I’ll be your foil, Laertes: in mine ignorance
Your skill shall, like a star i’th’darkest night,
Stick fiery off indeed.
-Hamlet
Hamlet Act V, scene ii, line 256
Stick fiery off indeed. Indeed!
This is the end of the play, Hamlet and Laertes are about to duel, and Hamlet is telling Laertes that the latter’s skill will shine. But he doesn’t say ‘shine’, he says that Laertes’s skill is going to like a star i’th’darkest night, stick fiery off indeed. It’s that last part that gets me. Stick fiery off indeed. I wasn’t expecting that. Like a star in the darkest night, shine brightly. Something like that was what I was expecting. But stick fiery off indeed. That’s interesting. What’s Will going for here? Why not just shine brightly? Clearly, stick fiery off indeed has got Will written all over it. Clearly shine brightly is way too simple. I suppose anything can shine brightly, but Laertes will stick out in the darkness and be fiery. He’ll blaze. Hmmm. Yes of course.
Will does it again. Will sticks fiery off himself, doesn’t he.
This is the backyard of my daughter’s place in Tennessee. That tiny white dot in the middle of the picture is me. On a warm summer night this whole field blazes with fireflies. They don’t stick fiery off, because it’s not one firefly. Instead the air is thick with their little twinkles. It’s much different than Will’s star, but the passage made me think of this nonetheless.
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