(We’re mashing up current events with Hamlet, the whole play, and you can start here in the middle or with this post.) Is Hamlet mad? We’ve cast him as all of us in the time of the fall, or at least the abeyance, of our republic, since that fits best with the silent coup that Claudius executed in Denmark. Has our coup, the theft of the election aided by the press and abetted after the fact by a shockingly silent federal judiciary, from district to appellate to Supreme, made us …

‘Conception is a blessing, but as your daughter may conceive, friend, look to ‘t.’: Blogging Hamlet – 13 Read More »

(We’re mashing up current events with Hamlet, the whole play, and you can start here in the middle or with this post.) Polonius drags Ophelia before the royal couple, to use her to plot an intervention for Hamlet, who has been driven mad by Ophelia’s return of his love letters, performed at Polonius’ command. So, government creates a problem, and then calls for more government to fix it. Polonius: “My liege, and madam, to expostulate What majesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night night, and time …

‘Since brevity is the soul of wit/And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes’: Blogging Hamlet – 12 Read More »

We’re mashing up current events with Hamlet, the whole play, starting with this post. Hop aboard! By now, in the middle of Act II, Shakespeare has laid out on the chessboard of his imagination the pieces of his Hamlet Game. We have the anguished, hypersensitive Prince Hamlet, the innocent Ophelia, Polonius the lover of intrigue and indirection, the upright but absent Laertes, the disconsolate Ghost, the accused murderer and sister-in-law-marrying King Claudius, and the dexterous Queen Gertrude. And with these pieces lined up on the board, Shakespeare begins that series of …

‘But, better looked into, he truly found/It was against Your Highness’: Blogging Hamlet – 11 Read More »

(We’re mashing up current events with Hamlet, the whole play, and you can start here in the middle or with this post.) Ophelia has had her own visitation, but it wasn’t with the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, but with Hamlet himself. A dutiful, and possibly too dutiful daughter, she reports to her father the event, which arose after she returned Hamlet’s love letters at her father’s direction. Since in our telling of the play, Hamlet is all of us, and Ophelia is the promise of a restored republic, we can …

‘No, my good lord, but as you did command/I did repel his letters’: Blogging Hamlet – 10 Read More »

(We’re mashing up current events with Hamlet, the whole play, and you can start here in the middle or with this post.) As the curtain rises on Act II, (We’re mashing up current events with Hamlet, the whole play, starting with this post),  we peek in on Polonius as he is directing Reynaldo, a spy. Please feel free to substitute a Google or Facebook algorithm or Amazon Alexa, or the FBI’s tracking of cell phones to identify the protestors who took that unscheduled tour of the Capitol. Polonius wants Reynaldo to …

‘Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarreling, drabbing – you may go so far’: Blogging Hamlet – 9 Read More »