Is that what that was?
A towering passion, was it?
A passion is one thing.
But a towering one is another. I picture it like an angry animal, like a bull, maybe. And at first there’s just one angry bull but they start to multiply. They are piled one on top of another until they form a tower and as the tower grows, their fury increases as well. And sooner or later, the tower is about to fall and all the furious bulls will tumble down and let their rage run wild.
I’ll court his favors.
I wonder what Hamlet’s plan for this is. How will he win Laertes over? Does he imagine taking him for a drink or going to watch a match of some kind?
How did Hamlet imagine this before he’s enrolled in the rapier and dagger game with him in a moment?
For, by the image of my cause, I see the portraiture of his.
It is unfortunate that so many of us can only see through the images of our own causes. It’s like we’re all wearing lenses that filter out anything that is not our experience. The self-oriented glasses reframe everything to ourselves.
It is a tremendous obstacle when trying to teach empathy. Why care about someone who is different from you, who has different life experience?
Hamlet shouldn’t have to have an epiphany that Laertes’ experience is like his. It would be great if he could recognize Laertes’ grief for Ophelia separate from his own. But in the moment, he can’t. So he has to backtrack to understand how Laertes’ situation is so like his.
But I am very sorry, good Horatio, That to Laertes I forgot myself.
You sure did, Hamlet.
You sure did.
You jumped in his sister’s grave and challenged him to a grief-off.
That was some serious self forgetting.
And a man’s life’s no more than to say ‘one.’
This is a good line to give to students, actually – one of those that can be introduced as “there is almost no agreement on what the heck Hamlet is talking about here. It may be very simple. Or it may be very complex. What do you think Hamlet means here?”
And then just let them bat it around for a while. There are no words that are particularly challenging – it feels simple. Though it isn’t. I feel I’d enjoy watching students wrestle with its possibilities. I know there would be students who would be as certain as they could be that they knew the answers. There are always such students.
But none of us can be certain.
We don’t know what this “one” is referring to is.
The number? A self? A life? A moment? An interim?
The interim is mine.
There’s a potency in this sentiment. Hamlet feeling his power, his moment. He has taken possession of time itself for this interim period. I wonder what he imagines he will do with this potent moment. In the end, he acquiesces to the king’s request and whatever plan he has is lost in the events that follow. But in this moment, he must have something in mind, something that makes him feel emboldened and ready to take on the world.
It will be short.
When I was on tour – the year-long one – it started to feel like a tour of duty at a certain point. As the end of our contract drew nearer, one of the actors began saying, “I’m getting short.” It’s apparently a military term for nearing the end of an engagement. I don’t know how he knew that. He’d never been in the military and I think his dad was in the CIA – which is not the same. But maybe they use the same terminology? I should ask my friend who used to say that. I think we all began to say it at a certain point, as the end drew closer and we drove one another more and more crazy.
But then, of course, I mourned the loss when it was all over.
It must be shortly known to him from England What is the issue of the business there.
I can’t tell if Horatio speaks in a stilted manner on purpose or if I’m reading more stilted-ness in his language because the first Horatio I worked with had a bit of brain damage and had to do a little extra work to sound like an authentic person. I thought maybe I was projecting that stiltedness from that first performer but this line is stilted.
It actually has the flavor of a non-native English speaker – which is, of course, a theory I’ve floated before. Horatio doesn’t have a Scandinavian name, he doesn’t know the customs of Denmark and often has to ask about obvious things. The fact that he rarely has a line that isn’t a follow up of the previous line or a simple question also suggests someone communicating in a language that is not his first.
Certainly, when I learned Italian, some of the first successful conversations I had featured lots of things that allowed the other person to keep talking and thereby took the burden of language off of me.
This slightly more complex thought may be revealing more of Horatio’s growing skills in English/Danish.
And is’t not to be damn’d, To let this canker of our nature come In further evil?
Slippery slope, this.
I mean. Morally, yes.
One fully understands why killing Hitler before he can kill anyone is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. It does feel moral to kill a killer like him before he can kill.
But to be damned for it?
Let’s say you had a chance to kill Hitler and you didn’t do it. You wanted to. You felt it was the right thing to do but your stomach turned so at the thought of murder, that you failed to turn the knife. Would this God punish you for such a failure?
I mean – it seems to me that the law of the religion is pretty clear. It’s “Thou shalt not kill.” Period.
Not – ‘Thou shalt not kill unless the person you’re killing is a villainous killer, in which case you are obligated to kill. So don’t kill unless you really have to and if you really have to and you don’t, then you’re looking at an eternity in the damnation machine. Clear?”
He that hath kill’d my king and whored my mother, Popp’d in between the election and my hopes, Thrown out his angle for my proper life, And with such cozenage – is’t not perfect conscience, To quit him with this arm?
It is rather a long list of grievances.
Claudius has really done some A+ work as a villain.
The phrase I’m most interested in here is the one about popping in between the election and Hamlet’s hopes.
First, because this is one of the most explicit references to the question of succession that hangs over the play but is rarely addressed directly.
Second, the “election” sounds like a democratic process but it is certainly not in this case. In fact, it illustrates how we got such a word as election and how its roots are in powerful men choosing a single powerful man to be their figurehead – and it is that way still in so many ways.
Third, popping is such a light word for what the results are. It is an interesting choice for the action. Claudius just pops in where Hamlet should have been and the whole succession committee was like, oh, it’s you? Oh, okay – fine. Next order of business!
The Hamlet Project 