Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act I

Welcome back to the new thing. My name is David Barr with me as always as my good friend Alex pre you. How are you Alex? I was there.

Wait, wait, I am a man with a what is that helmet called again? The beaver. The beaver. The beaver on the part of the part of the part of the part.

Yeah. Yeah. The front part is the beaver David and our very favorite for a beaver Greg McBrayer. How are you?

I'm pretty free. I'm doing well. I also have that nice silver beard like the ghost Hamlet has. You don't break.

I hate Greg McBrayer because even though I like to I'm bald but like Greg only ages in his hair. Have you noticed that like his face looks the same age. Now maybe like garbage in his 20s but his face looks the same age. His hair gets whiter and gray.

Yeah. And if you look at his forehead look how shiny it is. So he's getting shinier a little bit. Yeah.

And but today you look unmistakably like Ryan Reynolds but if he grew up in the East village and was homosexual. So Greg are you growing the beard out? No, I actually meant to get it turned up this week. I'll probably grow it on the fall.

Yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing your turn to beaver. Oh, thanks. I'll be happy to show up on your pick.

No, you are handsome. And we've already told the story about Greg wanting to be an LL Bean. That's true. I would like to be an LL Bean model.

So if you want to listen at LL Bean. And then we're here. He could do it. I mean, these guys in lumberjack shirts and Greg totally you can totally.

Yeah. You're not super handsome guys for LL Bean. They're just like moderately handsome. And LL Bean you can go to Lands End which is a bit down.

Yeah. I think the problem. I think the problem Greg is you're not like male model traditionally good looking but you're also not like inclusivity bad looking. You know what I mean?

Yeah. You're not like David where they'd be like oh he'll make the job a bit about themselves or Alex like the balls and like you know Middle Easterners will be like oh this guy you know reminds me of me. It makes me feel like I can be where a crucial. And Greg we have to cut you down Greg because out of the three of us is in the sounding fact you have the biggest ego.

I got enormous. That's really saying something. So there's the size of Denmark. So that's right.

That's right. That's right. That's why he's a young Fort and bras. So we're doing act one today.

That's right here. Of. Hammy. Hammy.

Yeah. So last time my daughter showed up and I was like hey do you want to see I had a watcher at the beginning and now you're watching your son but my daughter showed up and I said hey. I'm going to talk to my friends about Hamlet. You want to hear him?

I was holding my handle and she recognizes the book and and she says hi to everybody and then she ends up leaving and because you know much like you guys she she tunes out of the show after about five minutes. And then she the next day my wife's work on her computer and she wants to go look at the screen and she says I want to see my friends for Hamlet. I want to talk to my friends for Hamlet. So she thinks of you guys as friends.

So that's awesome. Nice. Nice. We are friends.

Wow. Yeah. Let's get into it. Act one.

Let's do it. Where should we begin at the beginning? I'm going to be seeing being a number of people are keeping guard. There's a changing the guards.

I talked about this when we did the opening episode but it even more amplified to me now. Just the political setting of this whole thing seemed to be really really strong here at the beginning. It's almost like the events are going to happen are sort of a distraction and Shakespeare's seemingly trying to prick our attention to pay attention to foreign affairs. But there's a number of guys got guards and they've seen the ghost of Hamlet the elder Hamlet twice and they're wondering if it'll appear third time and they'd counter Horatio and Horatio and he does see that ghost with him.

So it's not going to begin again. The ghost here's an act one. Now, when do the weir sisters appear in Macbeth? That's another one.

Yeah. Okay. So there's a parallel that I was thinking of last night. It's not the first scene.

It's not in the first scene. I don't believe so. I don't believe so. Or seen as when they're returning from the battlefield.

Oh, okay. So it's not my one to one. But on Greg, on your point, I think that's it's really right that you have no sense in the first scene of any domestic problems. Right.

Shakespeare seems to go out of his way. In fact, at the end, when they're like, let's go find Hamlet. I know where we'll find him. They don't mention where they'll find him, which is the coronation of his uncle after the untimely death of his father.

He could have easily put that in there. In fact, you wouldn't be, I think you could be forgiven for thinking that Hamlet is actually king. Right. There's no indication of the contrary.

So everything is going to be on the domestic, the foreign policy. And in fact, the coming of the ghost is misinterpreted initially as signaling something about foreign policy, which is why they get into the subject in the first place. So you're inclined on the basis of acting on to think, Oh, something's going on. Denmark's about to be invaded.

And the ghost is the elder Hamlet warning his son. And they're going to, this is going to be a form. And then it seemed to completely subverts that. So yeah, I think that's spot on about what's.

Of course, I hate to zip head to all the way to the very, very end. But that is what happens. Actually, it is a form policy as an astro. But yeah, go ahead.

You need to, yeah. But I mean, we talked about this last time about how the political is there throughout, there's constantly recalling this, but you're all everybody's dragged into the Hamlet theme, right? What's going on with Hamlet? And that completely distracts from the real pressing issue.

