Filed under: self-work | Tags: deFOO, hamlet, life story, self-work, shakespeare, therapy
That was actually the name of my first blog: “Unpack My Heart With Words.” I started it, aged 16.
It comes from a scene in – wait for it, wait for it… – Hamlet.
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!
This happens after a mid-length speech where he discovers that an actor of his acquaintance can show more emotion over a fictional queen than he, Hamlet, can show over a real dead father. He accuses himself – having not immediately killed his uncle for murdering his father – of being “pigeon-livered” (i.e. a coward) and other things. The bit above is him saying that since he doesn’t seem to be taking any action, he has to talk about it (and talk only, instead of acting).
I realized this evening while watching that soliloquy that the “like a whore” bit references confession. A woman – who in the middle ages had very little other recourse to make a living – prostitutes herself, and then goes to confess to the priest. She cannot stop what she is doing – or take actual action to repent – and so she goes to the confessional daily to be “forgiven” for that which she must do but cannot do.
Hamlet “must” kill his uncle, but cannot do it – and repents of it in this speech. The prostitute “must” stop prostituting herself but cannot do it – and repents of it in the confessional.
The reason behind my original blog title was a bit of a jab at myself. But really… I was in the same situation. Which is why I liked Hamlet so much, and why I think I revert back to thinking of my life in terms of that play during a reFOO, as I’ve been experiencing lately.
The situation I was in at 16 was this: I realized mother was corrupt. I read The Fountainhead at 11 and Atlas Shrugged at 13 (not a boast – just the facts) and was pretty heavily into philosophy and libertarianism at that time. Stef wasn’t around… but I realized that my mother was wholly irrational and just plumb fucking insane, but I couldn’t get out of her house. Legally, financially… you name it. I was trapped with the corrupt. What I felt I “must do” – i.e. get the fuck out – was also what I could not do. And so I wrote about my anger and frustration and hatred of her in that blog.
The tagline of my blog was “Fie upon’t!” – basically a nice Elizabethan way of saying “fuck it.” Which is, frankly, pretty much how I felt about life.
I haven’t been saying “fie upon’t” lately in regards to life… but it’s been mighty tempting. That old thought of “you’d best not try” is really tempting… but I think I’m soon going to overcome this latest round of reFOO and Hamlet-itis.
3 of 4 therapists have contacted me back. I got a bad instinctual feeling about one, so he’s out. Once I settle the transportation issue, I’ll schedule consultations with the other 2.
Going to see the estate agent tomorrow to look at apartments. There is a chance I will find one for January 1st move-in. If I can – and I get a good instinctual feeling about the situation (and actually take some time, as requested, to THINK about it) – I will try to get settled by 5 January, and make the first appointment for that week.
I am going to try to do 2 sessions a week – a mid-week session and a Saturday session.
So… frankly, no real progress yet, but there’s a hope of progress soon, and a path cleared to do so. Rand mentioned, through Ellis Wyatt, needing only an unobstructed right-of-way to move the world. That’s what I’m aiming at.
The soliloquy in question:
So I wrote yesterday that thinking about Hamlet is usually a warning shot across my bows from my MEs. I see now, unfortunately, what they were warning me was going to happen. It’ll be a little harder now, but I’m grateful for the chance to make things right. I’ve found 4 possible therapist candidates, whom I shall call tomorrow or Friday.
While I remember the insight, though, let me do a little close analysis of a line from that play – which, second only to Chekhov’s play Ivanov, is basically a window into my soul. I was obsessed with Hamlet in some younger days. This surprises me not at all.
I’m not fit to do anything else at the moment, and hopefully it’ll be relaxing.
The lines:
Polonius: My honored lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.
Hamlet: You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal — except my life — except my life — except my life.
That punctuation is a little misleading. I’ll discuss why in a minute.
First, let’s translate this into modern English – or try to.
Polonius: I’m leaving.
Hamlet: There is nothing on earth that I’d rather have done, except to die.
Inelegant, but it works. Except that’s not really what Hamlet says.
Herein lies the analysis.
Polonius tells Hamlet he’s leaving with the words “I will… take my leave of you.”
Yes, this is a common phrase of leave-taking in early modern English. But there’s a reason for everything in Shakespeare.
Hamlet’s reply is the reason why it’s really hard to translate these lines into “modern” English. He puns on the concepts of “taking leave” and “taking life.”
This actually came to me in the shower the other day:
Hamlet has been sworn to revenge by the Ghost. He knows (as he mentions throughout the play) that he’ll die in the attempt.
This is what I actually think is going on:
Polonius: I’m leaving.
Hamlet: There’s nothing I would rather have you do, except to kill me. Kill me, you fool. I hate you. You have my life already – I love your daughter and am obliged to forget her. My life is absolutely insupportable. I don’t belong to that world – that world of my father and uncle… and your world. It’s what you want, isn’t it? Death? Then kill me. Accept my life. Accept my life. Accept my life.
Maybe a bit melodramatic.
To Hamlet (as is eloquently put forth later in the “To be…” soliloquy), death is the preferable option to life if one could only know what will happen to them after death. Except Hamlet does know what will happen, because the Ghost has come back and told him. (“I am thy father’s spirit, / Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, / And for the day confin’d to fast in fires, / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature / Are burnt and purg’d away.”)
To die is easier than to go against one’s nature. Let me explain:
There are two worlds in Hamlet. Two worlds given many different expressions:
the world of the play vs. the world of the play-within-the-play
the world of being vs. the world of seeming (“Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not ’seems.’”)
the cerebral world vs. the world of the revengers and the murderers
the world of the living vs. the world of the dead
and (meta) the world of the renaissance vs. the world of the middle ages
Hamlet inhabits the cerebral world. The world of being. The world of the living. The world of the play. So, incidentally, does Horatio. Hamlet is a man of the renaissance.
