The Hamlet Project

So this is the plan now? Try and get Gertrude to round him into confessing his dark love feelings or “go to England” (AKA – execution) OR confinement. Where? The Danish dungeons? Claudius’ own private prison? Is there a Tower of Copenhagen like the Tower of London? And is confining someone who’s not really dangerous, just a little socially inappropriate really a good idea? I mean, sure, there are many inappropriate people I’d really rather not see around – but is it okay to confine them, just because they make me uncomfortable? I’m afraid not.

I’m in a café now where a very tiny young Asian woman wearing a histrionic Jesus smock hopped up on a stool and started singing and davening. (Is it still called davening when not done by Jews?) She sat there, rocking back and forth, singing, crying for about ten minutes, then hopped off her stool and walked away. This isn’t socially acceptable. It makes me uncomfortable. I was very glad to see her go. But should she be confined because she makes me uncomfortable? Nope.

And I guess that’s the Modern age, really – that’s one of the things we worked out over the years – a clearer sense of what we put up with and what we make space for. We’ve mostly figured out how to tolerate discomfort and each other without being total dicks.

How is being “round” with Hamlet meant to get him to “show his grief?” Unless I’m misunderstanding being round, I’ve never known stern anger to be particularly effective at inspiring heart to heart sharing. If you want someone to show you his grief, giving him a stern talking to is unlikely to crack those grief gates. If you want someone to share their feeling with you, it rarely serves to put them on the defensive.

I’ve seen a lot of grief in my time. A lot of it was grief that had not been previously been shown to anyone else. In most instances, the grief was revealed in quiet, in respectful sharing, in empathy, in simply attending to, in listening.

I guess, though, this Royal family here isn’t the BEST at listening. Good at talking – all of them. Listening? Not so much.

I never noticed before, but this is a direct counter-proposal to Claudius. Claudius has said, “England. He’s going to England, that’s it.”
Polonius very diplomatically, doesn’t agree.

What I’d like to understand is why.
Why doesn’t Polonius just agree with The King?
That would be the soundest political strategy, you’d think.
Could it be that Polonius somehow understands what “sending him to England” means euphemistically? Like, is it an accepted code between them – a way to say “send him to sleep with the fishes”
If so, this idea about the queen is a last ditch effort to save Hamlet’s life.
It does seem somewhat more likely that this is just a last ditch effort to prove his own hypothesis that Hamlet is mad because of Ophelia. And it is sort of sweet that Polonius thinks Hamlet will tell his mommy what he wouldn’t say to his girlfriend.

They told us it would be hard.
They told us to choose a back-up career.
They told us the odds weren’t good.
They told us we’d need more than your average amount of luck.
They told us that almost no one succeeds at this sort of thing.
They told us. They warned us.
We cannot say we didn’t know.

We heard it all.
We just didn’t listen.

I suddenly thought, what if Ophelia had been charged with writing down all that Hamlet said. Like, what if, after she indulges in some “woe is me,” she has to sit down and try and transcribe the whole scene for her father.

What if, the whole time Claudius and Polonius are talking, she’s busily writing and remembering what Hamlet said. Maybe editing out a few choice phrases she wouldn’t want her father to see. And then JUST as she’s offering up this piece of text to her father, he rejects it with this.

Has she been sitting there crying on her own all this while? Did those two guys really just emerge after her big sad speech and talk to each other for so long before remembering that this woman is there and in a bit of a state? Or do they somehow not see her before this moment? It seems pretty callous to just leave her there in her misery after she’d been set up to receive it. This line feels like: Oh, you’re still here?

That’s right, man, hold tight to your original hypothesis.
I suppose this is a saving face (so he doesn’t have to go live on a farm as he swore to do if he were wrong.) It’s like, “Yeah, he may not be in love with her now – now he may seem to hate her – but I STILL think it all started with that. So even if it may have shifted, I can still be right.”

There are many politicians like this. Many many. Never acknowledging their mistakes, their wrongs, the change in the landscape.

I was thinking how great it would be if I knew which of the things I made would do well and which wouldn’t. When I start, I have to think whatever I’m starting will be the thing that does well. Then it occurred to me, no one knows what will do well. Ever.

It’s like when I was trying to figure out what makes my blog posts go viral. I was analyzing the ones that hit, trying to work out the common denominators, trying to figure out what I should do to create another viral post. Then I realized that if I knew that I’d be a gazillionaire because no one knows what’s going to go viral.

Marketing companies are spending gazillions of dollars trying to understand the properties of viral videos, posts, ads, what have you –

There are ideas – I read the negative superlatives do vastly better than positive ones. World’s Worst Cheese Grater will draw much more attention than the World’s Best Cheese Grater. Lists also tend to get a lot of clicks – combine that with WORST and you’ve got a hit.
The Top Ten Worst Whatevers will do great.
And someone must have gotten some audience with that “You won’t believe what happens next” thing – because there are a million posts with that phrase. It’s something like what my Facebook friend posted on her wall: “Oh, silly internet. I almost always believe what happens next.” And I think many people are now hip to this plot – so it’s efficacy must be changing.

So I’m making peace with the fact that I have no IDEA what will do well. And I must continue with my self-delusion that each next thing will be the thing that does well.