His whole function suiting With forms to his conceit

Olivier slips into his antic disposition

I've long stood in the "Hamlet Ain't Cray-Cray" camp. Sure, he's an emo hipster at the start of the play, genuinely depressed about his father's death and his mother's o'er hasty, incestuous marriage. But when he meets the Ghost--the moment on which Hamlet's entire psyche hinges--he is not made mad with fear or anger or vengeful thoughts. Yes, he's filled with all these things, but it doesn't drive him mad.

Some people argue that the Ghost scene is enough evidence that Hamlet's already off his nut, but Horatio and Marcellus have confessed to have seen the Ghost as well, and they seem otherwise mentally stable in every way. The Ghost only really speaks to Hamlet, if you don't count the "swear" here and there when Horatio and Marcellus return to the stage to enact their oath to the Prince. Though overwhelmed with this vision and the information imparted about "murder most foul," Hamlet believes the Ghost in the moment, but even then begins to hatch a plan to confirm the Ghost's story. He commands his friends that they not give away the game of his feigned outward appearance and action--his "antic disposition"--no matter how "strange or odd soe'er I bear myself."

Next, Hamlet wordlessly freaks out Ophelia, successfully making Polonius believe he has gone mad with love. Claudius and Gertrude call up Hamlet's old flunkies to find him out, and then Polonius suggests how they might confirm his theory that Hamlet is lovesick for his daughter. When the players arrive, Hamlet is outwardly, eccentrically pleased with himself. No one is the wiser about what's truly sparking inside Hamlet's brain.

Now here's what I learned from memorizing the "O, what a rogue" soliloquy, and why it confirms my belief that Hamlet is not totes bananas. It tellingly begins with "Now I am alone." It's important enough that he announces it: "Now I am alone." He's been so busy putting on his "madness" mask for everyone that he's exhausted and feels he must speak with himself. His duplicity of character begins to appear in this speech, as he mentally breaks his own pate across for not having the courage to express his truest feelings to the world. He's jealous of the players for their masks, and how they can conjure up tears for a conceit, when he cannot weep for a truth. During this diatribe, it is clear that Hamlet is very hard on himself, for it was just the night before that he saw the Ghost, but he soon reveals his cunning plan to the audience. "The play's the thing," he states, "wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King."

At the end of this soliloquy, Hamlet is resolved to "observe [the King's] looks" and "tent him to the quick." He notes that the Ghost may be lying, that he "may be a dev'l, and the dev'l hath power T'assume a pleasing shape." Hamlet's ready for action. He's rationally, scientifically devising a way to test the Ghost's claims before he will allow himself to carry out a rash act of vengeance. This is Spock-like behavior. It may have more the Shantner-esque flourish, but it's Vulcan logic all the way.

But still, many believe that only half a scene later, he's preparing himself for suicide. WHY? Because he comes back onto the stage and recites "To be or not to be."

Respectfully, WTF.

If one forgets that the last soliloquy ever happened, only half a scene before, then one could interpret "To be or not to be" as a pure contemplation on suicide and its consequences. Many people believe this soliloquy is a true representation of Hamlet's character, and that when he sees Ophelia, he is pushed over the edge and gives into his madness.

I call bullshit on this.

Hamlet is a bit paranoid at this point--as his "Now I am alone" line can attest--but not without reason. He is well aware that R & G are spying on him. He suspects the King and Queen suspect he is mad. He knows Ophelia has been scared out of her knickers and that that's why Polonius has been pretending to be Sherlock Holmes.

In Act III, Sc. I, just before Hamlet arrives to enact his famous speech, Claudius says he has "closely sent for Hamlet hither," telling us that Hamlet has been summoned. Hamlet must suspect that someone will be waiting for him. He was never just walking around the castle idly voicing his thoughts. When he enters, he has this fabulous speech prepared, just in case someone is listening. And someone is listening--Claudius and Polonius are there, "seeing unseen" so they may judge what is bothering Hamlet.

Hamlet's no dumbass. He would never discuss his deepest thoughts out loud unless he were sure he were alone. "To be" fits his antic disposition, and could very easily throw off his pursuers. They would never guess from those existential thoughts that he suspects the King has been murdered and that he wishes to indict Claudius.

When Ophelia steps out, Hamlet is momentarily buoyed by her presence, and, for a tiny moment, almost allows her to distract him. But he keeps stepping forward on his balance beam of lies, keeping up his pretense that he is mad over love for Ophelia. "Ha, ha! Are you honest?" he asks, already suspecting her complicity in a trap. "Where's your father?" he asks, giving her one more chance to reveal her true intentions to him. He wants her to be on his side, but as soon as she says "At home, my lord," he knows her alliance is with Polonius, and he is truly heartbroken at that point. He goes a bit mad--for real-- and it feeds into the original lie of his madness, at least as far as Polonius is concerned. Hamlet walks away from this scene more upset than before, and Claudius actually begins to believe that this is not true madness.

