hello and welcome to classical stuff you should know a podcast put on by three dudes who work at a classical school in austin texas that's very true uh i am thomas maggie from when we started recording right now right now seriously so i my name is thomas maggie i'm the dean of student life at fairfax academy in austin i'm joined as always by mr aj handenberg this guy right here and another guy mr gregerson hey hello so guys i tried to come up with a woody introduction and it went very poorly but and i had lots of thoughts through my head but i'm not going you know i'm kind of indecisive is what i'm trying to say and i'm kind of planning on i'm just going to ramble for a little bit because i can't really take any action because i can't determine like what the next thing i should do is um i will fight you sir i will fight you like advice for like what like maybe kind of young young podcast we promised to tell oh our patronus house was so embarrassing why is this embarrassing because i got a lean one well do you want to go first or last wait i got for my house since we're talking about personality tests last time i got the nerd house what's that one ravenclaw ravenclaw ravenclaw ravenclaw is that doesn't even like ivy tower like kind of jerk holes no slitherner the jerk yeah anyway isn't it pretty known to script yeah like every character they don't really care about there's a ravenclaw there you go so i got the like purple house purple house has the cuties yeah so i got the house that like they just have to you know shuffle the like bland vanilla characters into i feel like yeah you're like the like middle class no but my patronus was a beagle which i'm kind of thrilled with because they're the smart dogs but they're also really disobedient that hasn't that doesn't nothing to do with me i have not even yet hit my teenage rebellion phase and i'm 35 so no one day i'm waiting to see it i can't wait till 40 rebellious smoking like smoking on the table don't tell me i can't vape i was put in the house of gryffindor so they have correctly recognized my valor and then my patronus is a vole which i had to look up and appears to be a small mouse-like creature that is adorable and very tiny but it's very noble how do you know a vole is how can they be in red wall they're very noble really i have no idea i don't remember the voles in red wall my house banker maybe this is okay my i was placed in the house of and my patronus i believe i referenced last episode as an irish wolfhound wall street it's a bull buy buy a bull bear hey bull bear that'd be pretty interesting why do you guys let the internet tell us what our patronuses are i feel like is there a combination of a bull bear that's is there an animal that is the common like a legendary bull bear animal no when i search that all that comes up is the bull market well i guess we get to name a new mythical creature when i search bull bear animal the first result is compare bull versus bear in face-to-face fight and it gives like attributes for bulls and bears anyway looks like the bear would win oh man that's a tough one though bulls got horns well they've been wrestling internally in the stock market oh am i right well yeah bulls have a higher force rating they each have equal technique oh but bears have random teenagers bears have higher intelligence so they could probably outsmart this is the weirdest so my question is if you combine the bull and the bear what would each part be would it be like bull head bear body or like foot half back half like top half bottom all right we got a podcast to do hey speaking podcast so back to my really funny joke about being indecisive and not knowing what to do bram do you have any advice for me on how to handle that friends today we are going to be talking about shakespeare's play hamlet um a play about an indecisive prince who has a pretty big moral decision he needs to make in his life and doesn't really know how he can make it but the other fun part about hamlet is it's a play that really um has you ask the question like when do you know you're being lied to or um how do you actually yourself make decisions what's what is your sort of decision making matrix how do you know when to when to do things um a very good podcast put on by andrew kern and friends which i can't remember what it's called they did a reading of hamlet i think that's the name of the kern friends kern friends i wish that would be great and they did reading of hamlet a number of years ago and they um uh as they were talking about it i think uh realized that every single scene has a character trying to convince another character to do something and he's using their words and he's using argument and rhetoric to try to convince that character to do something so should we tell hamlet that the ghost of his dead father is here yes or no you know or should we um um yeah so there's every scene has a character trying to convince another character to do something which led either andrew kern or somebody else on the podcast to say that it is a book talking about the power of rhetoric talking about how to use words to have people to try to get people to decide things that's one of the sort of stories about um but that's that's do you think that's an accurate reading because they say the exact same thing about the iliad i yes i think so i i've taught this book seven years in a row now and every time i read it it really is a book about decisions it's a book about decisions it's about how do you make decisions how are you convinced of things and how do you how do you process information when you can't really trust the source of the information how do you be skeptical and how do you not be skeptical when do you just sort of move forward on faith and when do you have to gather all your dad points um so it's like a book about like information lies if you live in a time where all those sorts of things are flying around how do you be the good man does that mean that it's a book about rhetoric i don't know because i think if you come to it with that idea you're going to see rhetoric spots just as if i come to it thinking it's a book about one character dominating another or maybe a book about love or duty like i'm going to find those spots and think every it's like not a book about about like love it's not a book about school except that hamlet is compelled by love of his father to avenge his father and his love of his mother that makes him spare her and the love between the father and the mother that complicates things with the uncle okay fine it's not a book about romance sure it's not a book about romance but i think coming in coming into this with a certain perspective you're going to find those things or just a book about many things go listen to their defense about rhetoric if you want to get all your shorts and a wad but anyway so hamlet that's how i arrive so it is about denmark and does any of you guys know what is historically significant about denmark nothing that is the correct answer thank you there's nothing historically significant in other words it's about a kingdom that doesn't really have that much sway in the geopolitical sphere of like medieval europe like it is a kingdom it has a king there are people who are beholden to that king and think that that king is divinely righted or has a divine right of kings to rule them but we're not talking about france and england we're not talking like henry v where the entire geopolitics of a continent are hanging in the balance with this