Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

erainbowdLeave a comment

I’ve never been a particularly beautiful woman – nor have I cared to take that identity on. I don’t know what it’s like to identify as beautiful or what it’s like to manage all that comes with a lot of physical attractiveness. It seems to come with a bit of baggage (as does everything, of course.) But certainly when someone responds only to your physical beauty, it’s hard to know if they’re seeing anything more than an image.

Many people see beauty as something that they need to possess. When you’re beautiful, people will work to own you in some way. This line here makes me feel like Ophelia’s linking her beauty with truth and in a sense, defending her beauty. She’s acknowledging that she possesses it and defending its virtue.
I like to look at beautiful people as much as the next person but I wouldn’t say beauty comes with any particular virtues. It does come with privileges and it does come with risks.
I guess it would be good to have some honesty on hand for recognizing those moments.

That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

erainbowdLeave a comment

I don’t think I ever fully understood this line. It always sort of washed over me with a sense of Hamlet pulling a GOTCHA on Ophelia – a tricky little punchline to his set up with his previous two questions. Looking closely at it now, I’m seeing that this honest question is not so much about her telling the truth but about her sexuality. That is, honesty as chastity, as the sexual police blocking the doors. Your honesty, that is, your purity, your virtue, your ability to put the brakes on desire – shouldn’t give anyone access to your beauty.

In other words, you’re a slut because you let me talk to you.

Which is really a shitty thing to say, Hamlet.

What his motivation might be for saying this shitty thing is not clear to me. If it’s to make Ophelia herself feel bad, that’s one thing. It’s a kind of lashing out at the one you love when they’ve betrayed you.

If it’s to have some sort of effect on her father – well, perhaps it’s designed to have Polonius leap to his daughter’s defense. Or to have Ophelia leap to her own defense, betray her father’s presence somehow or reveal something about what has passed between these lovers here?

In any case, this line of misogyny is pretty familiar where a girl can’t win for losing.

What means your lordship?

erainbowdLeave a comment

It would be interesting to see an Ophelia flummoxed by “Are you fair?” like the way it might be confusing for anyone to be asked, “Are you beautiful?” Especially someone who was looking right at you.
If you say “yes” you’re vain. If you say “no,” you’re lacking confidence. It’s a trap question. It’s unanswerable. The only appropriate answer to this is a question that questions the premise of the question.

Are you fair?

erainbowdLeave a comment

There was a story on the radio this morning about skin lightening creams. There was a fascinating discussion about the value put on fairness – that the fairer one was, the whiter one was (or is?!) the more beautiful one is considered. There’s tremendous scholarship and history behind it all. My favorite moment was when a woman called in, clearly an expert on the subject, and made me wonder why they hadn’t called her to be the guest on this show in the first place. She reminded me that when one isn’t invited to the party, sometimes you just have to show up anyway.

The other great moment in this discussion was a mother who called in to tell a story about her daughter. They saw “fairness cream” somewhere and her daughter asked “Is that what you use if you want to be a judge?”
Obviously, that sort of fairness is so much more important than the other sort.

My lord?

erainbowdLeave a comment

I hope this isn’t Ophelia’s pet name for Hamlet. When they’re out to the movies, or whatever, I hope she’s not like, “Put your arm around me, my lord.” I hope she’s not like, “Oh, kiss me again, my lord.”
“My lord, my lord, my lord.”

I have to wonder what she actually calls him when they’re alone. Now, of course, it’s possible in this society, that they’ve never been alone – but many signs would point to the opposite being true. Let’s assume they’ve had some private conversations and let’s assume they’ve had some physical intimacy. And if all of those things are true, then she MUST have been calling him SOMETHING besides “my lord,” and if she’s been calling him other things and then calls him my lord in every sentence suddenly, well, it must send up kind of red flag for Hamlet, especially if he spent some time at the top of their relationship getting her to call him Hamlet or something.

