This is a funny moment for Greece and Greek geography/mythology to show up. Most other references to such things were part of the Players repertoire – and that was largely from the point of view of the Trojans. We see the blood covered Greek laying waste to the woeful royal family in the player’s speech. But that’s the only other Greek reference I can think of offhand.
This is a Christian Denmark – we are living with Christian symbols and rules here – but Laertes calls to mind a tall mountain in Greece – a mountain built on top of another mountain to get closer to the gods on Olympus.
Maybe Laertes is longing for another paradigm, a way to get closer to Heaven together with his sister.
Leaps into the grave.
When I teach Shakespeare, I rarely acknowledge or engage with stage directions. They are most likely to be editor’s additions and don’t tend to help us engage with Shakespeare’s language much. That’s also the reason I mostly leave them out of this project.
But…in this case…this is such a juicy stage direction, it’s making me think about ways to utilize stage directions in general in my teaching.
There are some that are just so evocative – that say so much in a simple sentence. If you knew nothing about Hamlet but the fact that a character leaps into the grave, you actually know a great deal about the play.
If you knew nothing about A Winter’s Tale but that a character Exits pursued by a bear, you know something very intriguing about the play. I think I may be inventing an exercise for my upcoming workshops as I write this.
Hold off the earth awhile, Till I have caught her once more in mine arms.
This just goes to show that Laertes doesn’t have the support network necessary to help him handle his grief. It also suggests that the rituals prior to this burial were not sufficient to Laertes’ needs. He ought to have had an opportunity to hug Ophelia before they put her in the ground – or at least to have spent some time with her body. But it feels clear he has not had such a time – nor has he had anyone to grieve with. He has followers. He has friends, one supposes – but he probably doesn’t have a girlfriend. His father is dead and he didn’t handle that so well either. If anyone ever needed a grief counselor, it’s that guy.
O, treble woe Fall ten times treble on that cursed head, Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense Deprived thee of!
If I could go back in time and ask Shakespeare to write another play, I’d have a few requests – but one of them might be the play of Hamlet but from Laertes’ perspective. I mean – here he is asking for three times the woe to fall thirty times on Hamlet’s head and his perception of Hamlet’s deed is not actually wrong.
Hamlet did do something terrible that made Ophelia go crazy. And he didn’t even seem sorry.
We’re on Hamlet’s side, of course, because we have all of his information and we see things from his point of view and he’s articulate and sensitive and smart. But Laertes has quite a journey too – he’s just on the edges of this story. And it ends with as much tragedy as Hamlet’s story. The Tragedy of Laertes.
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d sweet maid, And not have strew’d thy grave.
Is this bride-bed be-decking an English tradition? Or a Danish one?
I don’t feel like I’ve seen a lot of this in European films – at least among the more Germanic, Scandinavian, English folks.
It’s hard to imagine a queen – like – a very English queen, strewing flowers on her daughter-in-law’s bed.
Like, if the current Queen Elizabeth had gone into her son’s bedroom to decorate it for Lady Diana. It’s just…unlikely.
But in cultures with a more expressive attitude toward sex, I don’t find it quite as hard to imagine. I can imagine a Queen that Isabelle Allende dreamed up doing some bridal bed flower strewing.
Earlier periods were sometimes freer about such things in some ways – and Gertrude and Hamlet are both fairly frank about sex in unexpected moments. Like this one.
I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife.
I have questions about this. Lots and lots of questions. Because Polonius makes it pretty clear that Ophelia is a prince out of Ophelia’s stars – that he had her return his letters because of this difference in their stations – and when Polonius says all this to Gertrude and Claudius, she does not say, “Now, Polonius, if they’re happy – why can’t we let them do their thing?”
She’s just, like, “Yeah, I don’t think that’s it.”
But WAS she supportive of this relationship at the time?
OR does she retroactively hope this? Like, now that Ophelia’s dead she can hope for it safely – without any danger of them actually getting married. Surely she would have preferred a princess from Austria or something. But maybe she did really hope this.
I’m not sure though.
Farewell!
This is one of those moments wherein the literal meaning of the word does not jive with the circumstances. In order for someone to fare well, to do well, to eat well, to go along just fine, that person would have to be alive. And Ophelia is dead. Now – her spirit, I suppose, in their world view might well continue and one might hope for her to fare well at St. Peter’s Gate or something but she won’t ever eat well again. It is one of the principle bummers of dying.
Sweets to the sweet.
This is a line my grandmother said when she gave me something sweet to eat – like candy or dessert. The first time I heard this line in context, I was pretty surprised that it wasn’t about chocolate for a nice person but flowers for a nice dead person.
I don’t think I was disturbed so much as impressed at how language travels from plays to people, permeating their lives.
What, the fair Ophelia!
I wonder who Hamlet thinks is going in that grave before he finally hears Laertes call her “my sister.” Like, sure, at first, it might be logical that it’s Polonius that has brought Laertes to the cemetery – but very quickly, there are many references to “her” and “she” and such – somehow Hamlet must be doing quite a lot of mental gymnastics to be surprised when Laertes says “my sister.”
I mean – if it were a line like, “Not, the fair Ophelia!” then it would be a truth that had perhaps been dawning on him slowly but he is somehow caught completely by surprise.
And it’s not as if he is uncurious about who the dead person is. He’s first asked the gravedigger who is to be buried there. Then he puzzles out that the dead person must be of some estate due to the accouterments and the company. But it takes Laertes saying “my sister” before he gets it. Does he think Laertes has an aunt or something?
I tell thee, churlish priest, A ministering angel shall my sister be, When thou liest howling.
Fuck yeah, Laertes! You tell him!
This is probably why Shakespeare made the priest such a dick so that we’d be on Laertes’ side to read the priest the riot act. And getting Laertes riled up by this churlish priest is useful because it means when Hamlet reveals himself in a minute, in a pretty churlish/dickish way himself, Laertes will be amped up and already furious.
Shakespeare doesn’t need the priest to be a dick for Laertes to mention his sister – he could just as easily say something like “Lay my sister in the earth” but he does need to get Laertes good and furious so he and Hamlet can have a dramatic grapple in a grave.
The Hamlet Project 