On today's episode of the New Thinkery, we're discussing Shakespeare's Hamlet Act 4. Just the three fellas all around. Let's get into it. Cue the music, Jake.
Welcome back to the New Thinkery. And Buenos Dinton Dias. My name is David Barr. And with me is always this my compadre, Alex Prio.
How are you doing, Alex? Buen Jourmeos, in your? And Googling, Googling, Moo-gli, to you, Greg. Good friend.
How are you doing? Guten-tag, here, David Barr. Yeah, right. Yeah.
We should talk about... I got two things to talk about, David today. We got to have a bit of an outside nandas with our Nazi friend here. He's got a seat that needs a confrontation sorting out.
But we need to talk about your new white supremacist, Proud Boy haircut. What's going on here? Well, another time in places, it's just a Marine buzz cut, Alex. But we went typifying me in this way.
I was sick and tired of paying for haircuts. You know, I still get those Alex. I'm like, I'm going to save up for those $10,000 couches, right? And I thought that I'd buy clippers and try it myself.
And I don't know how to cut hair. And so I didn't know what these one through five things are. I cut it out of two minutes rather short. And yeah.
So Alex is saying I look far right nationalist. Either that or you kind of look because you've lost some weight, you kind of look like either a nationalist or like Tom Hanks in like the act of the real... There we go. I know that's what I want.
Those are really insulting choices. Yeah. But there's another thing I want to confront you about more germane to the subject matter, which is you've been reading a play of Shakespeare's... Oh, yeah, I knew this was going to happen.
Yeah, I knew it was going to happen. How's it going? Haven't heard a lot about it lately. Yeah, I did one play.
I did one play. But he only wrote like four or five plays. Well, yeah. I mean, Shakespeare himself not Francis Bacon, sure.
I just read all the Francis Bacon ones. We should do Tumona Bathins. That's the one you read? Yeah, it's fairly short.
I wanted to do a Shakespeare play a day. But with kids, I just... If you want to be wise, you can't have children or you just can't be a good father. You guys noticed that as parents?
Yeah. I don't know, Alex names pretty wise. Yeah, what's a secret? It's not a secret.
It's not a secret. I'm now a bereft of wife in house. And so I'm bereft. Isn't that the word?
I don't know. Maybe not in this case. It's no longer to have, right? Yeah, that's not.
It's right. Yeah. So I found myself with a lot of time on my hands. That's much time his Hamlet had to plot?
Yeah, and to Fondol Ophelia. That's a professional segue, ladies and gentlemen, right there. That is a segue into the show. Do you think...
How's this for a starter? Do you think he and... Yes. Ophelia have made the beast with two backs?
Yes. Yeah, well, what are you basing that on? I feel like there's evidence. But I want to see if you've got...
So we should maybe situate where we are. We're at four. At four. Of Hamlet.
Why don't you find that out? I'll give a quick overview. So that we've set the table. I just remember I wrote in the margins, did they do the dirty?
That's what I... Yeah. So I'll set the table or to use language more familiar to David. I'll set the trough and then we can dine on this, these scraps.
So yeah, act four is seven scenes. There's sort of initial three scenes that deal with Polonius' death, Hamlet's reaction to it, where the body is held, et cetera. Then there's a central scene, that's for you, Greg. A scene four where Hamlet sort of crosses paths with Fortin-Bross' troops and encounters his captain, who's heading into Norway to alert them, that they're passing through.
And you get Hamlet's reaction in his final soliloquy, where he seems to resolve himself yet again on finally killing Claudius. And then we get three final scenes, which have to do with Ophelia's madness, Lertie's return and desire for revenge, for his father's death and then for Ophelia's madness, as well as Hamlet's return, which is sort of signaled by a series of letters that come in. There's also some strange behind the scenes machinations, which I can't completely make sense of, but maybe something to talk about. And then it ends with a sort of plot hatched by Lertie's and Claudius to kill Hamlet, so as to read Claudius of his pesky nephew and to satisfy Lertie's with revenge.
It's in many ways a transitional act. It's kind of following up the consequences of Act III and the stage of Act V, though I do think it has some very important and interesting themes in its right. Well, I found a couple places where I just enter after. Let's give back to the film.
We can go more in order to do one, but this is Act IV, scene V. I'm using the Pelican Shakespeare, so our lines are probably not the same. I'm around line 65. A king is speaking to Ophelia.
She's just sung a song, which maybe, I have my notes here, maybe a suicide note. She's sung a song tomorrow, St. Valentine's Day, all in the morning, the time. And I am made at your window to be your Valentine.
