When we were small, they had us each lie down on a big piece of paper and they drew an outline around our bodies.
We had a life-size paper outline of ourselves and we colored them in, giving us our own paper clothes and paper features. All lined up next to each other, you could see kids who were similarly sized.
Could we have our love lie down like this?
Have someone draw an outline around it with a thick scented marker? What shape would it be? What size?
I’d like to believe my love was bigger than me but I fear that it is smaller. And I’d like to believe my fear, were it subject to the same process, would be smaller than me but I fear that it is bigger.
But, let’s, for the sake of argument and literary symmetry, say that love and fear are the same size.
Let’s say their outlines are interchangeable.
Let’s say they are both me shaped, that each one’s outline is mine.
How would I color them in?
How would they be distinguished if not by size and shape?
It’s all theory until the day I get out the markers and the big paper to try it out.
For women fear too much, even as they love,And women’s fear and love hold quantity,In neither aught, or in extremity.
Do we?Do we all?
I’m not sure.
I know a lot of women who fear a great deal. They’re afraid of disease and of risky behavior. All things that it does make sense to fear, particularly if your own security depends on someone else’s life. When a woman is dependent on a man for her survival, it is only logical that she be a bit cautious for him as well.
But for those who are not dependent, the fear is not inevitable. Risky behavior might even be attractive.
Fear isn’t a given.
I have a lot of love. And I have a quantity of fear, too – but it’s not for my partner really.
Sure, I’d rather he didn’t encounter disease or trouble in any way. But I’m not afraid of it. Not in him or in myself.
The things I fear are more like: Will I ever find a way to make a decent living?
Yet, though I distrust, Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must.
This is the tricky think about relationships- the balancing of one’s needs with someone else’s.
I tend to weigh other’s needs over my own. But sometimes I just need to say something. Something – it’s necessary to share the distrust while simultaneously acknowledging that I’d prefer not to discomfort you.
In the Queen’s case – it would seem to be distrust of his own reporting of his health. Or maybe just his straight up health. I’ve known many people to underplay their difficulties – the “I’m fine, don’t worry” school. I know there are those who play that card the opposite way – the ones who are convinced they are dying and say, “I have a small cough. Worry!”
But I don’t hang out with those folks – I tend to hang out with my own tribe – the stoic, this broken bone is no big deal, this wound is nothing, sort of people. And sometimes you just want to take them to the hospital. But I don’t want you to feel bad about it.
But woe is me, you are so sick of late, So far from cheer and from your former state That I distrust you.
What is bringing the Player King down?
With what is he sick?
If the king weren’t about to be killed one might think he would soon be dead from natural causes – given how they both talk about his health.
It is a funny pre-murder scene. Death is looming, casting a shadow over the Player Royal family and then it appears from the other side.
Does the king, in sooth, know why he is so sad?
So many journeys may the sun and moon Make us again count o’er ere love be done!
Here at the café I’m writing in, they’re playing an album I listened to a lot well over two decades ago. It’s one I haven’t heard in ages. Many journeys of sun and moon have happened since then.
I was certainly a much different person then. I can’t imagine loving any one person throughout that journey, throughout those particular passages of sun and moon. I did love my friends throughout that transition – a good many of the dearest ones remain so. But to be partnered, watching sun and moon for thirty years, particularly those youthful 30 years, well, that’s harder for me to imagine. Most partners in that period lasted about two moons before our love was done. Sometimes it’s clear when a particular love cake is BAKED and ready to come out of the oven. And sometimes you might have the sort of love that cooks slowly and may never need to come out of the oven.
Full thirty times both Phoebus’ cart gone round Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbéd ground, And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen About the world have times twelve thirties been Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands, Unite commutual in most sacred bands.
This is a confusing timeline.
At first hit, this marriage would seem to be thirty years long, if we imagine that Phoebus’ cart journey is reflective of a year. But generally, Phoebus, the sun, is thought to go round the earth every day – which would put us at thirty days.
Then we have thirty dozen moons? Thirty moons would be around 30 months. But what is thirty dozen? 12 x 30? – ah, yes, 12 months times thirty – which re-iterates the 30 years idea.