In fact, there's a funny line in, I think it's an act to after what are their names. Scene to or act to? No, act to in voltamond and corneal, to be sent in act one scene to deal with what's going on with nor when they come back, Loni says, well, that matters well concluded. Obviously ironic.

And Loni says, no idea that this is actually the beginning of the end for this independent alley. Could you just real quick, I'm not jumping all the way to the place, we don't seem to be falling any kind of things to our, but Alex, could you quickly give me a one sentence? What happens in scene one, scene two, scene three, scene four, scene five? So we've got the scene one and then do scene two or?

I was trying to get a dramatic overview, right? Just a quick overview. Yeah. I can do that quickly because it's really only a few few scenes.

There's the last two are kind of one scene. But the first scene, right, the guards meet, they're going to go, they brought her ratio to this is Barnardo and Marcellus. They brought her ratio to go see this ghost that they've seen the past two nights. Our ratio is skeptical, but then he sees the ghost and he's convinced and they decide to go to Hamlet.

scene two is then right after the wedding, it seems like, and there's a bunch of affairs of state that he's wedding. Who's wedding? Sorry, Claudius, the king of Denmark's wedding to the Gertrude, the queen and the widow, the elder Hamlet. They deal with the issue of Norway, Cornelius and Volthomonders, they talk about what whether Lertis can return to France and he does by a colonialist's father's blessing.

And then they deal with Hamlet, who they tell to just stop, you know, mourning his father's death so much and and whom they tell, he can't go back to Vittenberg to his studies. And then Horatio comes in and he says, Hey, how's it going? All this stuff. Anyways, he's surprised to see him and Barnardo and say, Hey, we gotta go show you something.

scene three is really about Polonius's family, him and his two kids, Lertis and Ophelia. Lertis gives some advice to Ophelia watching out about Hamlet and then she gives a quick bit of advice to her brother, Lertis, Polonius that enters and gives his son a long winded bunch of advice to him and then Polonius, Lertis, heads off and Polonius gives some advice to Ophelia again, as well as Hamlet and forbids her from seeing him anymore. Scenes four and five are kind of two sequence scene where Horatio and Marcellus Barnardo's disappeared for some reason take Hamlet to see the ghost. The ghost appears.

Hamlet then runs off after the ghost over the protest of Rachel and Marcellus and then scene five. Hamlet confronts the ghost, the ghost reveals that he has or claims to be the ghost of his dead father, tells him about how he was actually murdered by his brother and tells him to a venge his death, Horatio and Marcellus then come in and Hamlet doesn't reveal what's happened, but then there's this very long demand by the ghost to tell them to swear not to tell anyone and the secrecy becomes a. But it seems that only Hamlet can hear him. Right.

Only Hamlet can hear the injunction, the swear, and then he is relating it to his friends, right? I don't know. Is that true? I didn't pick up on that, but I, yeah.

That's a good question. The scene later on in the book, or in the play, only Hamlet sees and hears him. Maybe that would be worth tracking actually as we go through it. In the beginning of Acts, they all Horatio and the other two guys Barnard and Marcellus, they see Hamlet but then Hamlet with the elder and then Hamlet the elder goes aside with the younger Hamlet and that's conversation between the two of them.

So it would be worth tracking when people can see and or hear the ghost. I think that's something we should do for as we go forward. Yeah, they don't speak. I think it's in a way Horatio speaks twice after the ghost speaks swear.

He says, propose the oath, my lord, and then O day and night, but this is wondrous strange, but it's not clear whether he's referring with wondrous strange to the ghost or to Hamlet acting strange, which he is. We should say something about the first lines, right? It begins with who's there, which is. And then, you know, Alex, really quick, not a creature was stirring that even a mouse.

You have, it's just another little example of. It's just entering that. Yeah, how Shakespeare's words have been to it. Yeah, I would scare.

So it begins with who's there and then that's Barnard, who's speaking to Francisco, Francisco, and he says, they answer me, stand and unfold yourself. And he says, long live the king. They're on watch because they're worried about Norway. There's all these preparations for war.

So it's, yeah, it seems clear that there's a, you know, there's a change in the king. So this is a right time to strike us, the king himself notes in C to, but people often note this that this is a kind of revelation of the whole thing, which is who is Hamlet? What is him? Which is a question he's continually asking himself.

But a young blitz and his excellent book points out that Francisco later says, but this relieve much things to bitter cold and I'm sick of heart. Why is he sick of heart? Well, Bernardo has to have you had a quiet guard and Francisco says not a mouse stirring. It's not the guard that's made him sick of heart.

It's not clear what's bothering him. And we never find out. And I think that's a kind of dark suggestion that if this play is all about the questions who's there and the first time we ask it, we find out that somebody's sick of heart, but we don't know what it is. Does Hamlet ever get to the bottom of who he is?

