Laertes gets real colorful when he’s freaked out. I mean – brains…heat…it’s evocative!
I understand the impulse – like – the pain is extreme and your head is aching. I had a migraine recently and I was ready for someone to put a bullet my head, it was so agonizing. Some heat drying up a brain might do the trick just as well – especially in a time before bullets.
What noise is that?
This is a very good question. What noise IS Laertes responding to? What is happening outside? Is Ophelia making crazy noises? Is someone fighting her? Is there someone who is preventing her from coming in loudly?
The Danes are clearly advocating for her entrance but she’s not in yet. Is she singing already? Are others trying to shush her? These are the questions that a lot of productions fail to ask and then end up bloodless and dry.
This is a good question. A good production will have a good answer.
How now!
I’m imagining a performance piece in which we see each character who says “How now” and the circumstances that inspire the How now. It’s only dialogue would be “how now.” The other lines would have to be observed somehow, with gibberish maybe or a speech reverser.
Actually this might work better as a film project. To edit together all the different characters in multiple settings with extremely different costumes and contexts and it’s just one How Now after another.
Let her come in.
It is curious that the Danes are so keen to let a crazy woman in to the chamber with their selected monarch and the man they hope he will depose.
A strategic mind would, of course, send her in, in hopes that it would aggravate the case. A strategic mind would recognize the crazy woman as Ophelia and expect that the crazy Ophelia would further enrage Laertes. A strategic mind would absolutely think that this would be end of Claudius.
But these are “The Danes.”
They are a crowd.
They’re a crowd that just broke some doors down.
Can they think strategically?
Someone out there must be thinking. This makes me wonder who out there COULD be thinking and inciting a crowd to send Ophelia in.
Who is left to be the Machiavelli outside the door? And who would be invested in seeing Laertes take Claudius out? Is it Horatio? Is he out there causing trouble?
That I am guiltless of your father’s death, And am most sensible in grief for it, It shall as level to your judgment pierce As day does to your eye.
While I COULD buy that Claudius is upset about Polonius’ death, he doesn’t actually seem too bereaved. His principle response when he heard the news was to think of himself and how it might have been him. This is the first mention of any actual grief for the man – for this chief advisor. So while he MIGHT have felt some grief for Polonius’ death, this is the first we’re hearing about it – so this grief seems more like a performance of grief than any actual feelings.
Why, now you speak Like a good child and a true gentleman.
It’s interesting that this line works on Laertes. There is a tiny hint of patronizing in it – calling Laertes a child really shouldn’t work. But I suppose in reminding Laertes of his status as the child of Polonius, the aspect of calling him a child gets subverted and Laertes has to accept the compliment of being a good child or deny being a gentleman. And this is how Claudius wins him over.
To his good friends this wide I’ll ope my arms, And like the kind life-rendering pelican, Repast them with my blood.
Today feeding people blood inevitably calls to mind vampires. But when Shakespeare was writing, vampires weren’t really invented yet. They weren’t yet a THING. A bird that feeds with its blood is just a noble bird, not a weird creature sacrificing itself to vampires.
I’m not sure one could talk about blood feeding in this day and age without conjuring a vampire image, so vivid is the vampire in the cultural imagination. Pelicans, not so much.
Will you know them then?
After putting on a show…
after weeks of rehearsal…
after eating many meals…
after a few drinks…
after the strike and the party…
None but his enemies.
As far as I know, my father doesn’t have any enemies – except maybe injustice and war. And even they don’t have any particular argument with my father – he’s just a lover of peace, he might not call them his enemies. I don’t know what it’s like to have a father with enemies. I can’t imagine who would wish mine ill. The only possible exception would be his ex-wife – who, due to their sharing of some children, has to keep her ill will in check. If she has any – I don’t know.
I’m not a big maker of enemies myself. I doubt I have any mortal ones – though I have pissed a lot of people off. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t want to kill me, though. And given how a lot of people have to live in the world, that’s probably a privilege.
Good Laertes, If you desire to know the certainty Of your dear father’s death, is’t Writ in your revenge, That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe, Winner and loser?
Swoopstake! I know Claudius has said a lot of very important words here but they all fade into the background with a word like SWOOPSTAKE there in the middle. I mean…SWOOPSTAKE!
It’s like sweepstake but past tense? Or like sweepstake but with more movement?
My god English was exciting when it was in this uncodified stage! SWOOPSTAKE.
It is so much fun to say or to write or even just think!
Maybe I should get a cat and name it SWOOPSTAKE, then I could say it everyday.
“Come here, Swoopstake! Here’s your dinner, Swoopstake! Swoopstake, have you caught a mouse?”
Swoopstake, yeah.
The Hamlet Project 