So really, the king here is saying it’s been thirty years again and again, in possibly the most obscure language possible.
My question then becomes – is this a mirror of Gertrude’s first marriage? It’s possible. Generally, Hamlet’s accepted age is 33. But I have yet to see where exactly that reference comes in. Is it the gravedigger scene? I can’t recall.
But – I guess this player marriage is at least in the Ballpark of the Gertrude & Hamlet partnership in terms of years. 30 to 35 years in that marriage? It’s all in the same neighborhood.
As woman’s love.
When our hearts get broken, suddenly everything gets generalized. You feel a woman did you wrong then clearly all women are wrong-doers. If a man behaves like a dog, then clearly all men are dogs. We love so specifically and then hate so generally.
This seems to be inevitable – at least in heterosexual relationships.
Certainly a woman who’s had her heart broken by a woman might still indulge in a lamentations of “Women! Can’t live with ‘em. . .” but there’s always in reserve the self. If it’s included, it includes a measure of self-deprecation, self-mockery, self denial.
Woman’s love is just as long and just as short as man’s is. Depending on the people and the circumstance.
‘Tis brief, my lord.
Polonius also uses the word brief in this play.
This makes me think about the way that language travels – through families and other familiars. Is it a familial verbal motif to use brief? Or do many other characters use “briefs” and I’m just not thinking of them at the moment?
I read an article about favorite words and phrases – how they travel like a virus from person to person – how words we use habitually migrate to others who either identify them as ours and pick them up or identify them as ours and avoid them. A vocabulary moves according to one’s company. Ophelia would seem to be primarily in her father’s company and would therefore take on some of his word preferences. Maybe. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence.
Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
You know what would be a really good gift for a total Shakespeare geek?
A ring. Like a nice silver one, with this prologue engraved on it.
It would be one of those things that said Shakespeare geek would wear and when he or she would show it to a fellow Shakespeare geek, the 2nd geek would first find it amusing and then get to say this line and then get all jealous and want one of his very own.
It’s like having an inside joke on a piece of jewelry – one that could last for centuries. Because the joke could have been as funny and as inside as it was 400 years ago. And will be as amusing as it will be 400 years from now, I hope.
The question is, though, could the prologue actually fit on a ring?
For us and for our tragedy, Here stooping to your clemency, We beg your hearing patiently.
An interesting set up.
Ophelia and Hamlet spend a few lines anticipating the long speech the Prologue is about to give, how he will explain everything.
Then the Prologue comes out and just gives them a sentence, which doesn’t explain anything.
What is Shakespeare doing here?
And what is it for?
It’s almost a comedy structure – setting up an anticipation of one thing and then delivering another.
And it is generally in the comedies that we see this trope of the nobles making fun of the players. (Of course it is usually the comedies that capitalize on the play within the play structure, as well.)
Is it all a set up for the lines that are about to follow – the one’s about the brevity of woman’s love? That could have been done without the set up, really. Hamlet and Ophelia could comment on the shortness of the prologue without first talking about how they expect it to explain everything.
And the prologue itself is not so much a prologue as it is a nursery rhyme or a fairy chant or a greeting card. It’s a little cute sing-song rhyming thing – hardly befitting the tragedy they’re actually about to share with this audience.
And it begs the question – how much of this show has Hamlet had a hand in arranging? Does he know that the prologue is going to be a sentence long and so sets himself (and Ophelia) up to be surprised by it? Did he set up the prologue to be physical rather than spoken? Is he not wanting the prologue to reveal the goods to soon? (Fat chance. They showed it all, first thing. And Claudius did nothing.) Perhaps Hamlet even wrote his prologue. We don’t know which lines he had them insert into the play. They could be these. (Though, that would be a weird choice.)
It’s all a little bit mysterious. Why such a short silly prologue? Why have a prologue at all? What is it doing in this play? Aside from giving the Players time to change their costumes and set up and such. Maybe it’s as simple as that.
The Hamlet Project 