battle no we're talking about denmark the rise and fall of the kings don't really matter so how about on one hand that the rise and fall of the kings don't really matter and on the other hand it's a story about a big political game of power so as the book starts we find out that denmark the kingdom has captured and taken over a large section of norway and the way that this happened was old king hamlet challenged old king norway to a fight and in their honor slash foolhardiness they got into a throwdown and they risked their kingdoms on this fight it's unclear whether it was like a mano a mano or whether it was like a military fight i kind of like thinking it was like a mano a mano fight like an old fisticuffs and their empire was on or their kingdoms were the prize old king hamlet beat old king fortinbra fortinbra was the name of the king of norway and took over his kingdom and came back and everyone was like hot dang old king hamlet you are awesome you just got us a whole new kingdom like glory days for denmark and then was it the entire kingdom or just a secession of certain lands it wasn't the entire kingdom of norway gone it was a chunk and so yeah probably like the disputed islands or something anyway and so then old king hamlet we find out that he died and he was sleeping in a garden and got bit by a snake and then died now that's the official claim but we're gonna realize that is not as old as it seems but as the play opens a bunch of guards are standing on the guard tower and they're freaked out because a ghost has been seen walking around in old dead king hamlet's armor and has been just like hanging out and coming at the ghost's time at midnight and like moving his arms and not saying anything so they it starts with these two guards sort of talking about this and Horatio who is another seems like a somewhat noble man is with the guards and he sees the king and wants to go and tries to talk to it and the king kind of like is about to say something and the rooster crows and then the king disappears into the daylight because ghosts and roosters don't get along you knew this right the rooster the herald of the morn scares away all the ghosts apparently medieval well they're pretty crotchety in medieval mythology or in medieval folklore ghosts hang out at specific times at night and then when the rooster crows it forces the ghost to go back to whence they came because the rooster is the herald of the morn and it's also the thing that crowed when Peter denied Jesus I don't know something to do with that so the ghost has to trundle off and Horatio's like man I should probably get I should probably like tell him this and you've had someone who looks like his dead father is hanging around and this does not bode well for the kingdom of Denmark when your dead monarch is floating around ghosts usually don't hang out when things are all hunky-dory ghosts tend to hang out when something bad's happened is there any question as to whether the ghost is real oh there is definitely a question and not whether the ghost is real because people see it but there's definitely a question as to whether the ghost is saying it's true or not so actually this brings us to an interesting maybe something we should put off the top of the story there is dramatic irony do you guys know what dramatic irony is where we know something the characters don't that's right so you're watching a horror movie and the one dispensable character is like whoa what was that sound I'm going to go check the woods to see what happened and we all sitting in the audience all say oh he won't die because we know it this is the classical like don't go into the shed don't go into the shed and he's like oh what was that noise and he goes instead of calling the police and leaving I'm going to investigate by myself you stay here and I'll go look and then the monster or the alligator or the hillbilly or whatever is in the woods kills him we all know this is happening it's called dramatic irony we know the character doesn't know and it adds some sort of tension and has you sort of be invested in the play or in the scene in a very different way Hamlet is almost like reverse dramatic irony we as the audience there are certain things in this play that we as the audience never know but the characters do did Hamlet and Ophelia have a love affair we never know did Queen Gertrude Hamlet's mom was she in on the murder of Old King Hamlet we never know is the ghost actually the ghost of Hamlet's dead father telling Hamlet true things or a demon sent to trick Hamlet to get Hamlet to do mischief upon to get Hamlet's head all twisted around because he's sort of sad low-hanging fruit we never know there are all sorts of ways that you can read the story that you never know if are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern just seeking after are they self-serving are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Hamlet's best friends are they just self-serving to try to get on the king's good side and they say if that means screwing over Hamlet so be it or are they actually eager friends of Hamlet trying to help out a buddy who's going through a dark time and agree that you're actually smart or not yeah he's pretty smart so we just have all of these questions so that leaves you as an audience member when you're watching this play you yourself need to make decisions about how you feel this play should be interpreted based on the information given to you but you're not given enough information to be 100% sure you don't have Ophelia coming to the front looking at stage center and giving a soliloquy on her and Hamlet's love and the love that they used to share you don't get that forsooth at 13 we made our first in kisses you don't get any of that so you don't get enough information so you have to make your own interpretations about what you are reading or what you're observing in the play based on information that can be taken almost in opposite ways when you start realizing that this is a play it's kind of masterful how every single line can be read almost as the opposite of each of itself so that was actually one of the criticisms of Hamlet there are folks out there who think rather than being his great masterpiece Hamlet is one of his worst plays because there's so much we don't know it seems kind of haphazard and thrown together because a lot of the things are never answered and it's been implied by some scholars definitely not all of them that this wasn't an intentional thing by Shakespeare he just needed to get a play done and he didn't take the time to actually tell the story he sort of threw this thing together and then yeah but if this is a slap together play then it just proves he's a master you know what I mean I think the very fact that we as the audience we know what's going on but we don't know why everything's going on and that sort of is the same folk that Hamlet himself is in I think is too good to be anyway so the first scene Hamlet comes in the news and we realize there's a new king King Claudius Hamlet's uncle has married Hamlet's mom and as we find out it happened like a month or two after the death of Hamlet I think it was just two months right so Hamlet who was away at school he was at Wittenberg doing a grad degree he was in graduate school comes home to the funeral of his father only to find that his uncle is now marrying his mother and Hamlet is still wearing his mourning clothes he's dressed all in black mourning the death of his father and his uncle