The Hamlet Project

I could probably cobble together a whole personal manifesto from lines in Hamlet. But use all gently. The readiness is all.

I mean, Hamlet’s talking about readiness for death here – which is not what I mean when I think about this line, when I use it in a theatrical sense or a Feldenkrais sense. When I think of readiness as a value, it’s about potential, about the ability to move in whatever direction the art demands or that the body wants. A piece of theatre with a coiled up spring ready to be released is my favorite.

 I will watch a state of readiness for a good long while. It is much more interesting to me than something complete. The theatre that is a well oiled machine, a well-rehearsed execution, a flawless demonstration – none of that satisfies me. Readiness is what I want to see and then I want to see it released.

And in Hamlet’s case, the release is death. But it’s the readiness that is the play.

In other words, we all gotta go sometime. And a lot of times, these lines sort of elide into only that sentiment – but there’s a development here that’s possible.

There can be optimism sprinkled in. As in: Listen, at least if I die now, I don’t have to worry about it coming later. If it’s not happening in the future, it’ll be now. And if it’s not now, it is definitely coming for me later. There’s something to work through – and I appreciate the sort of sestina quality of this line – circling around itself to say something both different and the same.

Not having had any significant religious training, biblical references tend to sail right by me. This line, for example, was, to me, about Hamlet identifying with a small insignificant creature, that when it goes, is particularly special. But no…. really, this is a line about God’s will being God’s will – that even something as small as which sparrow falls out of a man’s hand is guided by God’s hand. And also – the bible goes on about these sparrows that the “you” is more valuable than a whole bunch of sparrows. Which is kind of weird, I think. And explains why Christians tend to have this whole superiority over nature thing.
In any case – this line is such a direct reference to the bible, there is no question. All these years I was thinking that Shakespeare is just using images and poetic language in the middle of this bit – this sudden out-of-the-blue image – but no, it’s more like a supporting biblical reference to a case he’s making.

This is pretty much the same as Romeo’s line about defying you stars. It is a rejection of fate, of a pre-written future. And augury, apparently, comes from divination from the flight of birds. So – once the future might have been determined by which way a flock might have taken to the sky.

I defy you stars.

I defy you birds.

I defy you winds.

And here’s a great example for why you might want to actually listen to women. Like – if this intuition you’re having, Hamlet, would trouble a woman – you might want to, um, trust it. A woman’s trouble might have kept you alive, you knucklehead. Misogyny kills men, too. Even in fiction. If men in these plays didn’t dismiss their own instincts, their own emotional truths, their own sense of the room, as woman stuff – if they didn’t dismiss their tears as woman-ish and such, they might survive all these tragedies.

Patriarchy makes the tragedy almost every single time.

I was loosely a part of a company called “Foolery” years ago. It was a good name for a company of clowns.

It occurs to me now that aside from it being a crowd of clowns, a group of fools doing silly stuff – it might have been a reference to this line.

The founder, after all, had recently played Hamlet and said this line hundreds of times.

Mostly, I don’t go for the Melancholy Dane business. Hamlet doesn’t seem to suffer from depression or malaise or melancholy. Sure, he can get a little bit macabre and he does seem to be going through an existential crisis but I don’t think he’s particularly depressive. I don’t think of depression at all in the play.

Except for a line like this.

The depressive, to whom I am closest, says things like this all the time. After a big emotional blow, they will say “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.”

Partly it’s that they don’t want to talk about it but it’s also a way to brush away the pain.

Much is made of Hamlet having a sense of foreboding that foreshadows his death and that’s all right here in this scene. He’s got a bad feeling; he waves it off. Horatio suggests he honor it; he waves it off with some of the most poignant lines in the play.

It’s so rare that someone says “it doesn’t matter” when it doesn’t actually matter. It almost always matters a great deal.