No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest.

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Isn’t poison hilarious?
Sneaky poisoners, walking around on their tippy toes with vials of the vile stuff – just ready to slip it in to someone when they’re not paying attention. In the ear, in the food, in the drink, in the pearl that goes in the drink, on the sword.

It’s interesting how much poison is in this play and all of it comes back to Claudius. He is a poisoner. That is his method of choice (except when he can use bureaucracy and have England do his killing for him.) I’m sure there is some sort of taxonomy of murderers and their methods, something that gives each murderer a particular psychological profile.

If I were playing Claudius, I’d find such a taxonomy and spend some time understanding why Claudius prefers to poison.

Is there no offence in’t?

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I read a feminist defense of the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” The song had been accused of being a little bit “rape-y” in the last couple of years due, mostly, to the line, “Say, what’s in this drink?”
There are those, now that they’ve read the defense, who are joyously shouting vindication for the song. And those who are finding other details still on the sexist side.
Is there offense in it? It depends.
Certainly it was written in a much more sexist time than our own and is clearly a product of its time. Which doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it now. Ultimately, for me, like Shakespeare and other classic texts, it comes down to how it is performed.
If Bill Cosby sings this song to a woman, like, say, Beverly Johnson (or ANY woman) it does feel VERY rape-y.
Which doesn’t mean he shouldn’t sing it with Beverly Johnson. It would be the creepiest, most uncomfortable and interesting “Baby, it’s Cold Outside” ever.
When Luke Wheeler and Rayna James on the TV show, Nashville, sang it to each other, well, that’s just fine. Those two characters were hot for each other and in love. We want to see a nice sexy duet like that.
It all depends on how into the gentleman the Lady is and how uncreepy the Gentleman is. Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zoey Deschanel sang it, it would have a sweet quirky niceness.
But if Deschanel sang it with Christopher Walken in Deerhunter mode? Creepy. Scary. Not okay. But again, interesting!
It’s always always interpretation.

And then there’s the fun gender reversed way.

Have you heard the argument?

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There’s something interesting about framing the plot of a play as an argument. It implies certain amount of inherent conflict in the work. What is the argument? Thinking Man against the obligation of Revenge?
But of course it is not that simple if it’s even that at all.
Does this notion of argument come from rhetorical training and history?
In that Q2 talk from the Free Library
Lesser posits that the To Be or Not to Be speech is actually classic abstract rhetoric structure and content. What is the Central Question? To Be or Not to Be.
Point 1: Suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Counterpoint 1: Or take arms against a sea of trouble.

It is essentially an argument. Not really a soliloquy. It does not feature I at any point. It does not feature any of his actual circumstances. It does not ask the audience to solve it.
It is a very good argument, of course but an argument. Is a plot an argument?
Sometimes it is, yes.

O, but she’ll keep her word.

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She doesn’t, though, does she?
I mean, if the dumb show is a preview of what’s to come in this play, she most definitively does not keep her word. All it takes is a few gifts from the poisoner and her word is toast.

We don’t get far enough into the spoken portion of this play to see this enacted again but it seems pretty clear that the story is the same – so we can be pretty sure that the Queen does not keep her word on this point.

It would seem that Hamlet can only be saying this as a dig on his mother. As in, SHE’LL keep her word as opposed to YOU who married my stupid uncle, who just in case you weren’t in on it, murdered your first husband, you idiot.

Apparently in the first quarto, it’s made explicit that Gertrude doesn’t know and is therefore only complicit in seeking revenge along with her son. This makes Hamlet seem all the more cruel to her. But in the second quarto and folio editions, it is all a great deal more ambiguous. Does she know or doesn’t she? Is Hamlet’s cruelty to his mother justified? Those editions create more questions, which does make this much more artful in a way. It’s interesting to have to decide.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

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She does, though. That’s the thing. That oath the lady just swore is too damn much. And even though the Queen could easily be implicated in remarking on it, she does – because that oath is off the charts over the top. Seconded only by the previous speech’s over the top-ness.

And so far, there’s no action in this play. It’s just these two boring royals over swearing. The dumb show before it is much more interesting. And always raises the question for me of why Claudius waits so long to freak out about it. Is he not paying attention during the dumb show? Or is it a slow build and he’s simmering all through the epic speeches and then boils over eventually.

The Queen takes a lot of crap but in so many ways she is quite sensible. And this line becomes one of the world’s favorite zingers.

Madam, how like you this play?

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Lately, whenever anyone asks me this question, my answer tends to be, “Not much.”
I’m starting to fear that I will never like anything again. While all around me, people enthuse about what they’re watching, I look around wondering what I’m missing. Or wondering how I could fix whatever it is I’m watching.
What would please me?
What could be done to that play, that production, that performance to move me?
I usually have ideas. But I can’t do much about them in my current situation. I can only fix the plays that are before me.
But even, of course, my own work needs fixing. It needs enormous amounts of fixing. And probably other people watch it and wonder how they’d fix it.

Sleep rock thy brain, And never come mischance between us twain!

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I’m sure she means rocking in the sense of rocking a child to sleep, in terms of rock-a-bye baby, in terms of a rocking chair – the sort of rocks that lulls a person to sleep.
But I always hear it as in ROCK! As in Rock n Roll, baby! Rock that brain! Sleep, shake it like a mega-ton stadium show!
Rock thy brain!
Like a whole bank of speakers, like a set of earplugs to make it tolerable, like lights flashing, guitars wailing, arms slamming and a whole lot of strutting.

My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile The tedious day with sleep.

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After a tedious day, I am inclined to stay up way too late, trying to redeem it. If the day was a bust, I keep going, writing, typing, doing, hoping to find some good in something bad.

My partner is the opposite when his day has been particularly tedious, he will go straight to bed, hoping that sleep will re-set the day in the morning. He is more like the King in this respect. I am the opposite. Unless I’m suffering from jet lag. Then all bets are off and I’ll go straight to bed.

Sweet, leave me here awhile.

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Tomorrow, I have to get on a plane and fly back to my country, my state, my city, my borough, my apartment.
There is work waiting for me, a company of actors, a lovely group of students, and a man who loves me.
And yet – despite the water pressure and the madly expensive cost of living and the transport that shuts down so early and the freezing cold houses and the difficulty of eating sensibly –
Please, sweet, leave me here awhile.
Let me tarry just a bit longer
Let me take in more inspiration
Let me have more inspiring conversations
Let me meet more kind brilliant people
Let me be here, where I’m both more at home and less.
Leave me here awhile.

‘Tis deeply sworn.

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Is this what the king was gunning for in that epic speech about people changing their tunes later? Was he aiming to get a MORE binding oath out of his wife?
Was all that stuff about the discrepancy between thought and acting actually just a play to get her to swear herself into a corner?
I suppose that might give the King something to play in that excessively long list of aphorisms.
This line, then, becomes a button on his having won the thing he wanted.