Does anybody get to the bottom of who he is? Or is he just question mark a sick of heart, but you know, which is a good general characterization, but it's not actually precise. It doesn't tell you what's really is issue with Bob. Right.

Is there anything to the one scene one, I guess, there are never questions I have. One is, is there any significance of the fact that this is now the third appearance of the ghost? It seems like there's something going on with this. Like they've seen him twice in Marcellus and Bernardo, right?

Since it's the first time that Horatio the scholar sees him. If we don't have anything, we can just move on. I mean, after seeing him once you think, Oh God, that was weird. Seeing him twice, you're like, OK, he keeps coming.

Yeah. I think the question then is why did they bring Horatio the scholar? I think that's a fascinating. OK.

And this ties into this theme about like the academic kind of background is a part of the play. Is it because they sort of expect him not to believe in such things? Yeah. I mean, it's explicit.

You won't believe unless he sees they keep telling him a story. But I mean, I guess the question I would ask is in another day and age, you might have brought a priest, right? Or some kind of holding that instead. They really bring a skeptical scholar who's an expert in old books or something like that.

Right. So I was taken by this too. And I had to hear it. So I guess this back, I'm always I never know what to do with the ghosts and Shakespeare or the fantastic, which is the kind of thing.

And I'm always I'm always wondering if there's some ways in which it's shown that it's not actually happening. And I don't really answer this. I mean, we never really see anything of Hamlet, the ghost except part of his face, I guess. Is that right?

Like he's always in he's always dressed in armor. I don't know if always, at least in his first act, he's dressed in armor. I think his face is mostly shielded. And I think he's only part of his face.

I'll come up with my copy, maybe theory later. There are grave diggers and they are there is access to skulls. I don't want to put my cards too much on the tail, but in any event, right? Like Marcellus and Bernardo want to go to Horatio because they think he'll be a disbeliever, but then they call him a scholar.

This is around line 40, 42, something like that. Or a scholar speak to it Horatio. Bernardo says, looks a not like the king make market ratio Horatio says, most like it harrows me with fear and wonder. And so, you know, the wonder obviously strikes me as somewhat philosophical.

Maybe he is a scholar, but scholar also means someone who I mean, it's elasticism, right? And so there's this couple of fear and wonder. He's not just, he's not just amazed by it. He's also afraid of it.

And so I was, I think we've talked on this episode before about law. Let me just add one thing to the point that it heroes. I think that's, that's important. Yeah.

Okay. Why is that important? Because I think if you combine fear and wonder in a minor way, that I think a plausible human experience, like if you saw a massive whale come next to your ship, that would be cool. But when it heroes you, which is a very strong word, I think it implies the divine, right?

Okay. So in other words, Horatio, who they take to be a skeptic, I mean, I guess maybe this could shake anybody, but I don't know what kind of universal and are there actually ghosts. This seems to reveal that he's at least open to this kind of thing to me. Yeah.

And it's an expeech. He swears by heaven. Right. This is the guy who doesn't believe anything based on hearing.

I mean, earlier in the scene, he says, Bernardo says, let us once again, a senior year is that are so fortified against our story, but we have to not seen. So they have this direct visual experience of this goes. And then are communicating a story. He won't believe it.

Then he sees it and he's harrowed swears by heaven. And then they ask him about it. And he eventually goes, and this is a little later online. One to a line.

He says, a motive is to trouble the mind's eye. So this is something that's troubling his philosophic act. You could say in the most high and palm state of Rome, a little air the mightiest Julius fell, the grave stood tenetless and the sheet of dead did squeak and jive in the Roman streets as stars with trains of fire and dues of blood disasters in the sun. And the moist star upon his influence, Neptune's empire stands with sick almost to the doomsday with eclipse and even the light precursor of feared events, right?

As harbingers proceeding, still the fates and prologue to the omen coming on. So he starts talking about prophecies and magical things that he's obviously read about, heard about, but not seen. So I think this affects a big change in her ratio seeing this for sure. Now he, you know, right?

That famous line that Hamlet says there are more things in the world than a Trump dollar in your philosophy. I think this shows that he was a kind of dogmatic skeptic. And now he's starting to take the stories, the things he's heard seriously. One small point is that I was apparently in another edition, it's our philosophy in a different folio, not your philosophy.

But the other point I'm going to say is, Horatio, I think we mentioned this in the overview episode, is a kind of Roman character. And he eludes in the lines that you just read to Julius Caesar, no? So there must be some kind of any sites in Neptune as well, right? So Poseidon, but the Roman version.

I don't know what to do with this right now, but his mind is Roman, it goes immediately to Roman examples. And what other ways does this play parallel Julius Caesar? Or it seems, I mean, Shakespeare, there's another reference later in the book, right? To Brutus and stuff like this.

I think that's probably the closest play to this one. Because he's an assistant reference. Can you tell me what ways in which are we supposed to compare these two plays? Then?

