Be merry, certainly.
But while you’re at it could you also make art, make music, make theatre, make dance, make peace, make love, make order, make time, make discoveries, make way for others behind you.
O God, your only jig-maker!
The sign outside the shop reads:Singular Jig-maker
All jigs made here –
Fun, brisk, hopping sort of dances, songs, tricks, games, tools for sawing and cutting in two.
In the window – another sign – a testimonial that reads:
When I need a jig, God is my jig-maker. No one beats God in the jig-making department. Come in and get a jig today.
Ay, my lord.
The repetition of the I/Ay sound here is interesting to me. The audience, not seeing this page, might hear these two sounds identically, despite their divergent spellings and meanings.
It could suddenly make Ophelia a little playful – if she’s saying I instead of Ay. Who, I? I, my lord.
Could Ophelia be merry? It would give her a nice bit of shading. I suppose, too. Hamlet could hear her “Ay” this way if he wanted to. It might be a fun catalyst into the jig-maker line that’s around the bend.
Who, I?
I, too, have been accused of merriness. Not in those words exactly, as merry has been shoe-horned into such a small Xmas box of language that no one uses it but in relationship to the holidays and also to go-rounds. Otherwise – we tend to go with happy. I’ve heard many varieties of “You’re happy. You look happy. What a happy person.” Which is funny. Because I don’t usually feel that way. I may LOOK happy, indeed.
What I am, often, is friendly. And I hate to be called on that, too. Like when the folks with clipboards and causes call out to me on the street – usually it’s “Do you have a minute for gay rights or animals or children or the environment?” but at least once, someone called out, “You look friendly – come talk to me.”
I hated that. I wrote a whole thing about it – maybe even in this context, I can’t remember. But somehow it shook me. If there’s anyone I didn’t want to appear friendly to, it’s the folks on the street with clipboards. I want to look busy and unapproachable in that scenario. But. . .the friendliness snuck out, I thought. I felt called out – revealed. And I suddenly understood how that friendly person has so often gotten me into trouble. This was exactly what I was hoping to avoid with my friendly self – Trouble. And yet it got me there with some regularity.
I’m less friendly now, less merry, too. But the friendliness and merriness that remains is of a more honest sort. The sort I actually feel, instead of a mask to deter assailants.
And then today, the day I typed this, seven months later. One of those clipboard people called out, “You look friendly.” TODAY. AGAIN. I hate it.
You are merry, my lord.
I’m having a hard time focusing on this line because in this café where I’m writing, several groups of acting/writing groups have descended and are all talking merrily. It’s like, they’re all in rehearsal AND about to perform so they’re amped up to eleven. Actors vibrate at a fairly merry level or at least a loud level on any day – but on a day that they’re doing a first rehearsal AND a performance? That’s a group of performers turned up to eleven.
I’m starting to understand why so many theatre folk do these 24 hour play festivals – or 48 hour or whatever this is. It’s like a shot of cocaine. The high of creation coupled with the high of performance all in one go? It’s probably more like crack.
When it comes to pure adrenaline, this is the shit.
But – somehow – I’m not drawn to these sorts of events. I care too much about crafting a thing and making something with care and thought and what not. The adrenaline rush just isn’t enough for me. I understand it – if I were doing it, I’d be merry, too.
But I’d be exhausted afterwards, like I took some serious drugs. And I might have as many regrets.
Nothing.
Cue the Nothing Montage.
Cordelia upon Cordelia saying “Nothing” and “Nothing, my lord.”
Followed by Lear upon Lear with “Nothing will come of Nothing” and all the other Lear characters who reference this nothing again and again.
Cue also Julie Andrews singing “Nothing comes from Nothing. Nothing ever could.”
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
There must be, too, some nihilism in the Nothing montage.
Vast landscapes of nothing.
Zeroes.
Mushroom clouds.
It’s remarkable how quickly nothing turns to SOMETHING.
There is almost nothing that is well and truly nothing.
What is, my lord?