Then up he rose and Don just closed and ducked to the chamber door. Letting the maid, that out of maid, never departed more. So she came in and she's no longer a maid, I guess. So that's one bit of small evidence.
And then the king says, pretty Ophelia. And then she sings another song with the answer, so what I had done by Yonderson and now it's not come to my bed. So that's one place where I wonder if she's alluded to the fact that Hamlet and she have, you know, had nighttime teamly time together. Yeah, that's the same line I was looking at.
And I had to put the book down, I was so shocked. Yeah, mine has pictures in it. So I have a question. I have a premarital intercourse.
Yeah, most of their just drawings. I have David's old version, actually. I feel like postmarital intercourse is the greater scandal. In my life, yeah.
So I have a question for you guys. Do you think it's, do you think that Hamlet engaged in Ray Pine? Is he really falling out these Magi-Valient clues? I'm standing serious.
No, no. I think they had conceptual affections with that. Do you think they needed? I think he's a lunatic?
I think they got it. Yeah. He is prone to fits of passion. Well, yeah.
He did kill somebody. You said we've had this discussion before. We got it danced around this issue where the question of, is Hamlet crazy or not? And if he is, because at least initially, it's clear that his antique disposition is a sort of right.
I think Act 4 is maybe the first place where you can completely make the case that he's oozing it a little bit. Yeah. At least, you know. Percipitated maybe by the murder at the end of Act 3?
Yeah, Polonius' murder. And sort of processing what he's done, I think. Right. But in the Black 3, he's got this line that he says to Trudy as he's split, and where he says, I must be cruel to be kind.
So he has this sense that somehow if he tortures people's conscience, that will get them to repent and is a kind of kindness. And it's a sort of a way for him to reconcile his attraction to obligations to pagan versus Christian virtue. In Act 4, we find out he's been crying and distraught about Polonius' death, but then he's also joking about it. But he does that a lot where he's very emotional by himself, and then he's very playful and he gets distance on it at times.
I don't know. Is he nuts you think there? I'm inclined to that view. And so I'll push back the other way.
If one want, I don't know. You could intentionally put on these different acts in front of people. But I guess you're just on these different and private or if it indicates that maybe it's not intentional. Just to put the question back on you, Alex, and it's obviously it's the question of Hamlet's sanity as a popular one.
Why do you think it's so important to unravel? This is a constant fascination for God. Oh, is he mad? Or was the source of his madness?
Well, OK, so if he is mad, what would that do to your interpretation of the play? So I think that's a sober about a quite good actor. Yeah, I mean, there's a, so one issue, I think, is that he seems to definitely be really distraught and distressed in some way, if not mad. The difficulty is he's also very much in possession of himself in other ways, right?
So I think one of the issues of this play as well as Shakespeare's play is there are these subtle suggestions of things happening off stage that sort of inform, where's Horatio doing hanging out with Gertrude, for example? And he goes off to talk to the messenger who brings the letters. We don't know what they've said or if it even impacts anything at all. There's all these different machinations that you want to try to make sense of them.
And a lot of them involve Hamlet as well, right? Being kidnapped by these pirates. That might be something he plotted and he then executed. He has a kind of self-possession that makes it hard for me, personally, to buy that he's ever insane, though maybe he's extremely distraught and acting erratically, though I would have called that madness, right?
Like a loss of all sense or something. Does that make sense? Yeah. He's just erratic.
Yeah. And he's also thinking through. So if you go to like Act Four, Scene 3, he brings back the stuff about Kings and Beggars that came up in Act. It was the Act Two, the Shadows of Kings and Beggars and Heroes of Beggars' Shadows.
This is where we get the reference to the Diet of Worms. But he says, he says, we fat all creatures else to fat us and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes but to one table. That's the end.
A man may fish with the worm that have eat of a king and eat of the fish that have fed of the worm. What does that mean by this? This is quite is nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar. So there's this like kind of nihilism.
And like. And yet immediately then, but the king then has the worst plania, so in heaven. So like there's this whole like nihilistic like we're just worms and dirt and this and the other. What about Plonius?
Where's he? Oh, he's in heaven. Yeah. Yeah.
He's not in your gut getting eaten. Yeah. So it's very strange. As though I might guess is that the reason he's sort of destroyed about Polonius is that Polonius didn't really deserve to be killed to them when he thought it was Claudius.