and his mom are trying to cheer Hamlet up saying like man fathers die this is just the natural order of things fathers die kids need to accept it and then just sort of move on and move on to the next joys and the next joy is that you have a new father Hamlet me your uncle and Hamlet is not happy with his new stepfather it's not a joy not a joy and Hamlet makes all sorts of sarcastic snide remarks about you're right this is a great idea we can use the food from the funeral to furnish the wedding table and little snide remarks like that and Claudius is trying to tell Hamlet to look on the bright side and just like get over your father's untimely death and you know sort of move on and Gertrude is doing the same thing that's less than two months after his death so he's like two months no it's not even two months it's less than that and so Claudius is sort of like I don't understand my new weird kid and Gertrude is just wanting the best for Hamlet and sees that her son is in pain and sort of they just kind of restat for Hamlet and they go off to their new married life and Hamlet in one of his first famous soliloquies he's got a number gives a famous speech where he wishes he says oh that this two two sullied flesh would melt fall and resolve itself into a dew or something like that Hamlet wants to he basically wishes that he could die he says I wish I could just burst into dust and not exist anymore he says I don't want to kill myself because I'm Catholic and killing myself is against canon law so I'm not going to do that but I kind of just wish I didn't exist anymore and then he kind of gets all crotchety about the fact that his mom is married to his father and then he says that the world is like an unweeded garden things just sort of grow rank in time that as time goes on the world kind of gets crappier this is what young Hamlet is sort of saying and he's looking at this new state of affairs having come home from college and he's back into his childhood home and he's got a new dad and his mom is married and doesn't seem to be mourning her dead husband and Hamlet's dad anymore she's sort of off enjoying her new marriage and Hamlet's like what the heck what happened to my childhood and this is one of the most emotional teenager speeches she's mom's like why do you seem so sad he's like it's not seems mom I am sad and here's the little speech he was talking about it's real short oh that this too too sullied flesh would melt thaw and resolve itself into a dew or that the everlasting had not fixed his cannon against self-slaughter oh god god how weary stale flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world fie on it ah fie tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed things rank and gross in nature possess it merely he's not having a good time and then he goes on and he sort of talks about the things that have happened and he says she's married he sort of muses on the fact that the only reason she's married is because she's bored or she's lonely or she's a randy lady and she doesn't like to have no man in her life this is Hamlet's telling about his mom is he talking to his mom no he's talking to himself and so he's kind of he's sort of realizing he's like oh the only reason mom got married again is because she just can't stand not being with a man and he's implying sexually he's also implying that she's just sort of weak and can't be her own person by herself uncomfortable but this is your point we don't actually know if that's actually true and so hamlet is kind of bummed around and horatio shows up and he's like hamlet i saw your dad and hamlet's like yes so did i that's why i came home for the funeral he's like no no i saw the ghost of your dad hamlet says you show me him right away so off they go hamlet sees the ghost at night time the ghost shows up and hamlet's like i need to go talk to him and horatio says wait a second hamlet that could be anything it doesn't have to be your dad it could be some demon that has been sent to trick you it could as soon as you and it walk away and go around the corner it could turn into a giant beetle and cause you to descend into madness um think about you know all these sort of things and hamlet tells horatio to buzz off and he runs off to because the ghost he sees his father he runs off he's like my dad's here um he's going to tell me something important and um horatio um can't catch him um oh yeah so let's talk about how his dad will come back and talk about philio so hamlet goes off and the ghost talks to him and says hamlet avenge my foul and unnatural murder hamlet goes oh i knew it um turns out what the ghost tells him is that i the king one day when i was sleeping in the garden oh i was bit by a snake but it wasn't any sort of regular snake it was your uncle your uncle claudius poured poison in my ear and it caused my blood to congeal it's real gross um turn my blood into bloody jelly and i died and then he married your mom ghost says don't pick on your mom it's not her fault um but avenge my death kill claudius and then but and then the other thing the ghost says is i am in hell and at night time i'm allowed to leave hell and come to the earth and like roll around on the earth and until you have killed claudius when once you kill claudius i can go to purgatory is that what he says something like that the ghost gives something that is clearly not nothing like it's clearly not a medieval thought right like um let me just see if i can find it here uh enter ghost oh yes i am thy father's spirit doomed for a certain time certain term to walk the night and for the day confined to fast in fires till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away um but to this i am forbid to tell the secrets of my prison house i could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul freeze thy young blood make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres thy knotted and combined it locks depart and each particular hair to stand on end like quills upon the fearful port in time but this eternal blazing must not be to ears of flesh and blood list list oh list if ever um didst thy dear father love revenge his foul and most unnatural murder so he says uh during the days i'm like burnt by fire and i get to wander around at night so that burnt by fire could be purgatory right the fires of purgatory purge away his sins so it could be that like he's it's not until you do this it's until the sins i committed during my day are gone yes but then he's coming back and then telling him to kill to kill his brother so his sins aren't purge away yet anyway so he gives this and he says i can't tell you anything about the afterlife um so he gives this like pretty dubious version of purgatory yes my sins are being purged but i can also come to earth and like inspire you to do more sins on earth i don't know once you're purgatory you usually aren't really you stay there and you don't really you're not really allowed to care too much about what's happening on earth sure you can care but you're not allowed to like you shouldn't be able to come back and in in dante's purgatory over and over again the people there are asking dante to go home and ask people to pray for them yeah but none of them are like hey could you please kill someone yes yes so dante so this ghost is saying go and kill somebody so don't we learn he the ghost has at least some information that's true like claudius did kill yes because the ghost does give true information claudius did kill old king we find that that