Yeah, I don't know. That's, I mean, it's almost like, I'll just, I mean, since we're not this aren't academic papers we're writing, right? We're just talking. Is he kind of like the anti-seaser in some way?

That's an interesting. Hamlet the younger that is. Yeah, I mean, that is the Julius Caesar plays seems to be. It's actions that seem to lead to all kinds of problems here.

It seems that inaction is what leads to problems. That's the most obvious first thing, but David was trying to jump in. Sorry. I was changing, I had to disappear because I was changing a diaper.

So you guys have probably discussed this. I think we discussed in the first episode the, during the confrontation with the operation, they almost told a lack or told a lack of any Christian motifs, right? Because you would think you see a ghost and as a believing Christian, you just don't believe your eyes, right? It's something else like a piece of undigested beef.

And they make to stab the ghost too. But they don't say, the Lord is my protector or anything like this. And you just spoke about the implications of the Greek and Roman deities. And I know you had brought this up.

I will probably stupid to have brought that up since I'm not going anywhere with it. Well, I think somebody once mentioned that one of the reasons the ghost would be difficult is because there's no something connected to Protestantism, like in the denial of ghosts or something like that. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. That might be so there's a connection to even to Fittenberg there. And so Horatio could have that. I forget who suggested this to me.

I've been getting all sorts of messages about Hamlet from when I was hosting about it on Twitter. But it's funny. Their reaction is to try and kill it. Well, they are on guard, right?

I mean, that's a lot of funnier things here. Yeah. So I mean, to go entirely out of order here, but in scene four, act one, scene four, when Hamlet, the younger does meet the Hamlet, the ghost. Am I wrong?

I'm in the wrong scene. She's always the girl you're cracking up with. We'll see five as many converses with him. Okay, so the conversation and scene five, so I was thinking maybe.

Yeah. Okay. So there is this, this is act one, scene five, around line 77. Just above that.

He's the brother's hand of life of crown of queen. It once dispatched, cut off even in the blossoms of my sin. So he hasn't yet had time to repent. He's still in the middle of doing all the nasty stuff.

Unhousled, disappointed, unanled, which I think is David's favorite way to do it. And but the unhousled here, and I may even be pronouncing that wrong, but apparently that's something without having taken the communion. So the ghost himself does make reference to his, the Christian sorts of things. And to your point also, David, at the very end of act one, oh gosh, I don't see one.

Yeah. Act one scene one, Marcellus, this is round line 162, 163. I think we've ever discovered this in the overview of so as well. He says here, the Knights are wholesome, then no planet strike, no fairy takes, nor which have power to charm.

So it seems like Marcellus, like we are in this weird world where we've left a lot of this stuff behind magically, but there is still this ghost. So what do you make of the lack of Christian stuff going on in the first encounter, the ghost? Yeah. I mean, there's no suggestion of what its origin is.

I think even after there's a reference to purgatory that he brings up, there's one point in act one scene one where you get a sense of, because he says later that it went, yes. So here's this, a round line 165 in mind. So I think mine is a little bit. Yeah, our numbers a little different.

So we're in our Savior's birth to celebrate right there. Yeah. He says here, I was about to speak when the cock crew, the unanal, anal cock, I think, and then it started like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons. So there's an implication that this soul or the spirit that's not in heaven or in hell, but still lingering about has guilt and has been summoned with fearfulness.

I have heard the cock as we all have that is the trumpet to the morn, doth with his lofty and shrill sounding throat awake the God of day and at his morning, whether in sea or fire in earth or air, the extravagant and airing spirit, highs to his confines. I know the truth here in this present object made probation. So I think there's a suggestion here that he's aware that it's a guilty soul that's lingering about Aaron's soul that then now needs to return with the day to its prison. And Marcel's response, by the way, is faded on the crowing of the cock.

Some say that ever against the season comes where in our Savior's birth is celebrated. So there's at least in my edition, and I know that we're using different ones, there's a very clear direct reference to Christ. Yeah, these things, so that famous line something is rotten in the state of Denmark. And apparitions in uncanny unnatural events seem to take place whenever there's political turmoil.

What happens in Thucydides again? Like eclipses things that people hadn't seen. There's nothing. Are there any unnatural things happening in Thucydides?

I can't remember. Like this is the sea doesn't boil or anything. But he does leave open a certain natural phenomenon. Right.

Supernatural. And people take them as such. That's clear. Nisseus takes on eclipses as a sign.

That's right. And people take an earthquake as a sign. Yeah. And then the any bounds of morality are going to throw out the window and those just street vengeance.

Did you jump the scene to? Yeah, I'll jump off here on scene two. I think we talked about this in the early years as well. But here it came out clear to me the king, which in Act 1, scene 2, the king is now Claudius.

He begins by saying though, he had a hamlet, our dear brother's death, the memory be green. Our ostensibly refers to him and his wife. And there's some weird incest stuff going on. Just a few lines down, line 8, that we with wise of sorrow think on him together with remembrance of ourselves.