And it's a kind of happenstance that shows a kind of meaninglessness to events, though there might be this divine order beyond it. That definitely makes it hard for him to be this sort of like kind of agent of repentance, right? He wields guilt like a sword when he's the actual sword can just kill it random. Right, right.
So this is interesting. And as your question was crazy, is he erratic? He's deeply moral and he's very much concerned with dessert, as you mentioned. And like, does the Polonius deserve to die?
Does Claudius deserve to die? Not dessert with a bunch of strawberries and ice cream on it. Like David is worried about, but like, you know, just desserts. And so I was reminded that one of our followers on Twitter from the Leo Strauss Foundation, is that Minkoff?
It runs that? Yeah. OK. So he pointed our folks, our followers, to an interesting remark that Strauss makes about Hamlet, in fact, in the problem of Socrates.
I'm just going to read from this. This is his quote of Strauss and problem Socrates. In the problem of Socrates, where spiritedness and indignation are related to, quote, thwarted desire. So here's Strauss talking about spiritedness and indignation, which are related to this question of morality and moral dessert.
The ambiguity of spiritedness shows itself most strikingly in the shift from justified indignation to unjustified indignation. And is stated most directly in Hamlet's soliloquy in Act 3, scene one, quote, Hamlet enumerates seven things which make life almost impossible to bear. Almost all of them are objects of moral indignation, the oppressors wrong, and so on. But in the center, he mentions the pings of despised love.
Dejustified indignation about injustice shifts insensibly into the unjustified indignation about unrequited love. This is perhaps the deepest secret of spiritedness. And therefore, at least one of the deepest secrets of Plato's Republic, end quote. And Minkoff has said, also check out Sonnet 66, which I haven't had pulled up with folks on here.
But in other words, do we want to connect this to his erratic behavior, to his craziness? It's his indignation or his sense of moral dessert. And it's his notion that the world does not support his sense of justice, as this bound up with his going crazy. And now he himself has been the instrument of undeserved injustice he's killed for no good reason.
Yeah, I think that's got to be the problem, is that he thought the world was a beautifully organized whole. And then this thing happened where his dad died and then immediately his uncle, two months later, marries his mom. And he's horrified. Everything is terrible.
And he's searching for moral order. And among the many disappointments he endures is Ophelia's rejection of him, which happens between Acts and Acts 2. But also Rosie and Grant's and Gilden's turn. He's initially happy to see them and then discovers their agents.
And he ends up killing them, too. So they don't deserve to be killed, right? For trying to improve their station. Familiarly, and they were told by Claudius, like we're worried about it.
So they were just trying to be good and decent. They see their friend apparently not so far as they can tell. And they end up getting killed for it. So I mean, that sounds exactly right.
Can you read that song? I'd like to hear. Yeah, sure. This is Sonnet 66, tired with all these for restful death.
I cry. So the title is, I'm so tired of this that I just want to die. That's the title. I'm sick at all.
I just want to die. Yeah, 66. I thought 69. We'll go ahead.
That one's not about wanting to die at all. Sonnet 66, tired with all these. It is kind of about getting suffocated and suffocating in turn, right? Sonnet 66, tired with all these for restful death.
I cry as to behold, dessert, a beggar born and needing nothing trimmed in jollity and purest faith unhappily, foresworn and gilded honor, shamefully misplaced and made in virtue, rudely, strumpted and right perfection, wrongfully disgraced and strength by limping, sway disabled and art made tongue tied by authority and folly, doctorlike, controlling skill and simple truth, miscalled simplicity and captive good attending Captain Hill, tired with all these from these what I'd be gone, save that to die. I leave my love alone. It seems to bear pretty well on this problem in Hamlet. That's a tough one.
Yeah, it's a bit depressing. It's kind of a depressing sound. Yeah. But I mean, the basic premise of it is I look at the injustice in the world and I counted 11 examples and seeing that there's no support for justice in the world, I just want to die.
Need in virtue, don't forget to like, rate and subscribe, folks. This is where Hamlet, the play, it's never been one of my favorites. I know it's OK. Any people's favorite, but he's too kneeling mouth.
I was always looking at his introspection, the depth, the Hamlet. OK, but you kind of want him. He teaches waivers too much. It's like you kind of want him to just like to do.
That's only, you know, that's Fortin-Bross, right? Like he's the one that's like resolute. He makes up his mind. He's like, damn, I'll do whatever I need to.
Like, I'm on a war path now. And Laratius. Laratius is like. Oh, I guess I'm sorry.
Laratius is who I met, excuse me. It's the first one. He's matters into his own hands. So Laratius is right at the top.