is a true thing but whether or not this is a ghost of old king hamlet or some or a demon sent to confuse him we don't know because if he is a demon sent to confuse hamlet like mission successful like hamlet does end up getting confused um and hamlet doesn't immediately question anything about the ghost story about the afterlife he's just like oh that's crazy i'm gonna go i need to kill claudius i always knew the afterlife was weird um there's another element to this that interpreters like to point out and that i have found interesting is that hamlet is going to school in wittenberg and wittenberg is the seat of uh the protest reformation one of the colleges that basically was reinterpreting and relooking at catholic thought and casting skepticism on all of these what they would call extra biblical theological positions like purgatory so hamlet is going to this school that is kind of like the iconoclastic school of its day the fact that this ghost is now coming to hamlet and telling him things and hamlet is sort of not he's not dismissing the ghost and saying you're trying to trick me because what you're saying doesn't fit with dogma he's saying hamlet seems to be the type of person that doesn't necessarily believe in dogma um he's more skeptical than dogmatic um so that the ghost can come and if he's a demon he's picking on the guy who doesn't believe in dogma or if he is a ghost um he's going to his son and ask him to do something we never know does the play raise these questions also um only like does hamlet ever say so you say he doesn't question him that goes at first but does he later think where did this come from um no but but hamlet's so hamlet's famous to be or not to be speech has him and basically say who knows what happens when you die and since nobody knows what happens when you die that colors and makes cowards of us all even though he's literally talking with even though he's talking with the ghost and like dogmatically he doesn't you should know what happens when you die um but unless you don't believe it um and it seems like maybe hamlet doesn't believe it so hamlet's skepticism so this is kind of one of the questions that i want to have with you guys at the end of what hamlet is um how useful is skepticism and at what point is skepticism no longer uh is skepticism like just sort of make you um um not know what you're looking for um paralyzed anyway we'll get there all right so hamlet's off and he's just saying i'm gonna go kill claudius i'm gonna go do it right now which of course doesn't happen meanwhile we get um ophelia and ophelia is the daughter of polonius polonius is the right was the right hand man to king hamlet and is now the right hand man to king claudius um polon and polonius and laertes his son are kind of nervous about ophelia because it's kind of known that hamlet and ophelia have kind of had maybe like made eyes at each other or there's just sort of rumors that hamlet's into ophelia or that ophelia's into hamlet and the dad just wants to put a k-watch on it so laertes is going off to college and he gives ophelia a big old speech like hey girl don't go with prince hamlet because he's a prince he's got to marry someone more important than you he's gonna break your heart and ophelia's like that is wonderful sage advice thank you and then well she says make sure you follow that yourself oh dear brother i do really and i know that you would not give advice that you yourself would not keep this is important because either ophelia is actually innocent ophelia and she's like thank you for that sage advice and you dear brother i know that you would not fall into any such sins as well or she's like oh that's right i definitely will never sleep with hamlet anymore and um you dear brother of course we all know that you're going to college are not going to do that either right so if you're the actress playing ophelia you got to pick how you're going to play innocent or like sarcastic i shall the effect of this good lesson keep as watchmen to my heart but good brother do not as some ungracious pastors do show me the steep and thorny way to heaven whilst like a puffed and reckless libertine himself the primrose path of dalliance trends and rex not his own read so she could say that sarcastically or she should say it very honestly very honestly and then the dad comes in and echoes a bunch of good sentiments and tells lairdies a bunch of great foggy advice which hanberg i know you were a huge fan of oh i think this is i love this advice partially because the advice is really good it's really good but the actual advice like spun out of context is very good unfortunately it's spoken by a giant windbag right so in context it's laughable but out of context it's kind of good advice yeah and in context it's i think it's especially laughable because it's coming from such a blowhard and he's probably giving advice that anyone kind of knows already but it's still good advice and then the other thing is later the same guy polonius comes and says uh one of the most famous shakespearean lines brevity is the soul of wit but he says it in the longest speech ever that is not brutal so polonius basically is saying like ah my boy i try to go off to college and be a man and have friends but not too close and lend money but don't borrow it and and uh if you don't get into fights but if you do be the one that ends them he's giving all this good fatherly advice and then two scenes later he's hiring a spy to go spy on his son because he doesn't trust him um anyway so they both give this advice to saying ophelia just stay away from hamlet he he doesn't have your best intentions at heart and philia's like okay i will and you can read this scene as either hamlet and ophelia are having a secret affair which she wants to from her family obviously or they're not and we never really know um the very fact that ophelia kind of goes mad at the end of the play well either because they had an affair or because hamlet killed clonius anyway let's move on yeah so yeah well it's a whole play so hamlet has resolved to kill claudius and then immediately is beset upon doubts about whether or not claudius he should kill claudius um this is a pretty big deal like going and killing somebody is a big step that's a big step that's a life step the ghost has made him swear um and then hamlet has said that he will do it okay meanwhile um king and queen are oh yes so hamlet has sworn this is going to happen um and then there's a scene where uh polonius is sending a little spy to go spy on his son in college and ophelia comes in and she's visibly shaken and polonius says hey ophelia what's wrong and she says hamlet came the most strangest thing happened last night the night of the ghost hamlet came into my room and he was all he looked all crazy and his like shirt was all ruffled and his socks were all pulled down and his hair was all crazy and he had crazy eyes and he didn't say anything he just looked at me reached out his hand made a giant sigh he groaned groaned and then ran out of the room and i don't know what that means oh but the way she described this is one of my favorite scenes to reenact with the kids because he didn't just run out of the room he keeps his eyes fixed on her reaches out with his hand and then backs it totally out of it is the most awkward leaving the room the most dramatic like thing you can ever think of so now we know that hamlet's doing this because he has a vote he has sworn to the ghost that he will kill claudius which is