” Of course, even in that context the sentence structure is such that the murder is an afterthought. It’s just a description of the things he got (i.e. he got them because he did the murder.) It all feels as though Claudius just can’t take responsibility for his own actions, even in his confession.

I’ve always read this line as something so smelly that the odor could reach up to heaven, that the reach of the stink is so long, the distance so great.

But I just realized it could also be a personification of heaven. That is, maybe this deed doesn’t stink to anyone on earth but in heaven, it smells abominably- like the way certain smells smell good to some people and awful to others. There are a lot of perfumes like that – wherein the wearer thinks it smells great and some people AROUND them would disagree.

While working with the international students this morning (those for whom English is not native or easy) they came across a lot of words in their scenes in Macbeth that were unfamiliar. We talked about the definitions of regret and repent, as well as revenge.

It’s an interesting cluster or words to have in mind when thinking of this line. Because it is neither regret nor repentance, really.

It’s just facts almost. It’s guilt but not regret. It’s self-disgust but not repentant.

I feel like those distinctions are key because it’s easy to see this monologue as a little redemptive of the king because he acknowledges his crime and wants to pray about it.

But aside from not being able to pray about it, he never really expresses regret.

He is a little like Macbeth here, steeped so far in blood there is nothing for it but to say – “Hey, I’m steeped in blood. And it smells kind of bad.”

There is no “Oh, I shouldn’t have done it” or “Can I redeem myself?”
Just an “Ouch, Guilt Hurts!”

No one would ever actually do this, I’m sure – but the arrangement of this line is such that it would be interesting for Claudius to forget who he was talking to for a moment, slip and call Polonius “dear” – before correcting himself and saying, “my lord.”
It would add to the atmosphere of Claudius’ mental landscape – reflect the storm brewing in him, lead him to this speech that’s essentially a giant confession.
To see Claudius a little bit scattered, a little confused, could be very interesting for this scene, which feels as though it’s all business until the soliloquy.