But Hamlet is still one step ahead of everyone. If Hamlet were mad, he never would have been able to keep his secret of the Ghost's tale. If the Ghost were lying, Claudius wouldn't have confessed to any murderous actions and guilt for killing his own brother. If Hamlet were suicidal, he would just mope around, unable to rouse himself into the man of action he truly is. And if anyone wants to argue otherwise on that point, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me.

Now I am alone

Well, I tested myself yesterday with all my speeches and I'm happy to report I knew every one with minimal to no prompting; a definite improvement from the last time I quizzed myself. I promise to keep reciting them everyday, but before that, I shall embark upon a new speech this week. It's been a long while since I've memorized something from scratch.

The decision was a no-brainer. I want to complete my set of the four major Hamlet soliloquies. There are other, less prominent ones, but if you want a cross section of Hamlet's psyche throughout the play, the big four will provide you with it. Weighing in at ~55 lines (depending on your edition of the play), the Act II, Scene II speech is the longest of his soliloquies, but no where near as long as the one with which Richard Gloucester has blessed me.

It has been nearly a year since I turned my well-honed fangirling instrument toward Sir Kenneth Branagh. I started with realizing that Thor was directed by him, then moved on to seeing the screen graced with his countenance and voice through King Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing and finally, the movie that changed my life, his complete and epic 4-hour masterpiece of Hamlet. On July 10th, not halfway through my first viewing of that glorious film, I clearly recall my heart o'erflowing with love and inspiration. So of course, to cap off my unlocked achievements, I shall embark upon this emotional thrill ride of a speech. It still makes me melt and my ovaries quiver to hear it.

A week from now, I hope to have some more insight into what it's like to occupy and live through these enthralling words.


Hamlet, Act II, Sc. II
Hamlet: Now I am alone.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, an' his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha! 'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!
Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this: the play 's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

'Tis in my memory lock'd

MEMORIZATION UPDATE:

When my summer vacation began last week, I had spent 40-some days re-upping my memory. I did this by randomly repeating one of my speeches every day in my head or out loud in the car or to my bird or my orchids or whenever I deemed it an occasion that wouldn't out me as A) schizophrenic or B) hopelessly eccentric.

So, having done that, I sat down and tested myself. I picked my little strips from the bag at random and repeated them if I could. If a chosen speech wasn't immediate on my tongue, I'd set it aside. Turns out, I  knew 25 of the speeches with no cheating (not bad!). The rest, I still needed some prompting, but for the most part, I had them down.

For the last week, I've taken my weaker speeches and decided to practice two of them a day. I should finish with this in the next few days, and then I'll test myself again. I'm doing all this because I've resolved to get all these suckers down before I move on to any new ones. I've also resolved that after I'm satisfied with myself on the former, I shall repeat one a day again, at least two times, for as long as I live. Already, there are 20-something speeches that are no longer much of a challenge, and have moved on into the realm of being simply pleasant to hear oneself recite.

One day, this will be the ultimate parlour trick. I will ask friends to call out a play and I'll effortlessly recite my piece. But in the everyday sense, this has already proven advantageous for my brain. I encounter things during the day that conjure up certain lines, adding depth and feeling to special moments or creating profound associations. I'll read or hear something in a book or movie and immediately recognize a reference to one of the plays, and because I know some of a character's words, I have a more emotional connection to their story.

Another predictable effect of this project has been that when reading or watching the plays, the language barrier is now practically nonexistent. I now have an innate feel for the rhythms and a familiarity with the terminology--something that normally trips people up when it comes to studying Shakespeare. Shakespearean performers have a distinct advantage over the rest of us because of this.

I believe that this humble project has undoubtedly fostered a dynamic understanding of the text. It's enough to make me suggest that teachers REQUIRE students in schools to memorize some Shakespeare, even if it is one speech from the play they are studying. And not an anemic speech, either; a beefy, substantial one that can give you a true feel for the lyricism and weight of the words.

My narrative film professor at UF made us unpack an entire film for our thesis. We had to focus in on tiny details in a scene with laser-precision. It was his method of getting us to see films at all angles and develop our ability to analyze features we never paid attention to before. This same technique should be applied to Shakespeare. This is why I adore Chop Bard so much. I gives modern readers exactly what we need to see all the sparkling facets Shakespeare polishes for our pleasure.

If you're a fan of Shakespeare, you owe it to yourself to carry some words around with you. It's so achievable, you'll kick yourself if you don't try it ;)

There with fantastic garlands did she make

Orchis mascula

In between re-practicing all my speeches and writing a novel (well, three novels... I've been at this every summer for three years now), I am currently engaged in reading A History of the Orchid by Merle A. Reinikka. This publication is something of a Godsend for me, as I have been searching for a legitimate, comprehensive, historical chronicle of human fascination with orchids for quite a while now and I am in heaven with this book.