And he acknowledges he might be condemned to hell. That's the one I met. He sort of dares damnation, right? Laratius.
Yeah. And he refuses to have any calm in him. I don't know. I kind of go back and forth on this.
I've lately wanted to defend Hamlet's. You know, he's the only one who's been presented with this ghost who reveals to him the Machiavelli workings of his uncle, who attests to a Christian world as being, you know, burned in hellfire. And then he also, but also tells him to get good old school pagan revenge. Like, I mean, that's a pretty difficult moral dilemma.
On top of that, he's really sharp. He's an utter perfectionist, right? He has that speech raised like any small flaw and everybody dams you. So he's a complete perfectionist.
And so I think he often gets, and he's trying to figure out what kind of life would be able to reconcile this complex, if not irreconcilable situation. And he's kind of crushed in his spirit. And the only time he takes action, I think this reveals something about him, is in these crazy moments suddenly, right? Like he suddenly stabs Polonius.
He suddenly just takes out the sheet and writes a new writ and has Rosenkranz and Guilden's and Guilden's and Guilden's and Guilden's. He suddenly just battles, lerties, and then there's the whole deaths at the end. He, I think he's so stuck in trying to figure it out as an intellectual problem that whenever he acts, it just has to be completely unthinking and momentary, and therefore completely rash, right? You have it in Macbeth as well.
I just want to be clear that Alex real quick just admitted that, like, if, so you wouldn't kill somebody who killed your dead and stuff at your mom just for the record. So that'd be cool. Okay, just making sure. That's cool.
That's the goal. I don't think I'll be. Oh, it's got to be your uncle, right? Just like if anybody did it.
I think it would have to be my uncle. No, all right. That's disappointing. Sorry, Macbeth goes.
Ah, and you see it goes to get confused, you know what I'm saying? Well, there's the, I was just, there's the ghost in, Julius Caesar, which, who's the guy that sees the ghost and he's kind of like, oh, okay, cool. So you'll see a next Tuesday or whatever. I mean, we'll switch to Macbeth.
Macbeth, I can't, like, I have to reread it again, but is it Macbeth? Who is that first? Resolute, then he wavers, then it's Lady Macbeth that he couldn't. He's your resolute and then she forces him.
And then as he realizes he's completely damned, he becomes resolute and she changes. She's resolute. Yeah, I wonder if the Joe's the peer during that sequence. She sees the witches.
And then it's only after the death of Banquo, which is well after the death of Duncan that he begins to see Banquo's ghost. And that's him also being raxed by Gil, technically, there's that argument that the ghost never appears because he only sees it after he's learned of it, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, even that wouldn't be if it was different, it wouldn't sell it, but anyways, nobody else sees it.
It's not like the witches, which seems to be, and the witches say true prophecies, right? So there's some evidence then, you know? So anyways, I don't know about the ghost in Caesar. I didn't know he says, see you next Tuesday, jeez.
Yeah, that's what he says. All right, next, should we do a handle that's final soliloquy? Well, the fourth scene, I think we mentioned the several episodes ago, but this is one of the scenes where international relations sort of, which has been in the background the whole time comes a little bit to the foreground. This isn't this where Fortenbross asks to campaign through Denmark, and it gets, by the way, sort of like, okay, whatever, fine.
And Hamlet also doesn't quite understand why they're gonna go fight, it's just over some little piece of land or something like this. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, go ahead. I don't even wanna talk about the soliloquy for sure.
Yeah, this is where the foreign policy's coming in. He's passing through, keep in mind at the beginning of Act II, which was like the day before, they had just heard this is very strange, but here we are. They just heard from Cornelius and Voltamond that they are requesting pass through. Right, right.
So evidently, they were waning Claudius's reply, it seems like. It turns out that he's already set out, obviously, right behind Cornelius and Voltamond, because he gets there like a day later, and he's sending his captain to send a signal, hey, we're passing through, is that okay? So he's in something of a rush. Not sure why, he's in such a rush to fight over a nothing part of Poland that he was unbalanced.
A little patch of Brown. Yeah, that he was completely unconcerned with before, right? So now he suddenly needs to get there, he can't wait for the reply, and he's going to pass through, and then he'll be back very shortly at the end of the play. So that's just to lend more sort of credence to this argument that the whole stuff about attacking Poland is a...
Retext, a plea pretext for an invasion of Denmark. Yeah, but if the captain doesn't realize that. Was that? But the captain doesn't realize it's just a ruse.