Therefore, our sometimes sister now our queen. He alludes to his wife as also kind of his sister. And he says something along lines similar to Hamlet, the younger about his son. This is in line 64.

But now my cousin Hamlet and my son. Now you're my son. And so there is, I do think there is some sort of illusion. That's not so subtle illusions.

Some direct explicit illusions to incest. Naturally, I picked up on that. So real, there's a real. I don't understand.

I just, I don't get it. I'm just having my joke. I'm sorry. No, there's a real hunter-boe situation going on here.

Yeah. I don't, I really don't get the inside. I mean, there's nothing in sessions about it. It's just married his brother's wife.

I wonder if this isn't speaking up with the Christian. That's unseemly, but it's not incestuous. I should have looked this up. I think in the common place, at least in scripture, that sometimes you'd hear it.

It's an expectation in scripture in some places, actually. This is, this is, I think, a really difficult question because it is only explicitly referred to as incestuous by the younger Hamlet. So, and I think there's, there's, it's ambiguous. Some people say, well, this was a custom, whatever.

He does, he does in this speech refer to those present as, as having permitted the marriage. I'm trying to find it. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, nor have we here in barred your better wisdom's, which have freely gone with this affair along.

So you've permitted it, right? So I think there's a suggestion there that maybe this might not have been permitted. Right. But yeah, one, at one point, the queen will say to the king, Gertrude to Claudius in private, our marriage was, or hasty.

Doesn't refer to as an incestuous, right? So in confidence, you're saying we made a mistake, but the mistake was not marrying her, her dead husband's brother. The mistake that it was too soon. So I think it's, it's really open.

It's a question here, whether this is just incestuous in the young Hamlet's mind or a custom or what's going on. Right. Yeah. But the play itself is drawing art.

I mean, even though the king doesn't explicitly say it, I mean, this is pretty, I mean Shakespeare is putting in his mouth some things that definitely get fodder to Hamlet's claims of incest. Absolutely. Yeah. So it's almost like, again, like, I mean, this would be a theme for ancient tragedy, but David, you know, Shakespeare much better than I do.

I don't think there are any, I mean, this is a consistent theme of Greek tragedy, right? And a problem at least. Is there anything like this in Shakespeare? Is this the closest we get?

Well, I don't understand. Are there any other plays where incest is a theme or a problem for Shakespeare? I can't think of any. Yeah.

I don't know if the top of my head. Yeah. So I'm just wondering if again, the display seems to stand in the middle ground between his Roman plays and his Christian plays are between the Greek world and the modern world. If this is another sign of that straddling, so incest is also being straddled as it were.

Take a southern boy and make that joke. Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, I think this is a kind of Renaissance issue, right, where you have this newly developed, very strong connection to the ancient world on a broader level through this kind of study that creates or raises these ideals and these narratives that then start to operate. I mean, another way to put this is maybe one of the reasons Hamlet is especially offended at the events is because of his government.

I was just going to say, like he's trying to make this more of a Greek tragedy kind of thing than it actually is. Like he's wanting it to be an incestuous problem because then it does have these tragic elements, right? I mean, he's, he's, any of us, and he's, or something like that. Yeah.

And I think one of the obvious things going on here is that Hamlet is trying to, deciding how to act is, is deciding what he wants his story to be. And so he often reflects on it using literary illusions or biblical illusions, even, but he uses these illusions as a way to, to think about what his life means, right? So even, even we saw this last time when we were talking about when Claudius refers to his offense as having the primal eldest curse on it, he's thinking of it in terms of a biblical narrative, like, oh, I'm going to get the same comeuppance, right? As Cain did.

When you start thinking about the purpose of your life in terms of these various traditions, you really are just trying to find what book to put yourself into, what book you belong. That's a good point. I didn't know if there was also a political aspect to it. Is he guaranteed to inherit the kingdom when his uncle dies?

Because if he's not, there's, there could be another motivation behind this too. There are these references to elections. So the place seems to be somewhat ambiguous points in the direction that maybe the king has actually chosen, to some degree or in some way, by others. Yeah.

So I think, I think it's maybe similar to McBeth, where it's moving from an elected monarchy to a hereditary monarchy. All right. Because he does say it as the scene, you are the most immediate to a throne, which could mean, hey, you are the closest person to us. It could mean that you're going to get this when I pass on, right?

And in addition later on, somebody says, but he's been promised to throne. So it does feel like though it is elected, there is also this moving in the direction of presumption that the son of the king will take the king's place. How about Hamlet's, I mean, he's, he certainly shows up on stage. The first thing he does kind of does is make a joke a little more than can and less than kind.

Can't tell me times I've heard that. And he sort of just seems like a petulant young man. Oh, yeah, totally. Right.

And the king and the queen are saying, just do chill out, chill out, chill out. He makes some jokes about the son. And then we get this rather long soliloquy around line 129. Is there anything leading up to this little quay or anything in the soliloquy that's worthy of mention?