probably going to involve some amount of of you know danger on his own life and by also swearing he swore that he would not care about anything else in this world and he goes and he's basically giving like this girl goodbye to ophelia so we know that hamlet's got this ghost thing going on and polonius is like well hot dang hamlet's in love with you ophelia this is why he's so moody this is why he's wearing black this is why he won't eat food at the marriage dinner polonius is like i've got it all figured i've got it all figured out so polonius is somebody who takes the information and immediately makes a conclusion that he thinks it's 100 correct and is like kind of wrong it's kind of right hamlet maybe does love ophelia um all the information points to the fact that hamlet could love ophelia and it does actually play out it does actually put all the pieces together polonius is kind of being like a good observational scientist right like we hear the effects here's the behavior oh the reason of it is hamlet's love for ophelia that makes perfect sense well meanwhile it's like a supernatural ghost has told hamlet of this sort of murder and has sworn made hamlet swear to murder somebody polonius didn't factor that into his calculation anyway so he goes to the king's like i got it your son's all weird because he's in love with this girl and the king's like finally that's good work let's spy on him so they're like all right ophelia here's a prayer book sit in this garden and look real pious and pretty and then when hamlet walks by we'll listen to hamlet talk to you and ophelia's like okay um and she has no she can't really get out of it she says okay um and hamlet comes up and ophelia's sitting there she's like you know how now my lord how are you and um right yeah so when hamlet's walking up to see ophelia this is when he gives his famous to be or not to be speech where he is sort of freaked out about the prospect of murdering somebody and him probably having to die because if you kill the king like you're gonna get tried for treason or you're gonna throw your nation into chaos or something's gonna happen um and hamlet's sort of musing on death to be or not to be that is the question whether it's nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or take up arms against the sea of trouble and by opposing in them so he's asking himself like what makes living purposeful why should i live um should i like it's a suicide speech yeah should i try to to you know uh tackle head-on all the difficulties of life or should i just kind of give up it is suicide but i also kind of see it as like an apathy speech hamlet's saying like what makes actions purposeful why do anything and this is what over-educated college hamlet is asking himself um he's saying like what is the point of doing stuff because the world is unjust like bad people get power liars win you know there is injustice in this world so why go through all the crap that's going to come your way to try to be a good man is what he's asking it sounds like an important yeah and then he says the only reason why we don't all just sort of give up and like die is because we're scared of the afterlife we don't know what's waiting there the fear of the unknown the undiscovered country makes cowards of us all he says that's not a great answer so really at this point in the play hamlet's answer to why we do anything is because we're too cowardly to kill ourselves it's this fear of the great unknown and when i so it is a very human question but when i read this question um i see it as like it is the question the the question that um skepticism brings you to right like like hamlet doesn't have a like hamlet's mental models of decision making throughout the play are i don't know i'm going to try to gather all my all the information that i can and he realizes that he exists in a world where all the information that he gets even though he gets it it is still he is still unable to parse it out to be sure hamlet wants to be 100 sure that claudius has killed his dad before he does it um so he asks this really great question of why should we do anything why the two choices are do something or die what he ends up saying is i wish i could just die yes but i'm too cowardly to do it yes and that's almost like yeah that's the worst way that you can answer that question so hamlet's reason for existing is i'm too scared to die to do the actually thing that he to do the thing that he knows he should be doing or that is expected of him so his sort of lack of a cohesive understanding of the universe or of the world or any kind of knowledge or any sort of assurance of the afterlife or faith in the afterlife paralyzes him and so the only way he builds his decision-making matrix in life is on skepticism and doubt of death and so not skepticism of death but his doubt of what happens after death his fear of death so it's a broader point about skepticism can only take you to that point yeah i mean i even read hamlet as like the first kind of the first modern man like the way that he frames agency is fear is through his fear of death and mortality and if you look at the classical world in the ancient world christian world this is not how we framed agency we framed agency based on almost um based on sort of objective values that we believed existed in the person of god and that we had to conform to those values and that human agency was moving towards righteousness um or was trying to be glorious in the ancient greek world was trying to be sanctified and moving towards righteousness in the christian world um and um sort of you had a mission and a calling and you had you and that you had a afterlife that was going to be um a judgment on that on that living christianity had uh has two levels of this where the sort of the general overall category of sinfulness is taken care of at the cross but then you also have this sort of secondary category of earthly righteousness that had some kind of that has some kind of um a hierarchical reward structure in the afterlife which is maybe a little podcast um hamlet has none of this um all hamlet has is a big black question mark and he's trying to build his life of how he should act in this world on a big black question mark and all it does is leave him like depressed and inactive which is also yeah you spoke this summer it was yeah this summer was that the theme of the yeah it was sort of um i'm thinking of hamlet as yes as um the modern man and then also um it was a little bit talking about ophelia um but we'll talk about ophelia a little bit anyway so hamlet's asking himself this to be or not to be great question and then the honey trap of ophelia is sitting there um and he goes now unfortunately she's honey trap but probably against ophelia's wishes she's being used by the king her dad to try to get information from hamlet everybody's trying to get information we're also presuming that she cares about him so finding out what's wrong with him also is good for her so because she cares about so hamlet comes and he is absolutely mercilessly cruel to her and basically says because she's a woman she only has one good thing about her and that's to make sinful people what is it He says, all women are good for it to be breeders of sinners. He says, if you want to do anything good in this world, Ophelia, go join a nunnery, because then at least you won't make any more sinful people. And Ophelia's like, ouch, that hurts. Hamlet, there's a very heartbreaking line where, what did she say?