It only foreign breastnotes are ruse. Yeah, probably not, or if he does, he's playing his role well. Yeah, good point. Yeah, and they're fighting over nothing, and yet the pull will still defend it.
I don't think we say that word. I'm not going to say it's a pull. No, you know, that Yul Norm's joke about the pull. Can I tell that joke real quick?
Certainly. Guy goes in and he orders a Polish sausage, and the guy works there, he says, are you Polish? And the guy that wears a sausage goes, look buddy, if I come in here and ordered a burrito, would you have assumed that I'm Mexican? He goes, no.
So if I was, came here and ordered a bratwurst, would you just assume that I'm German? No, I guess I would. If I came in here and ordered a pizza pie, would you assume that I'm Italian? No.
But if I came here and ordered Canadian bacon, would you assume that I'm Canadian? Guy says, no. French fries. So what if I came here and ordered French fries?
Would you just assume that I'm French? And the guy says, no. So why, sir? Why, pray tell, when I ordered a Polish sausage, and I come in here to just assume that I'm Polish?
And the guy said, well, this is a hardware store, sir. Heh heh heh heh. I tell another word Polish, sure. Yes.
He pretends to be Polish, and he's like, you know, people always talk about the Polish, these jokes, and they don't realize Poland is extremely advanced. It's completely insulting. For instance, the Polish have an extremely sophisticated space program, and they're going to be the first people to land on the sun. And everybody thinks it's impossible.
You can't land on the sun, but the Polish realize you can just go at night. Heh heh heh heh heh. And I think this might be the first Polish joke in hand because I think you're right. You don't pull over a tiny piece.
That's right. That's right. I think that the Norwegians are like, why are you fighting? We're just trying to attack Denmark.
Like, now we got to fight. So, so Alex, I think that's a discovery. By the first Polish joke. Yeah, this might be the way I get canceled.
Yeah, we can only hope. So, what do you want to say about the Silhouette way after this first world first Polish joke? Oh man. Yeah, I mean, he sees them fighting over this, and he says, so Hammers starts, how all occasions do inform against me, and serve dull revenge.
What does a man, if he's chief good in market of his time, be but to sleep and feed? So, he's apparently just been stuck in sleeping. Yeah, but to sleep. And if he, but we hear a little later from Kertrude that he's got kind of fat.
I missed that. He's an act by, she's like, he's a bit corpulent. He says, a beast no more. So, I think he's reflecting on himself.
He's maybe been depressed in bed, just eating Cheetos. And he says, a beast no more sure he that made us, that's capital H.E. with such large discourse looking before and after, give us not the capability and God like reason, to fuss in us unused. Now, whether it be beast you'll have lived in or some craven screw-up of thinking too precisely on the event, a thought which quartered half but one part wisdom in ever three parts coward.
I do not know why yet I live to say this things to do. So, that I have cause and will and strength that means to do it. Examples gross as earth exhort me. And then he goes into this whole thing about this.
Army willing to fight over nothing and he concludes. It's even for an actually says rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument, but greatly to find quarrel in a straw when honors at the stake. So when honors are matter, you have to just go to it. So, what he's saying is like, wow, these pull are willing to fight over a little piece of land and I'm not even willing to have entered my dad's death.
Yeah. What's wrong with me? Yeah. How stand I then that have a father killed a mother's named.
Excitement's of my reason in my blood and let all sleep. While too much shame I see the imminent death of 20,000 men. That for a fantasy and trick of fame, go to the graves like beds. I think that's an important line, the fantasy and trick of fame.
That fame and a desire for honors seem to be just tricks, delusions, right? A king is just maggot food and a maggot will get you a fish and then you eat the king. Cause you eat a fish that ate a maggot that ate a king. Right.
And so he's struggling I think with the nihilism of it. And then at the end he says, oh, from this time forth my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth. And so he's apparently resolved. This is his last soliloquy and he'll still learn.
He'll still learn. One kind of small blood. He'll have to read to make sure I'm right here, but doesn't it kind of make fun of them at the sort of the invisible character of what they're up to? But his, I mean, what he's doing is also the prodding of a ghost, right?
I mean, maybe I'm wrong here, but led by a delicate and tender prince whose spirit with divine ambition, poth, make mouths at the invisible event. So he's sort of like, they're fighting over nothing. I don't know. Maybe that's just one down a dead.
I mean, maybe that's the bigger issue is that he's doing this for a fantasy and effect. Right. Yeah, there you go. Fantasy was first used, I think, in the play by Horatio back in Act 1 scene one in hearing of the ghost.