Ever since I downloaded Darwin's The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids Are Fertilized by Insects onto my Kindle from the Open Library, I find myself compelled to seek out little-known researches and journals on the most engrossing of botanicals. The whole book is essentially very detailed orchid porn, and it has led me to scour the internet for--and in two cases, obtain--some of the orchids he studied. Thank you, Darwin, for everything.

Anyhow, six pages into the History, the author mentions Shakespeare and how he peppered references to all sorts of plants, weeds, and flowers throughout his plays. Entire gardens (I've been to two in NYC myself) have been dedicated to the plants that pop up in his works. Indeed, there are many, but only once did he throw an orchid into the lot.

Of course, it was in Hamlet, Act IV, Sc. VII, when Gertrude is setting the scene of Ophelia's death for Claudius and Laertes:

There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do “dead men’s fingers” call them.


The author of The Plant-Lore and Garden-Craft of Shakespeare agrees that the "long purples" and "dead men's fingers" are reference to the common purple Orchises (Orchis latifolia, O. morio, O. mascula, and O. maculata) found in English woods and meadows.

This green thumb with over 50 orchids to her name was ecstatic with these tidbits. That the only reference to orchids ever made was in Hamlet (my favorite!) just ices the cake for me.

Orchids, by the way, got their name from the Greek orchis, meaning testis, because most of the orchids the ancients knew about at the time had testiculate bulbs that resembled male genitalia. Based on the "Doctrine of Signatures," plants that approximated human anatomy in shape were believed to treat or cure ailments related to the corresponding body parts. So it follows that orchids were thought to assist with fertility. If a man consumed the plump, fresh orchid tuber, they would beget male children. If a woman ate the dried up roots, they would bear females.

Given all the talk of conception ("Conception is a blessing, but, as your daughter may conceive..." Act II, Sc. II) and "chaste treasure" earlier in the play, one could surmise that poor, scandalized Ophelia may have had certain adult activities on her mind while she was picking her flowers.

Just a bit of vegetation for thought. Next week, I think a new speech is in order. Stay tuned!

Sassy Shakespeare: My favorite one-liners

There's a lot of these "Shakespearean insult generator" memes out there, where you choose one item from each column to create a sufficiently archaic-sounding verbal poo-fling. Gems such as "gleeking knotty-pated harpy" or "puking beef-witted apple-john" or "yeasty tardy-gaited moldwarp." Most of these sound more like Harry Potter incantations than insults.

As giggle-inducing as some of them are, they aren't genuine, actual lines from the plays. And after you'e heard some of the more pointed and exotic barbs, you begin to find it a tragedy that these colorful words and phrases aren't used more today. For example, I was irrationally tickled that the word "clotpole" is often utilized in one of my favorite BBC series: Merlin. Lear used it, as did Guderius in Cymbeline. Having encountered it before, and read about its very bawdy origins, I gasped when I heard it uttered in such a family-friendly TV show. Of course, no one outside an English Lit professor would normally pick up on it.

But it's not just the bawdy stuff I love. It's the clever throw-away lines and the chronically taken-out-of-context quotes that I've highlighted throughout my Complete Works that I feel could be useful in everyday conversation. Enjoy!

"I like this place, And willingly could waste my time in it."
--Celia, "As You Like It," Act II, Sc. IV

"You do assist the storm."
--Boatswain, "The Tempest," Act I, Sc. I

"In nature, there's no blemish but the mind; None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind."
--Antonio, "Twelfth Night," Act III, Sc. IV

"Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall..."
--Escalus, "Measure for Measure," Act II, Sc. I

"Scratching could not make it worse and 'twere such a face as yours were."
--Beatrice, "Much Ado About Nothing, Act I, Sc. I

"This is the fruit of rashness!"
--Gloster, "King Richard III," Act II, Sc. II

"He that loves to be flattered is worthy of the flatterer."
--Apemantus, "Timon of Athens," Act I, Sc. I

"For defect of judgment Is oft the cure of fear." 
--Belarius, "Cymbeline," Act. IV, Sc. II

"O, pardon me; For when no friends are by, men praise themselves."
--Lucius, "Titus Andronicus," Act V, Sc. III

"Where's hourly trouble for a minute's ease."
--Helicanus, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre," Act II, Sc. IV

"No sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir; but I do bite my thumb, sir."
--Sampson, "Romeo and Juliet," Act. I, Sc. I

"Most spend their mouths when what they seem Runs far before them."
--Dauphin, "King Henry V," Act II, Sc. IV

"Unquiet meals make ill digestions."
--Abbess, "The Comedy of Errors," Act V, Sc. I

"More matter with less art."
--Queen, "Hamlet," Act II, Sc. II

"Trifles light as air Are to the jealous confirmation strong As proofs of holy writ."
--Iago, "Othello," Act III, Sc. III

"...didst thou ever hear that things ill got had ever bad success?"
--King Henry VI, "3 King Henry VI," Act II, Sc. II

"'Tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation."
--Falstaff, "1 King Henry IV," Act I, Sc. II