We know that the king would like for him not to go back to school in Wittenberg. Both the king and the queen want Hamlet to stay close by. It's not clear any why. Maybe if they were shrewd or they would want to get rid of him and send him back to Wittenberg.

No, I really think so. I thought that his radar is in tennis are up. I want to see him as a petulant young man too. But his father passed on.

We don't know what he suspects yet. But we might venture to suggest that he suspects his dad was killed in a natural way. Well, it might only probably happen. So you would be angry and you wouldn't want to go to Wittenberg.

I mean, I thought that the king, he's fearful that the king is going to hatch a plan. I mean, the king is eager to keep him around because he wants to kill him. But Hamlet seems legitimately surprised when the ghost tells him that Claudius has killed his father. So the petulant at this point seems to maybe write that he does hard with the suspicion.

But to me, the petulant seems to be, I can't believe my mom is marrying so quickly. I think I don't know. I think that's the event. So in act three or two, I believe he gives this speech.

What a piece of work is man, right? That speech where he says I used to think the world was basically man is the jewel of the world and the world is a beautifully organized cosmos. He's then after the death of his father, which it could have been a snake. He's like, Oh God, this is horrible.

Like what, you know, so it is people die. Do I looked up deadly snakes in Denmark and the most poisonous snake, the European adders, not really that deadly, the people. So that was the trouser. The trouser, Snake.

I thought it was Adler. Snake bite. Snake bite. But anyways, then his mom marries his uncle.

He's like, what the hell is going on here? It's been two months. I also moved on with my uncle of all people to the point of marriage to, which I think implies infidelity before the death. And I think it even implies this is a thesis I'll saw later.

I think it's possible that Claudius is Hamlet's dad because Hamlet was conceived. Hamlet's dad. And Hamlet was conceived while the elder Hamlet was on campaign. It looks like.

Get out of here. Hamlet was fighting Norway when Hamlet was around the time that Hamlet was conceived. So, get it, Alex. So, but let's leave that aside.

That's just a theory. But the point being is that Hamlet's world has just collapsed, right? And so he's drawn by this point that, and this is in his first speech and comes out, that you can be, you can have an almost perfect exterior to a person and they're not what you thought, including your mother. And so in his first soliloquy, when he's wishing for death, he says the line, this line, this line, one 29 or so.

So act one, C two. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, that this two, two, Selly flesh would melt thaw and resolve itself into a do I wish I would just melt away naturally or that the everlasting had not fixed his can against self slaughter, or I wish it weren't forbidden by divine law. And here's the point I want to draw attention to. Oh, God, God, how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world. Phi on it off by to an unweeded garden that grows to seed.

Things rank in gross in nature possess it merely. So what's he saying there? I thought the world was a beautiful place, but it is an unweeded garden and it is owned by those who are rank and gross in nature, all the uses of this world by which I take to me, I take him to mean that the way you're supposed to behave in this world is actually unprofitable. And that ultimately evil rains his worldview has been shattered.

And so when he's making these jokes, these double entendres, I think he's showing how like a word that can mean something perfectly benign can also point to something low, right? He's constantly punting and he's that's his way of on a linguistic level of talk about what happens in an experiential level that his own mother turns out to be rank and gross in nature and he never suspected this. And in that soliloquy, we see also that kind of like a ratio, Hamlet's standards are classical. Right, I mentioned this in the previous episode, but he refers to Hyperion, Naomi and Hercules.

And so you see that his stand like right, Claudius is no more like my father than I to Hercules. And so his standards are these Greek heroes. So this is not Christian, by the way. Yeah, on the one hand, but on the other hand, there is also this reference to like a fallen state of man from the garden, right?

So I think it's showing him trapped, but when he's inclined to action or when he wishes he could do something, he takes on a pagan. Right. Yeah, that's very good. Okay.

There's anything else in that he speaks with Hamlet or to speak with a ratio, I guess, and the rest of seeing to is there anything else worth going on there? Something I noticed on this reading around one line, 182 at when he first encounters a show, and he says, Oh, what are you doing here in Elsinor? We'll teach you to drink deep air, you depart. We're going to get you wasted by nothing, which is, I think, alluding to the celebration that takes place and that we hear about in the next scene that there's going to be a lot of drinking going on.

I think this is an indication that Hamlet, though he's really upset about what's going on, he's kind of getting to the point where he might move on a little bit, right? He's going to say celebration. He's going to try to go along with it. I think even though the garden is unbeated, I think there's a way in which an unweated garden still has flowers in it.

I think one such flower for Hamlet might be Ophelia with whom he has some sort of romantic relationship. Now, Polonius is going to forbid that and that's going to really upset Hamlet where he realized even that flower is duplicitous, right? That even that was a was a weed. I wonder whether though he's lamenting what his mother has done, a he's the marriage or an inappropriate marriage, he is not as bad as a fratricide slash register.