Anyway, where basically it's like, here cracks a noble soul, says Ophelia, about Hamlet, and that her heart is just so broken in half because of what Hamlet has said. And meanwhile, he's being very angry and dismissive, and off he goes. And the king's like, well, Polonius got any other bright ideas, because he's clearly not in love with Ophelia. And Polonius is like, yeah, there's something else going on.
Anyway, Hamlet wants assurances that Claudius did the murder. So he decides he's going to put on a play. And on this play, he's going to reenact the scene of the murder and judge Claudius' reaction. So he's going to have a king get poisoned in the ear by his brother, and his brother marry the wife.
And he's going to put on this play, and he's going to intently stare at Claudius to see how Claudius reacts to this. All the while being kind of a cad. All the while being kind of a cad. He's sort of, for the majority, we haven't talked much about his demeanor this entire time, but he has been acting super strange.
And he's even told his friends, look, I'm going to be acting weird. Right after the ghost, he says, I'm going to be acting really strange. You can't let on by looks or huffs or by implication that you know that I'm not crazy. It's like, I'm going to be acting crazy.
So we also don't know how much of this is legit, whether he's actually crazy. Or if it's just this show that he's putting on. If he's going to kill his uncle, then he doesn't know if he's legit. He went off and saw a ghost, he comes back acting crazy.
He doesn't know if he's acting crazy or went crazy. And, I mean, even with Ophelia, is he separating himself from her to prevent her the heartbreak of realizing she's a murderer? Or is he doing it because he actually doesn't love her anymore? And then he throws around all this sass all the time.
It's not just, you know, lovesick, freak out kind of thing. It's also, he makes jokes that are kind of off-color and, you know, says some things he shouldn't say in the presence of the king. He's just kind of pushing on all those boundaries in a really not okay way. Kind of pushing away his friends, being real strange.
He's the kid that left a small town of Denmark, went off to college, came back, and is kind of a jerk to everybody. That's what Hamill is. And he thinks he's better in the small town. There's definitely some scenes where, like, a cannon goes off and he hears a bunch of people cheering.
And one guy's like, my lord, what is happening? And Hamill says, that's an old drinking game that they play here. They shoot cannons and they chug their glasses of wine. And the first one to finish gets to cheer.
I hate this place. So he really is, like, from a small town that all they care about is, like, drinking. And he's this, like, educated college kid that wants to put on plays. It does sound kind of like an awesome tradition.
I mean, the king even talked about it. He's like, tonight I plan on drinking deep. They're going to shoot the cannons and drink beer. That sounds awesome.
What a better reaction to a cannon. Hamill does not think that's awesome. He thinks that's, like, so small town. He's kind of a snob.
Anyway, so then he puts on this play and watches Claudius. And Claudius gets all flustered and upset and gets up and leaves. And Hamill's like, got him. Hamill's like, fine, I now know.
I can go kill him. Claudius himself actually is flustered and goes off and goes to church and kneels and prays. And he says, I'm a murderer. And he's like, I know, I'll pray.
And then Hamill comes up, fully knowing that Claudius is now the murderer, and sees Claudius kneeling and praying. And Hamill has a sword unsheathed behind Claudius. And he's like, ah, if I kill him. If I kill him now, he's praying to God.
He's praying to God. His soul's going to go right to heaven. My dad's soul's in that burning place. Oh, I'm going to kill him when he's doing something sinful.
He puts the sword away and off he goes, I'll kill him when he's doing something bad. When he's, like, laying in bed with my mom or when he's drunk in his cups. And we also find out that he, Claudius is actually remorseful. And he says, I would repent, but does true repentance mean giving up the things I earned in my sin?
And since I'm unwilling to give up the kingship, I cannot truly repent. So, Claudius gets, apparently, as Claudius gets up from praying and tells the audience, yeah, my prayers are going up to heaven, but my heart's not in them because I don't want to give up my kingdom. If I really want to be penitent, I would need to give up my kingdom and, like, confess to people. I can't just confess to God privately.
You can't just confess to God privately and not confess to people and think everything's okay. Because you're keeping what your sins gave you. So, he's like, I guess I'm not going to confess anyway. Which means Hamill could have stabbed him.
Right, he doesn't go on to repent. No, he doesn't repent. You're complicating this by saying that Claudius actually has some, he's kind of a good dude. Claudius feels guilty, but he's not going to repent.
Let's put it that way. Claudius knows he did wrong, and he feels bad about it. Feeling bad is not the same thing as repenting. That's the thing.
When students say, like, yeah, I did that thing, and I feel bad about it, you're like, well, you're not there yet. I'm going to repent. Anyway, so Claudius doesn't repent, and then Hamill decides that he's going to kill him later. Claudius is, then Polonius is like, all right, well, Ophelia couldn't get it out of him.
Maybe his mom can get it out of him. So he decides to hide behind the curtains in Hamlet's mom's room and have Hamlet talk to his mom. Hamlet goes to talk to his mom. The ghost shows up, but only Hamlet can see it.
Queen Gertrude, because the ghost, is like, stop messing with your mom. Don't guilt her into this. Hamlet accuses her of all these sort of things. He says some terrible things to his mom about her being married to the king, and all she wants is, like, lovins.
And mom's like, what's wrong with you? And then Polonius, Hamlet looks like he's going to do violence upon his mom, and Polonius makes a squeaking noise. He's like, ah! And Hamlet says, what's this, a rat?
