Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!

-Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Hamlet                        Act IV, scene ii, line 2

Since this is only the second line of the scene, I’m going to give you the whole thing so far and let’s see what we can surmise.

Scene II

Another room in the castle.

Enter HAMLET

                                                

HAMLET.

            Safely stow’d.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN [within].

            Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!

And that’s it. I mean to say, that’s all we’ve got so far. We don’t know what he’s safely stowed until a few lines further on when Rosencrantz asks, What have you done, my lord, with the dead body? So it’s a body that’s safely stowed. Wait, whose body? Well if we’ve been reading/watching/listening to the action so far, we’d know that it was Polonius, whom Hamlet stabbed whilst the former was hiding behind a curtain. And if I’m not mistaken, Hamlet presumed at the time that it was Claudius behind the curtain. Of course, if it had been Claudius, well then the play is pretty much over: revenge extracted – game, set, match. But it wasn’t Claudius, and so nothing has been resolved, and the action continues.

And R&G cry Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!

 

I searched all over for a picture to go with the Hamlet, Lord Hamlet yell, but I came up empty. So I settled for this picture of the most famous site of the Rebel Yell. It's the field in Gettysburg where Pickett's charge took place. Did you know that when they recreated the charge on the fiftieth anniversary of the battle in 1913 they actually recorded the sound of a bunch of seventy year-old survivors re-creating the Rebel Yell. Or maybe it was the seventy-five year anniversary in 1938 with ninety year-olds. I'm not quite sure.

In any event, just like with Polonius's death, I'm not sure all that much got resolved by all those Rebel yeller deaths either. 

And R&G cry Hamlet, Lord Hamlet!

What shall we do? let us, that have our tongues,

Plot some device of further misery,

To make us wonder’d at in time to come.

-Titus

Titus Andronicus                                 Act III, scene i, line 135

It’s kind of a weird thing to say, but then, this is a pretty weird play. It really would seem that Titus and his family don’t need too much more misery. Two of Titus’s sons have just been led off to be executed for a murder they didn’t commit, and now his daughter Lavina has been brought in. She’s been raped, and had her hands cut off and her tongue cut out. I mean, really, they need no further misery in order to be wondered at in time to come.

Now something just occurred to me. From my perspective everything in the past week or so is framed within a picture where the backdrop is the news of things going wrong. First it's the pandemic, then the economic meltdown, and now the country being torn apart over the issue of race and riots, and all with no leadership whatsoever from the top. And the more I read and think and listen to people, both famous and non-famous, talking about it, the more and more I come to realize that not enough of us white folk are doing a very good job of understanding what the minorities are going through. And I wonder, are any of those on the receiving end of the injustices thinking let us plot some device of further misery, to make us wonder’d at in time to come. Oh I don’t mean that they’re actually wanting things to get worse. But maybe they’re thinking, What the hell do we need to happen before someone notices? How horrific does it really need to be before these white people actually get it?

So I guess that’s today’s question, and it’s just a little bit of a twist on Titus’s question; but both wondering about some device of further misery.

There's no sugar coating it today. It's this morning's cover of the WSJ. Yes, there's a lot going wrong right now, and I'm not sure when it's gonna start getting better.

Sir, you speak nobly.

-Edmund

King Lear                                Act V, scene i, line 28

Okay, couple of things. For starters, yes, he does speak nobly because this is Albany he’s talking about, and Albany’s the one guy of that whole group of n’er-do-wells who retains some nobleness. On the other hand, these eight noble lines that Albany does speak are quite difficult to understand. Shall we take a look?

            Our very loving sister, well be-met.—

            Sir, this I hear,-the king is come to his daughter,

            With others whom the rigor of our state

            Forced to cry out. Where I could not be honest,

            I never yet was valiant: for this business,

            It toucheth us, as France invades our land,

            Not bolds the king, with others, who, I fear,

            Most just and heavy causes make oppose.

Say what? Well there’s a lot to unpack there. Or we could just leave it in the suitcase. Ahh, let’s take a shot.

We’re near the end of the play, and the group convened here is Edmund, Goneril, Regan, and Albany. First it was Edmund and Regan talking, and then Goneril and her husband Albany show up. Edmund is playing the two sisters against each other for his own means, and he’s been talking with Regan (whose husband died a few scenes ago) about what a faithful lover he’s been to her (not). So Goneril and Albany show up, and that’s Albany’s first lines above. When he says loving sister he’s talking to his sister-in-law Regan. The king is come to his daughter is saying that Lear and Cordelia have met up. But from there on in this passage, it gets a little tough. Where’s Shapiro when you really need him?

Perhaps we’ll leave that suitcase intact and stick with the four words that we started with. In fact, when I tell you that we’ll leave that suitcase packed, you might just reply

            Sir, you speak nobly.

 Okay, today's line got me a bit confused. So here's a picture of a fancy N chair. We'll call it the Noble Chair, so that if you sit in this chair you'll speak nobly. How's that?

Belike you slew great number of his people.

-Sebastian

Twelfth Night                           Act III, scene iii, line 29

I’ve got a few things to talk about this morning. To start with, I watched a 1970 production of Twelfth Night two nights ago. It was with Ralph Richardson, Alec Guinness, and Joan Plowright, the latter playing twins Viola and Sebastian. It was pretty entertaining and the first time I’d ever seen any production of this play. So it’s always good to see one for the first time, and it really pulls together all those lines that I’ve looked at over the past four years.

The word ‘belike’ means probably, presumably, or perhaps; just in case you were wondering. Sebastian and Antonio are strangers in town, and Antonio says that he has to be careful because in the past he’s fought in some battles against the Count of this town, and he doesn’t want to be recognized. Today’s Totally Random line is Sebastian responding to that.

But the funniest thing about today’s line comes actually a few lines earlier. These two guys have just arrived in the town, they’re deciding what they should do, and Sebastian wants to go sightseeing. Shall we go see the reliques of this town? And then, 

              I pray you, let us satisfy our eyes

              With the memorials and the things of fame

              That do renown this city. 

I dunno, I just thought that was humorous. I guess I think of sightseeing as a modern thing, but apparently it’s not. I guess I needed Will to remind me of yet another thing that hasn’t changed in the last four hundred years. 

I think I managed to find the perfect pic for today. It's a picture of me at the Gettysburg military cemetery; the same place Abe gave his famous address. Memorial Day, sightseeing; yup, I think I've got all the bases covered.

Go softly on.

-Fortinbras     

Hamlet                                    Act IV, scene iv, line 8

What a nice line. Go softly on.

The speaker, our friend Fortinbras, is the answer to the trivia question ‘who has the last line in the play Hamlet’. This, of course, is not that last line. This is the part in the play where Fortinbras is leading his army through Denmark on his way to a fight in Poland. He’s telling his captain to go and tell the Danish King that he’s just passing through, and he sends the captain off with the phrase Go softly on.

Hamlet is a bystander in this scene, and this leads into one of his soliloquies when he sees that Fortinbras is taking a couple thousand men to a fight to the death over a meaningless patch of land. Even for an eggshell, he says. That is the How all occasions do inform against me soliloquy. But before we can get to that, we go through the brief part of the act where Fortinbras says Go softly on.

So I’ll just say to you, have a good day, and go softly on. 

Well, you can't see it too well, but those guys on the right side of the picture are playing some kind of bocce. This is the Arenes de Lutece in Paris. It's almost 2,000 years old, built by the Romans. I thought the picture was a good representation of Go softly on. A slow game of lawn bowling in a two centuries old arena. Yeah, these guys are going softly on. Or maybe the arena is going softly on.

Either way, Go softly on.