Right, for sure. He's wheeling, I think, therefore to maybe move on, though not happily, but just live with his situation such as an interesting. All right. So, scene three, sort of family affair, Lertis Ophelia and Flonius, right?

So, brother, warning sister, father, warning son, father, warning daughter, something like that, right? And then there's three different warning slash conversations. Anything worthy of note of that people being introduced, we learned that Lertis is worried about his sister. They both seem to be worried that Hamlet is dishonestly trying to bad her, I guess, for lack of a better word.

Yeah. And that his intentions aren't sincere. Are there any other, is there anything else I'm missing here? I mean, do they recognize that there might be political shenanigans afoot and that this might be best as to your clear panel?

The grounds for steering clear panel, it seemed to be only that he's this drunken party in college boy. I think it's more Polonius's view. Okay. Lertis also raises the issue of his position.

He says, he says, after saying like, oh, he might change his mind, he goes, perhaps he loves you now and now no soil, no soil nor coddle doth besmirch the virtues of his, well, maybe he's being honest, but you must fear his greatness weighed, his will is not his own, for he himself is subject to his birth. He may not as unvalued persons do carve for himself for on his choice depends the safety and the health of the whole state, meaning that, you know, look, the guys got to marry sensibly. He might have to marry for an alliance, right? Yeah.

Therefore, you'll be tossed to the side, you know, be, and then, you know, people will besmirch your name. He says a little later virtue itself, scapes not Columbia strokes, right? People will ruin your reputation for this. And so you're going to end up the worst of this overall, whereas I think it's Polonius, who's really like, he's a little bit.

Yeah. That's funny. But there is this, there is this undertone throughout this scene. And I think about the whole play of kind of sexual permissiveness.

And you do get a sense that Denmark is me being a kind of morally decadent time. Ophelia says to Lertis who's rushing back to France and we know what the ladies in France, you know, there is a place in France. You're red, buddy. I guess you read.

Yeah. There's a place in France where the naked ladies dance and Lertis head over. He says, she says to him, but good my brother, after he goes on it like good, my brother, some ungracious pastors do show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, which is, I think, a kind of mix of a classical and. Yeah, that sounds like a hurt the Hercules thing from, yeah, path to virtue.

Yeah, steep and thorny way to heaven wows like a puffed and reckless libertine himself, the primrose path of dalliance treads and wrecks not his own read. In the beginning of act two, Lertis has got to send money to, I'm sorry, Polonius has to send money to Lertis. It's been about two months to find out. He's got to send money to Lertis and he's like, go find out what he's been doing with all this money.

See if he's been like partying and gambling. So there is, I think, a sense that Lertis has lived in the highlight in France. Right. That's one does.

What about the fatherly advice that Polonius gives to Lertis, huh? Yeah. What do you think of these? You got any good ones?

I mean, I sort of, I mean, it's nice and poetic and wax is philosophical, but I don't know. I kind of want to hear from all our, but if memory serves David, that was just crap. No, that's not true. When I was younger, I thought it was touching and some of the suggestions, of course, are sounds, but you can read it certainly in a light where it's just he picked up the local medieval Hallmark cards and then just collated.

It is. I will say it seems to be an interesting sort of set of parallels. Do X don't do Y. Do X don't do Y, right?

I mean, what it really is is an insight into how he understands politics. Okay. Let's hear it. And just strategize it.

My kid is, I got to come. Well, tell him until I know himself be true and send him on his merry way, David. Yes. Send that kid to a fight.

I may. I may, like I put Cookie Monster in his bed to freak him out. I may just come in his room like a ghost tonight. I heard David gives his son the advice.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice, but he changes ear for a different body part. Jesus. God. How is going on?

I mean, we need a lot of crash jokes. I don't child. And Greg's really, look at him. He's hamming it up, Alex.

Change it from ear with the voice thing. I don't understand. Another McBrayer classic. So one thing I'll say about this, I think David, you got to go be well, you know, now I can chill for four minutes.

Okay. One thing is we find out Polonius has gone to college that he did a bit of acting in college. She's obviously well, yes, that crazy line where he talks about all the different kinds of theater. It's at the end of act two, he goes, the best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral, historical, historical, historical, historical, historical, historical, pastoral, seen indivitable or poem unlimited.

So that cannot be too heavy or plot is too light. And so he's obviously read it felt like a kind of cliff snook or like a notebook version of like, adages he had worked out from like reading old books. It reads like wisdom, literature, doesn't it? Wait, oh, she's having a good time in this, uh, uh, with the speech, he gives them good time, Willie.

Take in the sphere. So people called him. Are you heard that Shakespeare is like a good joke? Yes.

All right. So should we jump on to the bacon made? Yeah. Is that right?

Yeah. Of course, right. You guys have heard fall staff Shakespeare equivalent, right? No.

Oh, okay. So if you've heard this, I apologize. This is taking us outside of this play, but I've often thought that fall staff is actually the equivalent of Shakespeare himself. Like he's the wise man.

