The Hamlet Project

Ladies and Gentlemen, my name’s Mr. Guildenstern and I’ll be your substitute teacher today. I hope that you’ll give me the respect and good behavior that you usually give to your teacher, Mr. Pahlinus.

Oh, excuse me, yes, Mr. Polonius. Now – I’ve got several worksheets to hand out to the class – I don’t expect to have any trouble but if there is, I have the authority to send any of you to the office that give me reason. Okay? Are we going to be okay?

Now see. That’s the kind of thing that is not a good idea. I don’t like to see that sort of thing. Do you think that’s the way to behave? No, no, I’m not going to send you to the office for that. Of course, you didn’t mean it, I understand. Just. . .don’t do it again – okay?

Now if everybody could just quietly fill in your worksheets while I take the attendance then we can all have a peaceful class. Yes? It’s GUILD-en-stern. Mr. GUILD-en-stern. That’s right. Like a guild. Do you know what a guild is? No, no, of course. No. Just fill in your worksheets, alright everybody? Settle down. Settle down. It’s time to settle down.

Guildenstern is KIND of a lousy messenger. He’s referenced some commandment from Gertrude but has failed to state what that command is. Instead he gets all touchy and moody with Hamlet for bantering. Which is all the stranger since he previously had a bantering relationship with the prince. All previous exchanges were banter and now messenger Guildenstern can neither deliver the message nor fall into his usual style of conversation with his friend.

You’ve got to breed pedigree courtesies – make sure you mate them with well made courtesies.
It helps, too, to line their cages with handmade paper. If you put down newspaper, they’ll breed but they might not reproduce the best courtesy.
Breed them right and you can make a coat of the right courtesies. But – a coat with the wrong breed of courtesies will not only make you look like a fool – it won’t keep you warm either. Start with the right breed of courtesy and you’ll breed even better
courtesies.

What if Guildenstern has a special relationship with Gertrude?
She has specifically sent Guildenstern to Hamlet because Guildenstern, upon seeing Gertrude upset, has gone straight to her. What if the King and Queen sent for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern because the Queen knows exactly where to find Guildenstern and thinks he might be able to help her with her son.
What if Guildenstern has suddenly gotten a little paternalistic, a little Polonius like – with Hamlet because he’s just been getting busy with his mom?
What if it started years ago when Hamlet and Guildenstern were young and Guildenstern would come over and be all Eddie Haskell with Hamlet’s Mom.
“Hello, Mrs. Hamlet, you’re looking beautiful today.”
And since Mr. Hamlet was so often away at the wars, she found herself flattered and intrigued. Neither Rosencrantz nor Hamlet ever the wiser.
Nor Claudius Nor Hamlet Sr, either.
Gertrude and Guildenstern get it going.
Until of course it all falls apart.
Like everyone in this play.

It’s not so wild what Hamlet’s just said previously. He’s bantering. Very logically, it would seem to me. I have met many people who DID need to put their discourse into a frame, that did veer wildly. Hamlet does a good demonstration of that behavior elsewhere in the play, particularly when he’s talking with Polonius. His cloud analysis, for example, is much more wild than the joking suggestion that Guildenstern should go tell the doctor that Claudius is choleric.

It makes me think about how people so often see others according to how they expect to see them, rather than how they really are. There’s a study with rats where they told people that their rat was especially clever or stupid and held them, and the rats then performed better or worse in a maze depending on people’s perceptions of them.  Which is a slightly different thing – because Guildenstern thinking Hamlet is crazy doesn’t make Hamlet crazy but it does make Guildenstern interpret everything Hamlet says as being crazy, even when it really makes sense.

Expand this to the effect this idea might have on children, though, and we can see how kids would start to take on the qualities that are projected on to them. It happens with race, too. There was a story on This American Life about the biases that get pre-school African American kids sent home while white pre-schoolers don’t. You get sent home enough times for doing nothing – you’re gonna want to just go ahead and DO something. So black children get sent home more than white children and suddenly there’s a reputation.

Put a frame around that discourse.