And he stabs through the curtain and goes, Polonius. Polonius dies, and then Hamlet takes his body and hides it in somewhere in the castle. That's going to put a damn brother relationship with his girlfriend. With his girlfriend.
So Hamlet murders Polonius, or kills Polonius. The king finds out and says, Hamlet, I think you need to take a bit of a trip. You need to go on vacation. I want you to go and do this, you know, sort of hastily thrown together emissary trip to England.
You're in England, Hamlet. But Calais doesn't want him dead. Calais doesn't want him dead. He wants him out of the castle.
Turns out people like Hamlet, which is kind of weird. And also, the king just recently died, and now he's a new king. And now the king's right-handed man died. And people are going to be like, what the junk is happening in Denmark?
So he doesn't want another scandal. So he's like, Hamlet, you're going to go basically on timeout. And you're going to go to England. And so Hamlet's going off to England.
And the king gets his best Hamlet friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. We're not going to talk about them. This is going to have time. And he basically gives a letter to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and says, all right, you guys, when you get to England, give this letter to the king.
Don't read it. Give this letter to the king. And Rosencrantz and Guildenstern say, of course. They go off.
Hamlet, in the middle of the night, finds the letter of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, decides to read it. It says, dear king of England, kill Hamlet. Love Claudius. So Claudius does actually want Hamlet.
So Hamlet does want Hamlet dead. Hamlet goes, oh, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, you snakes. He changes the letter to say, dear king of England, kill Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Love Claudius.
Re-seals it. Puts it back in their bags. And then the weirdest thing happens in the entire play. I'd have to assume that he had that on a new piece of paper.
Because if the king was scratched out, it says, please kill. And there was a name scratched out. And it's like a little addendum. Kill these two guys.
Hamlet has a royal seal. I think he actually steals Claudius the seal. Or he's in the bag or whatever. And he's able to do this.
And then Hamlet's boat, this is all off-scene. We don't see this happening. Hamlet's boat gets attacked by pirates. And Hamlet gets attacked by pirates and joins the pirates.
And then the other boat goes back to England. And Hamlet goes on the pirate ship, convinces the pirates to take him back to Denmark. Because now Hamlet has written evidence that the king wants him dead. And so he's coming back all hot and full with rage.
We don't have the pirate scene. But every year, as an extra thing for our students to do, we have them write the long-lost scene of Hamlet. Where Hamlet interacts with the pirates. And it's very fun.
We get very good scenes. And so if you're one of our seniors listening now, which means spoilers for class like crazy, you might want to start beginning on writing that scene. So Hamlet comes back. And he's sort of a focused Hamlet.
He comes home. And he decides that he is going to kill Claudius. Meanwhile, Ophelia went crazy. Ophelia has gone mad.
And because her father is dead. Because Hamlet killed her father. And Ophelia is walking around all crazy and saying crazy things. But they are crazy things that are also pregnant with meaning.
So it is unclear whether Ophelia is just completely off her rocker. Or is now, I wouldn't say feigning madness. But is now using madness to actually say true things about people. So the fun thing about Ophelia is if you read the play, every single scene that she is in, she has a reason not to speak her mind.
Every scene. She has a reason to be duplicitous in her speech. Because she is sort of forced by being sort of subservient and a female in this game of power. And all the sort of men around her are playing this game of power.
She has to play this role of, she has reasons to be lying. And now, in her craziness, everyone's like, oh, Ophelia's crazy. She can actually say true things. And she says some pretty cutting things to people.
But everyone just sort of says, oh, well, she's just crazy. So it's actually really interesting. And so then she's nuts and then drowns. She doesn't just so much drown as that she sort of falls in water and doesn't try to save herself.
She just lets her robes drag her to the bottom while she is singing songs of her childhood and sort of recounting poetry. It's very creakily. I think there's lots to be said about why she's singing songs of her childhood. They're all songs about, like, one day my prince charming will come and marry me and that kind of thing.
And her prince did come and did fall in love with her but murdered her father. Like, she's not living in a fairy tale. She's living in sort of a real cruel world. And that cruel world has its...
Anyway, so she dies. And then Laertes is like, my dad's dead and my sister's dead. And he comes home. He wants to kill Hamlet.
So Laertes wants to kill Hamlet. Hamlet wants to kill Claudius. Claudius and Laertes hatch this plan to, like, get Hamlet into a duel. And it gets all convoluted where there's a poison sword.
And then Claudius is like, if that doesn't work, I'll have him drink this cup and I'll put poison in it too. So it basically ends with this whole big, like, you know, screwed up, you know, messed up, like, a gong show. Do you use that term in the States? A gong show?
Yeah, we know a gong show. A gong show is like a big old mess. It's from the actual gong show. It was a joke about the gong show.
And if you came in, you were doing a bad job, they would smack up a gong and so... Yeah. So basically, again, it's a huge old gong show. Hamlet stabs Laertes with a poison sword.
Laertes stabs Hamlet with a poison sword. The queen gets thirsty and drinks from the cup, not realizing that it's poison. She dies. Hamlet realizes what happens.
Pours the poison cup down Claudius' throat. Claudius dies. Horatio comes in with a dying Laertes and a dying Hamlet. It's like, my lord, if you're dying, I'm going to die.
And Hamlet says, no, I don't want you to die. I want you to live on and tell my story. Tell my story. And then Horatio says, okay.
And then right at the end, the son of Fortinbrah rushes in and takes back his lands and becomes king of Denmark. And there are these little hints that Fortinbrah's been on the move, but the king has kind of ignored it because of the pressing concerns of Hamlet. And I mean, so, yeah, that's a weird thing going on in the background. So young Fortinbrah has wanted his lands back, and the king Claudius' solution is to send a letter to that kid's uncle, who is infirm and in bed and sick.