Right. So it might be that he sees them fighting over nothing, a tangible nothing, but it is in a way a kind of invisible fame or honor. And there's something, I think, very appealing to sort of modern corrupt individuals like ourselves about this sort of thing where it's kind of hard to, when somebody says they're going to die for the sake of their honor and their fame, their immortal fame, you're kind of like, you know how many anonymous nothings have done that? And it's, you know, with the historical sense, as I were, we kind of lose grip of that.
And you can see Hamlet really calling that. Yet he's compelled to it. He feels disordered. He feels the sting of honor.
Right. Should we go to Ophelia? Oh, Ophelia. Yeah.
Ophelia, you want to talk about the songs? Yeah, why does she sing all these songs? She's like some jolly Italian. The immigrant jokes keep coming with you.
There was, I was just, oh, gosh, is it Bloom? Bloom, Bloom, where we're reading Alan Bloom, close in the American mind? It doesn't name a line on it. What play is it by Shakespeare where he talks about the effect of music on the soul?
It's like every Shakespeare play. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a kind of dream-like character to it, obviously a musical character. These are what sense I can make of them, which is not a whole lot.
As Greg showed, it does seem to be a kind of allegorical or a sort of a retelling of her predicament and her lament in song. And then she adorns herself with flowers and lets herself drown under the weight of her dress. So there's a kind of, yeah, I don't know, there's some extreme. If you guys want to pause, I can read it, actually.
Yeah. It's the merchant of medicine. Do you guys think that Hamlet and Ophelia went to Hampshire College or Bard? They have that vibe.
Like Sarah Lawrence? Yeah, maybe, maybe. Sing one. Give me just one second.
I can point it out. Here's another thought on foreign policy about Greg what's up this passage from Bloom. Line 106, Claudia says, where is my Switzers? It's not a waste.
I mean, that is the plural at the singular room. Where is my Switzers? Is that another racist joke? I feel like that's a- Hey, geez.
Can we make fun of Swiss immigrants? They've never been down on their luck. We can make fun of the Swiss. Yeah, that's a good job.
But those are the Swiss would be mercenary troops, right? Right. So this suggests a loss of the people's allegiance, right? And maybe a kind of insularity that clauses this.
Just to say that when Claudius is worried about Hamlet and Liertees, I think this plays into his plot later in Act 4. But when he's worried about Hamlet and Liertees, there's good reason. His rule is by no means secure. Right.
Were we going to say about Song and the Soul? Yeah, sure. So I was just reminded of this recently. This is in A Close in the American Mind.
It's in the chapter on music. So page 69, Bloom says, the power of music in the soul described to Jessica marvellously by Lorenzo in the Merchant of Venice has been recovered after a long period of dissuay to it. So Bloom famously talks about the power of music over the souls of the young in 1980s. But here's Lorenzo on music.
Let's sit in and there expect they're coming, and yet no matter. Why should we go in? My friends, DiFano signify a prayer within the house your music is at hand and bring your music forth into the air. How sweet the moonlight sleep upon the bank.
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music creep in our ears. Soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven is thick and laid with patterns of bright gold.
There's not the smallest orb which now behold is to put in his motion like an angel sings. Still queering to the young-eyed cherubins, such harmony is in immortal souls. But whilst this muddy, visture of decay, doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. Enter musicians.
Come ho and wake Diana with a hymn, with sweetest touches pierced your mistress's ear and play her home with music. Jessica says, I'm never married when I hear sweet music. Maybe I'll continue just a little bit. The reason is your spirits are attentive.
But for do but note, a wild and once-in-heard or race of youthful and unhandled cults, fetching mad bounds, bellowing and not naying loud, which is the hot condition of their blood, if they but hear for chance a trumpet sound, or any air of music touch their ears, you shall perceive them make a mutual stand. Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze by the sweet power of music. Therefore the poet did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods, since not so stockish hard and full of rage, but music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treason's, stratagems and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night, and his affection's dark as heirlus. Let no such man be trusted, mark the music. So I don't know if that's super relevant, but there's a lot of- Where's that from? Where's that from?
That's from the merchant of Venice. And he's saying, don't trust a man who doesn't like music. That's right. Yeah, what is that line in Caesar about Antony?
No, no, no, no, it's about Cassius. He doesn't trust a lean guy. Yeah, he has a lean look and he doesn't like plays or something like that. Right.
I don't know if I can say this and I don't know if I can do this justice, but the notion I suspect there is that music arouses something almost divine in us. And if you are not that type of a human being, you've revealed yourself to be, well, a traitor to mankind, as it were. And so you shouldn't trust somebody who doesn't like music. And so let me connect this to the Ophelia.
