(We’re mashing up current events with Hamlet, the whole play, and you can start here in the middle or with this post.)

Just as Hamlet is on the verge of persuading Gertrude to foreswear her marriage and restore her connection with her son (cue the deep Freudian analysis), our orange-haired Ghost enters, and Hamlet unwisely begins speaking to him:

Hamlet: “A king of shreds and patches, –
Save me, and hover o’er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?”

Queen: “Alas, he’s mad!”

Ghost: “This visitation is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose
But look, amazement on thy mother sits,
O, step between her and her fighting soul…”

Of course, the Ghost’s very visitation has threatened Hamlet’s goal of working a change in his mother’s heart, since it has offered Gertrude evidence that her son is mad. Even world-historical orange-haired Ghosts make mistakes. They can nominate two dud Attorneys General (Sessions and Barr) in a row, for example:

Hamlet: “How is it with you, lady?”

Queen: “Alas, how is ‘t with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with th’ incorporal air do hold discourse?

Hamlet: “On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares!…
Do you see nothing there?”

Queen: “Nothing at all, yet all that is I see.”

Hamlet: “Why, look you there, look how he steals away!
My father, in his habit as he lived!”

Queen: “This is the very coinage of your brain…”

Even now, now, with Polonius’ bleeding corpse still on the floor, and knowing that he has given his mother plain evidence that he’s insane, Hamlet persists in his cause. (This my virtue doesn’t refer to Hamlet’s virtue, it means “my scolding of you”;  pursy means flabby).

Hamlet: “…Confess yourself to heaven,
Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come,
And do not spread the compost on the weeds
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg…”

Channeling Nostradamus, Shakespeare foresaw the weak moral condition of our fallen republic, where virtue must apologize to vice. At last, the Queen confesses to a change in her heart:

Queen: “O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.”

Hamlet: “O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
Good night, but go not to my uncle’s bed….”

Gertrude next makes a promise to Hamlet (this counselor refers to Polonius; prating means foolishly ranting; marshal me to knavery means lead me to mischief):

Queen: “Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.”

Hamlet: “I must to England. You know that?”

Queen: “Alack, I had forgot. ‘Tis so concluded on.”

Hamlet: “There’s letters sealed, and my two school fellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work.
For ‘tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard…his counselor
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave. –
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. –
Good night, Mother.”

{Hamlet exits, dragging Polonius.}

Petard is a French word meaning both bomb and fart. Leave it to the French. And leave it to Shakespeare to use the combination to suggest that his enemies will meet a highly comic death.

Hamlet has told his mother that the two RINOs, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, have sealed letters from the King that they are to take to England along with Hamlet for the trumped-up ambassadorial purpose of collecting an agreed tribute.  And if you believe that, you believe Paul Ryan fully intended to fund the Wall when he reached a budget deal with President Trump in his first year in office.

This remarkable scene ends with Hamlet calmly tugging Polonius’ corpse out the door in order to bestow it in some unfrequented portion of the palace. We don’t want any dead tech oligarchs, the spymasters of our age, but it would be a consummation devoutly to be wished to see the carcasses of their corporations tugged across a courtroom floor and into bankruptcy.

Hope you enjoyed, and more tomorrow!