And he's like, when the older normal people figure it out, the problem will be solved. And then young Fortinbrah supposedly is like, okay, I'll go do some war with some people near you, but it requires that I have to walk through your land to get there with my army. Can I do that? Can I do that?
And they say yes. And so right at the very end, he rushes into the castle. King Claudius would have thought, hey, young Fortinbrah is visiting as a friend now, when really we don't know whether or not he was truthfully invading or not. You know, heads or tails, whatever, Fortinbrah's got his lands back because Hamlet made a king.
So what I love about Hamlet, now if you're listening to this, and this is your first exposure to it, you're probably, your head is spinning. If you know the play very well, you know that there's all this levels of complexity. There's complexity to the plot. But what I find very fascinating of it is, when you take each and every individual character, they are all trying to sift through all of the information of the kingdom and try to figure out what is the signal and what is the noise, to borrow a term from a blog.
Like, what is the important piece of information that I need to act on, and what is just the unimportant everyday life stuff that I can ignore? For Hamlet, he thinks the signal is the ghost. For Claudius, he thinks the signal is whatever's bothering Hamlet. Claudius doesn't realize the real signal is Fortinbrah amassing an army on his borders.
Hamlet doesn't realize that he doesn't have a way of, he doesn't have a code, basically. Hamlet doesn't have, his code is skepticism. His code is, I want to be 100% sure, and I can never be 100% sure. And always follow ghost advice.
And always follow ghost advice. So everybody is trying to disseminate what is true and what is right and what are people's motivations, and everybody is playing a cloak and dagger politics game of power. And when you have those two things together, you are, it's going to, like one of the guards say, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Like, that is a recipe for the rotting of community, and the rotting of culture, and the rotting of family.
Everybody has, they're trying to get an angle on each other. Everybody's trying to figure out what is the real story, and what is the fake story, who's lying to who. And there's no, there's no, like, maybe even Fortinbrah. Fortinbrah seems to be, like, the clear-headed, I wouldn't call him virtuous because he's doing, he's avenging, but he is, he seems to be, like, undivided in his intention.
I'm going to come back and take my lands, and that is a noble thing to do. Everybody else is pulled, and is pushed and pulled by their own oscillating inabilities to sort of know what's going on. And Hamlet has his own problem with inaction, right? He is constantly chastising himself.
He's like, Fortinbrah just lost some land, and look what he's up to, and I lost my dad and talked to a ghost, and I can't do anything. So it's always this, he thinks all this stuff, but the only real action he takes is acting weird, putting on a play, and then eventually getting into a petty duel with larities. He doesn't, and by the end, he's like, really, the real thing is just being ready instead of taking action. So he does all of this crazy trying to find information, but never actually does stuff except on accident.
So the question I would like to ask my students is, do you think Hamlet would make a good king? Because on the one hand, he's thorough and wants to do the right thing with the right information, but he also won't make a decision until he is 100% sure, and can't be sure because you can never be sure. At some point, you need to sort of act on first principles. You can't prove everything before you act.
At some point, you just need to act on a conviction of that something is right to do. So the answer is no. I don't know. But the thing is, he's also thorough enough that you would want maybe someone that thoughtful to be king.
Anyway, so that is a very fast run-through of the play, and it's the main themes. And there are so many different ways you can take conversations about the story. It's very rich. And it deserves your study.
It's one of those plays that yields quite a bit, even from just studying individual speeches, from studying characters. I can talk about Polonius for an hour, even though all he is is essentially a blowhard. Hamlet, at the end of the play, actually has this line where he says, he basically has a statement where he says, God will sort it out. We just need to act.
We just need to be ready to act, which is very different from early Hamlet, where he says, I want to be sort of sure of everything. So there is some kind of growth in Hamlet from inactivity to kind of almost like a faith action. There has been some commentators that have talked about that Hamlet's thoughts on theology go from a sort of a Catholic dogma to a Protestant faith kind of metric, a matrix of looking at the world. I haven't done enough reading of the story to see if that bears itself of any fruit.
But there is a progression of Hamlet that he sort of goes from, oh, I wish I could die. I'm not going to, but if I die, I'm going to, you know, it's against the law to we can never really know what we need to do. Horatio, so the readiness is all is basically what he says. So is that admirable in Hamlet?
I still read Hamlet as he gets into the modern trap. And the modern trap is he wants assurance, facts, but no cosmology. Yeah. Yeah.
That's good. Because cosmology is one of like emptiness. Yeah. All right.
Well, that's great. So this has been Classical Stuff You Should Know. As always, you can reach us by email at classicalstuff at verifasacademy.net. You can find us online at classicalstuff.net.
You can find us on Twitter at classicalstuff, C-L-S-S-C-A-L-stuff. And I think that is everything I need. That's it. Anything we got?
Do we ever make mistakes? I don't think so. Anything wrong? A thing that I meant to say in the last episode but never did is that the article I referenced many times was Uncovering the Secret History of Myers-Briggs, which is by Mervé Emreau.
Cool. Anyway, that's kind of the thing I got wrong. Well, this has been great. How's the 2019 going?
This is awkward. We're definitely recording this in 2019. We are a weekend and I feel so different. Yes, our New Year's resolutions are going so well.
That's right. That was... I don't know. I don't want to say anything.
Cool. Cool. Well, then for Graham, AJ, and Thomas, this is us. This is Classical Stuff.
And we will see you in the new year. Bye. Bye.