There's this kind of music is a way, this is obvious. I suppose, but it's a way that we try to soothe our souls. And she's greatly despondent and she's trying to, you know, she's trying to make herself feel better. It's the simplest way to put it.
Yeah, to add to that. Yeah. Yeah. She had as some consolation.
Keep in mind her uncle and her brother, but especially, I'm sorry, her dad and her brother, but especially her dad. Her brother said, be careful with Hamlet. You know, he's king. He's got to think about the state.
Maybe he loves you. He doesn't spell out the maybe, but he suggests, you know, maybe there's, it's not genuine. And then Polonius then comes in as like, are you kidding me? He's just going to hit it and quit it, man.
Like, what are you thinking? Like he's not interested. He's a pious bod. He calls him, right?
And so that really scares her because Polonius also says, I've been hearing things. I've got word, right? Oh, by the way, Polonius comes from Poland. And Polonius is dumb.
So anyways, but to get back to the point, she had, I think, she was very distraught by that. And so she listened to her dad and then was obviously upset by Hamlet, the whole mouse dropping. Now that her dad is dead, all of her connections to the highest seats of power are gone, right? She's really, she's got a bad reputation.
She's left a drift, Hamlet has kicked her to the curb, thanks to her dad's plan. I think she's utterly despondent. All she has is her brother, who's often France gallivanting. And she's got to be, think, you know, my life is over, right?
And it's too bad, because Lertis comes back too late to reassure her, right, to offer some justice. Should we compare Lertis and Hamlet? You were doing this earlier, Greg. Well, his disciples, I think.
Yeah, sure, his decisiveness on the one hand and his decisiveness to do the thing that might be not sanctioned or morally wrong in the eyes of the gods, right? You get the sense that he has no problem of engine, the death of his father whatsoever. Even though we're in Shakespeare's status, even though to be fair, Hamlet didn't kill him on purpose and sleep with his mom. And so it's not done with the same offense necessarily as the offense with which Claudia sort of killed Hamlet's father.
But nevertheless, he's decisive. It's just resolute. It's time to go kill him. Yeah, I think they compare his next sense otherwise.
So if you go to line, this is 130 in my edition, but when Gertrude says calmly, good Lertis, Lertis says that drop of blood that's compre claims need bastard and therefore Christ cuckled to my father, rans of the harlot, even here between the chaste and smurched out of my true mother, right? If I'm calm, it's like I'm not my father's son. Like my mom stepped out on my dad and slept with somebody else. And this is a shame to everybody.
Now this line jumps out to me because I have this suspicion that Hamlet might be Claudius' son. He was conceived 30 years ago, also 30 years ago. The elder Hamlet was on campaign fighting for me. So there's a kind of- Oh, well.
Yeah. And also Claudius calls him his son a lot and wants him to call his father. And it's in a way that's kind of insistent, right? More so than anybody else in the play would insist, right?
And it makes me wonder whether part of the reason Claudius wanted rule was to shore things up for Hamlet. It might even be the elder Hamlet knew this. Somebody was pointing out to me that it's strange that Hamlet has fond memories of playing with York, yet he never relates a single fond memory with his father. He seems to be cold at this and perhaps came back and his wife was pregnant and was like, hey, what's going on here?
You know, filthy Claudius, but he has to keep up appearances. That's my guess. So here, if you do the reverse, it would say, well, there's something calm or at least sluggish about Hamlet. Could he be maybe uncertain about his own, who his father is?
Perhaps his father was a cuckold, perhaps his father was a harlot. Maybe that's part of his dilemma, is he's thinking about the uncertainty of his own origins. Well, wait a second. But if he's uncertain about his origins, then why the mania to avenge a father that was not a father?
Well, your answer is that's what's happened, right? But perhaps the reason for sluggishness is the uncertainty. Right? So insofar as he thinks that this is, I'm gonna let his dad, like his true father, he might be pushed, but perhaps part of the breaks, it just strikes me that I had the suspicion given what we know about his birth and then you get this line.
It seems to suggest just the converse anyways. So Hamlet comes back, can I throw out another crazy theory? Sure. That's what we're here for.
So scene seven, Larety's is talking to Claudius and Claudius is about to tell him a plan when the messenger comes in with letters that Hamlet's returning, right? And at this point, Claudius and Larety's hatched this plan to poison Hamlet. Larety says, I'm gonna use this poison on my sword. And Claudius says, yeah, we'll have a backup plan of like a poison chalice, right?