And then you think about it, and you look up to fall actually in old English, apparently one of the definitions was to shake. And so fall of staff Shakespeare, like it's the same, like he's writing himself into the place. Yeah, that's, that's interesting. But do you remember what happens to fall staff?

Right? The king kind of, uh, no, he kind of forgets about him. You know, he doesn't listen to him. He is his, he's an opera, while his advisor, but then like politics, he doesn't seem to have the same effect on the, but it seems to be a critique of the king for doing that to his old friend, right?

Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

So you need me. I'm your boy. Billy Shakespeare. He loved me.

You're gonna play love game? You know, Greg, I know you don't do drugs. I didn't know that. You're in a good mood today, which is, I mean, that's awesome.

Well, you know, we've been recording like 10 o'clock at night and nine 30 is my bedtime. So I was like, I energy Greg. Oh, yeah, this is my energy Greg's. It's the afternoon.

I've had coffee, had lunch, I can't wait to get to acid. When he worked out hard and I worked out hard. Yeah. Sorry.

So let's see. What do you want to go to? This act. Okay, let's do it.

We can do this. Let me just, for the beginning of scene four, I'll just note that there is this common theme of reputation and appearance and judging the interior of a person starts with who's there. There's the warning. That's the who's there stuff in scene one and scene two.

You get this seam speech seems not over this in the first episode we did. But there it's about how you can actually show your interior suffering with a kind of impeccable surface and it turns out and what things you might not be able to see in three as we saw. There's the worry about a few of those reputation scene four. We get this custom of drinking and firing off cannons.

It looks like and he says, him, worries. He says they club his drunkards and with swine sprays soil, our addition, meaning their virtues. And indeed, it takes from our achievements though performed at height the pith and marrow of our attribute. And so, the chances in particular man, therefore, some vicious mole of nature in them.

So basically saying the rest of the world's stamp of one defect. Yeah. Anyways, yeah. You go.

The rest of the world's gonna think we're Hicks. Yes. And so like if I, if I may, like Hamlet's the guy who's gone off to some fancy college and has come back to his own town and be like, you guys are a bunch of dumb yokels. I think that's right.

Yeah. I mean, it's, this is Northern Europe, right? It's cold. This is a harsh client.

Yeah. These are not the court known for their flourishing. Right. And so then you mentioned one of the things one of the possibilities is he being seriously considered a friendship.

And maybe there's a kind of healthy detachment from your own country that could be useful if you're king. But this kind of despising of your country is probably not healthy for a potential king or something like this. I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. This whole custom that he's just right. Right. And there's, but I think there's also, there's what they sort of, that's one characteristic.

Another characteristic is this is crazy perfectionism, right? Like Michael Jordan loves to gamble, right? Yeah. I don't think therefore that he's a bad basketball, but you can have vices or flaws that don't seriously undermine your virtues, right?

Or completely undermine the general virtues, right? There is a, and so in act two, it begins with, colonialist saying, go spread these rumors about my son and the guy's like, isn't this going to ruin his reputation? No, just a little bit. Like everybody knows young people will crows a little.

That's not a big problem. Right. And so I think there's a, there's a more balanced view, but you know, Hamlet is, I think he's so distraught by the way his mother turned around that he's fallen into a kind of perfectionism of appearance that is part of his downfall because you can't have a perfect appearance, right? Appearances like words, admit of ambiguity, word play and therefore suspicion, right?

But it doesn't matter how great of a, of an individual you are, there's going to be your detractors. You know, it's how it always is. Sure. Something people note that's, I think, right?

Horatio is Danish, but it's completely unaware of this custom, even though foreigners know about it. Horatio is, yeah. Yeah. It's very strange.

He seems strangely alienated. So you mentioned this, I think it's even more true. Horatio that he's kind of distance from Denmark, even though he's a day. He doesn't, he's not even aware of its basic customs.

That's kind of funny. Yeah. That's good. I didn't even notice.

I mean, I had an underlying mark that just hadn't thought it out. Yeah. I mean, he's not as shy as a person. He's like, we do that?

Oh, that's cool. I didn't know that. Yeah. Very good.

What else should we talk about? I mean, we should probably wrap up soon. You brought this up earlier. Maybe you have more thoughts on it.

I'll just know the thing about him being in purgatory where he didn't have a chance to atone for his sins. The ghost is in purgatory, right? Yeah. Yeah.

And he says, no reckoning made but sent to my account with all my imperfections on my head. And then he says, oh horrible, oh horrible, most horrible. Right? Yeah.

You did not even call it incest, by the way. He also calls it incest. Yeah, that's right. He says a little later, when he gives him advice to get revenge, he says, taint not thine mind, nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother on.

I think what he's saying is, there is don't sin like me. Right. That's really important because what I think what bothers him most is not even so much the betrayal of his brother as the fact that he's suffering in purgatory. Right.