Are you honest?

erainbowdLeave a comment

More than I used to be.
And back then, I would have told you that I didn’t lie, which I didn’t know to be the lie that it was.
I didn’t lie about the facts. My lies were not the kind that get you called a liar. I didn’t deceive anyone or misrepresent myself willfully.
But when you asked me how I was, I usually said I was fine, accompanied by a big believable smile. If you asked me if I wanted to go to the party, I’d say sure and convince both you and myself that it was true.
The thing that was tricky about my lies is that mostly believed them to be true. It was aspirational truth. If I told someone I was doing great it was because I was doing my level best to believe it to be so.

I am a lot more honest now than I’ve ever been – but I find that my honesty is a lot less socially acceptable, especially in the theatre business. Most everyone would rather hear the lie than the truth. The truth being complicated and sometimes painful.

Am I honest? I waiver between trying to be and trying not to be. That is the dance, finding the right moments or honest.

Ha, ha!

erainbowdLeave a comment

On the episode of WTF I just listened to, Lewis Black discusses how he went from being a theatre maker to a comedian. He’d been a dedicated theatre maker – playwright, director, producer for 20 years and when he turned 40, he made a switch. He became a stand-up comedian.

And it was a successful switch for him. He’s found success in a new form. And he made the switch at the age that I am now. I’ve also spent 20 years in the theatre with only minor breakthroughs.

From the place he’s sitting now, this former theatre maker only wonders how he managed to stay in it so long. And he has a lot of zingers on the business of theatre making. (My favorite was one about the actual business of theatre being to say “no.”) He said he’d always had a sideways interest in comedy though when he turned to it, it was unexpected. He came to it as a writer looking for a stage and he found he could say what he wanted better in comedy than he’d ever could in theatre.

I listen to a LOT of comedy podcasts. I am mildly obsessed with comedic structures and ideas. Is it my turn to switch over at 40, too? I only have a few months of 40 left. I’ll have to do it soon.

There, my lord.

erainbowdLeave a comment

If someone compelled me to break up with someone I loved and insisted I return his letters, I think those letters would feel hot in my hand. I’d know I had to give them away – something has convinced me that it must be done – but if I’d experienced those letters with all the love and sweetness, if I’d cherished them, if I’d slept with them under my pillow, smelled them, run my fingers over them, wrapped them up in ribbon to be assured none would be lost, I’m not sure I could surrender them without a little internal fight.
My hand might be offering them, but I might not loose my fingers quite enough to let them go or I might offer them in such a way that brought them closer to me, rather than far away. Or I might turn away as I offered them, hoping not to witness their loss. I might, in fact, not offer them up honestly. I couldn’t. Not if I loved them.

For to the noble mind Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

erainbowdLeave a comment

What the heck does a noble mind have to do with anything? (Aside from rhyming with unkind and giving this line the feel of an ending.) Rich gifts go sour on any kind of mind if the giver turns into a jerk. If you gave me a car and then turned into an asshole, I’d want to sell that car, stat, no matter whether my mind was noble or not.

But Ophelia uses this “noble mind” phrase at least twice in this scene. This noble mind appears to be hers. The next noble mind is his. Noble minds are clearly important to our girl, Ophelia. And I wonder if this is her value or her father’s. It’s not a phrase I can think of him using, so it may well be her own. The idea of that pleases me – since Ophelia seems to have so little that is truly hers. Even a verbal tic would be a little something.

Their perfume lost, Take these again.

erainbowdLeave a comment

This sort of thing just doesn’t work with texts and emails. While we exchange probably more with the written word than ever before, we have lost the material pleasures and pain of written communication. In order to return someone’s “letters” today, you’d have to first print out all the stuff and you’d have to delete them from your email program and your server, maybe and my devices that collect emails, like your phone or your tablet.

A love letter used to smell good. It felt good. You could hold it in your hand and know that the paper you held had been held by your beloved. The ink you run your finger over came from a pen between the beloved’s fingers. Did he scent this paper or is this just how his rooms smell or him? You could bind letters up with ribbon and treasure them as a series, watch the handwriting shift and charge from letter to letter, notice the use of a different pen, different doodles in the margins.
A packet of letters could live, treasured, in an underwear drawer or a treasure box. A secret pocket, perhaps or under a pillow. Paper. Ink. Atmosphere.