Keep in mind, Claudius is under threat. He's got his switzers, the people come in wanting to make Larety's king, they liked Polonius. Polonius seems to have been murdered and everybody's looking at Claudius. He's a really morally suspect guy.
On top of that, they love Hamlet. Hamlet's been shipped off, he's been upset. It seems like Hamlet might have caused a bit of unrest, right? And now the death of Polonius and Larety's return.
He seems like he's becoming more and more isolated. I wonder whether the return of Hamlet allows Claudius to kill two birds with one stone, right? Larety's kills Hamlet. Claudius asks his guards to take him away.
He kills Larety's and he looks like the true defender of the rightful line. Oh. Conversely, what was the plan he had initially before he got the letters? Perhaps he was gonna send Larety's off to England.
Hamlet would die. Blang Larety's and put Larety's to die. Chief the same goal. I just wonder if that's his way of avoiding these challenges to his power.
We'll also make himself look like the people's defender. It's a little bit like Remira DeWorker, right? You make the guy who's actually the friend of the people. You make him look like an utter villain.
And thereby you look like the greater friend in a merciful one. Of course, young Grum is not really focused on four affairs. And he's not really the defender of the people. No, but I mean, you know, yeah.
No, he's not. No, he's not. But it makes you also wonder whether he's, maybe this sort of unrest is a sign that they're not gonna fight his worst for him. Yeah.
I mean, they accept Ford and Ross when he comes in, nobody fights the idea that he'll be a camp. So maybe that's it. Did we decide if Ophelia is crazy? I feel like she is.
Okay. What do you think? You think she's just trying to sue herself and then she kills herself? I don't know.
I'm not sure. Isn't that also a possibility that it's not suicide at all? It's just an accident? Yeah, I wonder what it is.
He's like once it's put in motion because of the weight of her garment, she can't stop that, right? Yeah. Yeah. Evidently though concludes that it is a suicide.
They try to fight against it, which makes you wonder whether the story that they tell is meant to save face. I don't know. Just a second to save and face. What do we have to look forward to in the fifth installment of Hamlet?
A lot of debt. Talking to you. York, no, not York, sorry, the grave digger. We get some figures.
We get the grave digger and Ozrecks of new characters. Okay. He's a man I'm infinite jest. And we in our act five discussion will definitely make more jokes at the expense of, you know, surf millions from Europe that came in the 19th century.
Listen to some Irish jokes. Nobody minds. No, that's offensive. No, that's a bit.
I don't know. You've got to be somewhere. I really don't know. Probably.
He's a guy. Or he's a guy. Or he's a guy. Who?
Your wife, right? 100% yeah. Yeah. On both sides.
Do you have any audience today as your guests listening to the recording? Mandy? Candy? I'm not sure.
I just googled 80s beach babes and that's what we got. Yeah. Obviously we all do for the 80s. Sure.
Do you remember the 80s at all? Are you kidding me? I was born in 84, correct? So yeah.
So you were like 1989. I would say 88. Okay. I mean, there's a certain really the golden of course the golden years were early 90s.
Yeah. Yeah. You remember 80s a little. I mean, Oh yeah.
What's so? That cocaine was a heck of a drug back in the 80s. Yep. Yep.
Yep. Yep. That's when you were doing your stint on Wall Street. It's a nice to come.
It's just yeah. Go get to hell with you. Go right there. It was actually campus security.
Oh geez. That's a good one. If you got to rest on Zoom, we would release the video for likes. Yeah.
Just like just like what's the guy rapper Mike just got arrested at the Grammys or the killer Mike his name is killer Mike. Okay. I have a funny story about campus security. This is told to me by our friend Dustin Pion who was for a time at least a student at St.
John's College, Santa Fe. He's all right. So this was a little while ago and he told me that the security guards on the Santa Fe campus were instructed never to engage the students in debate over whether or not they were caught doing something right or wrong because they were trying to add a band time. Office tree.
Yeah. Yeah. Kind of ensnare and confuse the security guard. So they were told that's fantastic.
Allegedly that if you see them doing something wrong. You know what's the part they did something wrong. Just don't listen about their telling you. Which I think is a little bit too much credit to St.
John's undergrads. Yeah. And now the credit to the security guards. All the security guards just run away and start beating their fathers with their Billy clubs.
All right, folks. Don't forget. Like, rate, subscribe, send in some Polish jokes to the new thinker at gmail.com or dmus or whatever it is. Or tweet them at us.
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