Fortinbras (Hamlet’s foil – his distorted reflection), Polonius (Horatio’s foil and distorted reflection), the Ghost, Claudius, Gertrude, and others live in the world of seeming, the world of revengers and murderers, and the world of the dead. These people represent the medieval mindset.
Ophelia, who lives between the two worlds, is the only person in the play who actually goes mad.
Hamlet as a play is in large part about the tension between these two worlds. Hamlet is asked by the ghost of his father to act as a revenger – which Hamlet cannot do. The ghost (and indeed Hamlet’s father in real life) represents the world of revengers and murderers. Hamlet cannot act as a revenger or a murderer. The whole play chronicles his futile attempts to act against his nature. In my favorite soliloquy, he attempts to convince himself that he is of the old world – a murderer – by using his foil Fortinbras as an example… and ends up not convincing himself, but damning Fortinbras in the process.
Hamlet tries to live between these two worlds. It eventually kills him – as was foreshadowed from the start.
(The thought: “And what am I doing? Is not the world from which my reactions have come lately the world of revengers and murderers?”)
I’m tired. And this is a bit of a sub-optimal analysis, but I think it got the job (i.e. showing me why I thought of these lines) done.
Filed under: random | Tags: Complaints Department, hamlet, random, shakespeare
Dear Hamlet,
I watched Derek Jacobi doing your speech tonight. You know… the one that everyone knows the first line of. “To be, or not to be…” etc. I.e. my least favorite soliloquy in the entire play. And I just wanted to sit down and have a little chat with you about some of the things that you mention in there. Let’s take it from the top.
Hamlet, Hamlet, Hamlet… You start off so well. I mean “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” is great. It might even be true. I mean, sure. You’re a prince, your family is rich, you’re going to be king of Denmark, you’ve been able to stay at university for an abnormally long time and do sweet fuck all (I mean, c’mon, dude, you’re fucking 30!) and your girlfriend is both beautiful and virtuous… and that’s some pretty outrageous fortune. What a craptastic life you’ve led. Yeah, your daddy is dead, but if what you say about death (“to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to…”) is true, then maybe that’s better for him! O, but of course he’s told you in a previous scene that he’s in purgatory being roasted alive. Ooooo…. sorry.
And that’s sort of the point you come to in the next bit (“for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause.”) Yeah… so nobody knows what is going to happen to him after death. If what’s going to happen to him in death is more craptastic than what’s happening to him in life, you’re quite right – he might be pretty glad that God has “fixed his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter.” Just by the bye, can I give you a piece of advice? Your mentioning your suicidality the first time we meet you and then your continuing to harp on it throughout the entire play is a little bit anticlimactic when you actually do get killed. Just sayin’.
Anywho, this is the problem that I have:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
So… let’s talk about this, shall we?
Just to reiterate, you’re a prince. You’re also only 30. So what do you know about “the whips and scorns of time”? I’m sure that you don’t have a single wrinkle on your well-preserved face, or a strand of white in your well-groomed hair. Or, take the next bit: “the oppressor’s wrong.” Uh… YOU are the oppressor. You’re a prince. Who rules over you? Your “uncle-father and aunt-mother” – but… really, is there anything you’re debarred from doing? What the heck do you know about “the oppressor’s wrong”?
Moving on, you talk about “the proud man’s contumely” and “the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes.” Who has ever spurned you in your entire life? Who has ever looked down on you or spat at you in your entire life? “The pangs of dispriz’d love.” Well… Ophelia loves you so deeply that she runs mad after you kill her daddy. Your mother dotes on you so much that she’ll do whatever you say, even though she thinks you’re mad. You talk about Yorick and your dad loving you. You have an excellent and faithful friend in Horatio. Admittedly, your uncle is a bit of a fucking bastard. Even he, however, won’t do or say anything to your face. Whom have you ever loved who has not loved you back?
“The law’s delay, the insolence of office.”
So you have to do… what? You’re 30 and still at uni. What office have you ever held? And I’m sure that the officeholders of the court have never dared be insolent to you – except Young Osric, who is evidently a fucktard anyway… and you’ve not even met him yet. And… the law’s delay. You’re saying, seriously, that your cases are not the first to be considered? You, the prince? Liek srsly, Hamlet. Come off it.
Then, we have the big one: “death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns.”
Uh, HELLO?! Who was it that comes back from beyond the grave to tell you to kill your uncle? O, right! Your father. His tomb “op’d its ponderous and marble jaws to cast [him] up again.” You know… that guy? The one who told you he was in purgatory and that really craptastic things were happening to him that would “freeze thy young blood” if you were to hear the “lightest word” of his torture? I mean, just sayin’.
At least, however, you’re slightly more honest here:
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn away,
And lose the name of action.
So you’re saying, basically, that you’re afraid to kill your uncle because you know you’ll die and be sent to purgatory to get tortured and you’re just a bit… not kewl with that. I mean, fair enough. I’m not sure exactly that you have a “native hue of resolution” – since you don’t really seem to be an action-oriented kind of a guy. But, you know, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here.
Still, my dear man, you may want to reconsider the better part of your speech. You go back on yourself, my lad… and really? I like you just a little bit better when you get so bloodthirsty (and try completely to delude yourself) when you see what that idiot Fortinbras is doing with his “shark’d up… list of lawless resolutes.”
If you need some help in re-drafting this one, I’d be happy to help. You can email me your edits.
Cheers,
Charlotte