At a dinner, I mentioned that I work as a Shakespeare Consultant. A man, much older than I, got excited at this mention because he teaches Shakespeare. It was clear, very quickly, from his questions and responses that he expected me to not be up to much. Once he heard my actual credentials, he became less interested in hearing about my experience and more interested in proclaiming his own credentials.
He picked up the thread only to let it go, it seemed to me, because he preferred to explain things and he understood that he might be out of his depth explaining things to me. Which was a good move. And he left the women at the table to pick up the thread he’d pulled on and investigate it further. And in a funny turn of events, I found myself explaining a few things to my dinner companions, despite my general antipathy toward explaining and teaching in a social setting.
This was mostly due to some other explaining that was being attempted by one of the other guests. And the explanations were so ridiculous that I just had to pull out a few knowledge cards just to refute them.
And that’s when I realize – oh, right. I know a lot of things. And while I don’t often have occasion to pull those things out, I actually have a pretty full deck of facts and experience.
Maybe no one expected a tutorial on the printing of quartos, using sugar packets as a visual aid, at dinner but that’s what they got. What that has to do with “what is,” I’m not entirely sure. But what is, my lord, is what is, what went through my mind as I thought about what is.
That’s a fair thought – to lie between maid’s legs.
It’s a fair thought to imagine a Hamlet lying between one’s maiden legs, too but it isn’t ladylike to say so. The fiction that women don’t enjoy a little Hamlet in dark places is one of the most insidious fictions of the patriarchy. For women who might really enjoy the Prince of Denmark lying in her lap – and I do mean Country Matters here – it’s insidious to pretend that we wouldn’t, to play coy, to just want to be overcome, our will surrendered to the conquering hero.
That’s the root of rape culture. This belief that only men want sex and women simply tolerate it – or are just driven wild once our wills have been subverted, then we let loose all our secret desires. For all the women who have no desire for Hamlet to put his head in her lap and would maybe prefer for Gertrude to put her head in her lap or to just put her own hand in her lap, we, the women who’d quite like a bit of Hamlet, or his ilk, might want to find a way to be clear about our own desires, to be honest about them, to shift the culture from No somehow meaning Yes to so many men, to a world where we can say yes enthusiastically.
It might be the kind of world in which Ophelia could say to Hamlet, “You know, I had a dream just last night where you did just that” instead of having to pretend she hadn’t heard or hadn’t understood.
To me – it is a fair thought. To Ophelia – it might or might not be. Hamlet’s been such a dick in this scene and in the previous, it might not be such a fair thought. For others – it is decidedly not a fair thought. And for all of us – it is not a fair thought if it were not with our consent.
The fairness of the thought is entirely conditional.
I think nothing, my lord.
Many a woman I know has tried this strategy – this, “I don’t know anything. I certainly am not thinking, no, no, no. Nothing to see here. What? Me, think? No way.”
When you’ve been boxed into a corner by language – when some dude has suddenly become sexually inappropriate.
When he starts making innuendos and pretending it was you who’s thinking dirty so many will try to remain flat and neutral – to play all innocence, to claim that not only did we not get the dirty joke but we’re not thinking at all.
Do you think I meant country matters?
Of course she didn’t think you meant country matters, you dick!
And she especially didn’t think you meant CUNT-ry matters as some Hamlets like to play it. You’re in public, you jerk. Even if you’ve been enjoying all sorts of country matters with this woman in the privacy of your own bedrooms, you don’t talk about them in front of your parents at a damn play!
This is all assuming that this reference to country matters is a sexual metaphor. It just occurred to me that it could be country as in Denmark rather than country as opposed to city. Country matters would then be matters of state – which, as a Prince, he could certainly be interested in.
However – in context – this little possibility is pretty slim – as what could affairs of state have to do with whether or not Hamlet gets to lie in Ophelia’s lap.
In any case, I’m having trouble seeing Hamlet’s playing with Ophelia here as the harmless charm offensive it’s usually played as – at the moment – to me – it’s mostly just offensive.
The Hamlet Project 