Episode 30 - Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark

TEXT:

HORATIO
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form,
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? Think of it:
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.

HAMLET
It waves me still. Go on; I'll follow thee.

MARCELLUS
You shall not go, my lord.

HAMLET
                                         Hold off your hands.

HORATIO
Be ruled; you shall not go.

HAMLET
                                           My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.
Still am I called. Unhand me, gentlemen.
By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me!
I say away! Go on! I'll follow thee.

Exeunt Ghost and HAMLET

HORATIO
He waxes desperate with imagination.

MARCELLUS
Let's follow; 'tis not fit thus to obey him.

HORATIO
Have after. To what issue will this come?

MARCELLUS
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

HORATIO
Heaven will direct it.

MARCELLUS
                                Nay, let's follow him.

Exeunt

NOTES:

Madness
Whether Hamlet is mad or just playing the part is a question that has generated millions and millions of words over the centuries. We will have plenty to say on the matter - but it's worth marking here that Horatio's mention is the first time in the play that the idea has surfaced. 

Cliffs
Cliffs appear often in Shakespeare - often with the epithet 'chalky' attached. In Horatio's worry about Hamlet getting giddy and falling off the edge, Shakespeare gives voice to a peculiar human habit of fantasising about the dangers while standing on a cliff. In King Lear, the startling scene between Gloucester and Edgar likewise plays on the human imagination and the fear of being on the edge. 

Nemean Lion
The Nemean Lion was the first of the Twelve Labours of Hercules - and it became the hero's personal signature garment. Because the lion's skin was impermeable and his claws invincible, the story goes that Hercules (Herakles in Greek) had to strangle the beast to death. A variant suggests that he shot an arrow into its mouth. When he was trying to skin the beast's corpse, he likewise had difficulty making any impact, until the thought struck him that he should use the animal's own claws for the job! 

Episode 29 - What Should Be The Fear?

TEXT: 

HORATIO
It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.

MARCELLUS
                   Look, with what courteous action
It waves you to a more removed ground:
But do not go with it.

HORATIO
                                   No, by no means.

HAMLET
It will not speak; then I will follow it.

HORATIO
Do not, my lord.

HAMLET
                        Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life in a pin's fee;
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again: I'll follow it.

NOTES:

UR-HAMLET
The Ur-Hamlet (the German prefix Ur- means "primordial") is a play by an unknown author, though it is maintained that it could have been written by Thomas Kyd (who wrote The Spanish Tragedy) or perhaps by Shakespeare himself. Scholarship dates it to sometime during 1587.  No printed copy of the text survives, but it is mentioned in various places. As mentioned in the episode, Thomas Lodge refers to it, and it was sufficiently current in the public imagination for Thomas Nashe to have mentioned it in comparison with Seneca in his address to the Gentlemen Students of Oxford. All we really know about the play is that it featured a character called Hamlet and a ghost character that exhorted him to revenge. 

Thomas Lodge
Lodge was a trained physician who also had a passion for literature. His father had been Lord Mayor of London. He turned to writing rather later in life, having established himself first as a doctor. He wrote in a variety of formats - novels, pamphlets, and even plays - and indeed his treatise in Defence of Poetry, Music and Stage Plays somehow contained enough opinion to find itself banned. Lodge travelled extensively, even as far as Brazil in the early 1590s. In 1596 he wrote the work that earns him a mention here, Wit's Miserie and the World's Madnesse, a kind of memoir in which he mentions having scene the Ur-Hamlet play performed at Burbage's Shoreditch Playhouse.   

Thomas Nashe
Nashe is considered the greatest of the Elizabethan pampleteers - writers who produced pamphlets, or unbound and therefore easily distributed pieces of writing. He wrote a wide variety of items in an even wider variety of styles, very much appearing as an Elizabethan man of letters. His name appears on the title page of Christoper Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage, although we have no idea what, if anything, he contributed to the play. He comes up in connection with the Ur-Hamlet because of his somewhat convoluted reference to a Hamlet text in his address To the Gentlemen Students of Oxford, in which he laments the poor talents of writers contributing to English drama at the time. In comparison with Seneca, he feels they are rather worthless. There's an inference - given the comparison with Seneca, whose Roman plays are notoriously blood-soaked - that perhaps the Ur-Hamlet was also quite a bloody tale. (The body count in Shakespeare's version isn't anything to be sneezed at, either.)

Episode 28 - Angels and Ministers of Grace

TEXT:

HORATIO
Look, my lord, it comes!

Enter Ghost

HAMLET
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?

NOTES:

Angels
We will have much to discuss about Angels in this play - not least their final mention, which appears in one of my very favourite lines Shakespeare ever wrote. Hamlet was written at a liminal moment - the new faith of the Protestant Church of England was still only a generation old. Indeed it had come about in order to facilitate the union of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, whose only child, Elizabeth I, was head of the Church. Praying for the intercession of angels - or indeed their protection is a particularly Catholic thing, with which perhaps Shakespeare himself may have grown up. Hamlet's call to "angels and ministers of grace" makes him sound distinctly Catholic, and would not have gone unnoticed. He, Claudius and later Horatio all refer to angels throughout the play. 

Goblins
Goblins (and sometimes the deluxe version, Hobgoblins) appear occasionally in Shakespeare's plays. Surprisingly, the most supernatural of all the plays, Macbeth, doesn't feature any, but they get mentioned in a good variety of others. There are a great many variations of goblins across Europe - from the friendly trickster hobgoblins of English lore to the malevolent Erlking or Erlkonig immortalised in Schubert's fiendish art song. The only Danish goblins I can find in literature all appeared a good while after Hamlet, and were all written by Hans Christian Andersen. It's worth noting that Hamlet's reference in this chunk of text is not in any way cute or kid-friendly - he's thinking that the apparition before him could be a fiend from hell. 

Burial
When I started to write a note about burial customs and their significance in the play, I wound up re-recording Episode 28 entirely! So, not much more to say than is now included in the podcast. But for a brief discussion of the differences between burial customs in Shakespeare's time and our own, click here. 

EPISODE 27 - THAT PARTICULAR FAULT

TEXT:

HAMLET (continued)
So, oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As, in their birth--wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin -
By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens
The form of plosive manners, that these men,
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,
Their virtues else - be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo -
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault: the dram of eale
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal...

HORATIO
                                Look, my lord, it comes!

NOTES:

Alchemy
Alchemy is (or was) the attempt, via scientific processes, to improve or perfect something. Most frequently the aim was to turn something ordinary into gold. More specifically - and useful to us - was the process of converting a 'base metal' into a 'noble metal'. The noble metals are those substances that resist oxidisation or corrosion - particularly gold, silver, platinum, palladium and so on. (The metals that are worth making into jewellery or currency, since they will survive!) Hamlet's reference to the 'noble substance' is, we can reasonably assume, to gold. 

The Humours
The four humours date back at least to medicine in the time of Hippocrates. Ancient Greek medicine identified four humours - black bile (whose name in Greek gives us the word melancholy), yellow bile, phlegm and blood. Galen suggested that an excess of any of these led to one of four personality types as mentioned in the episode - melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic and sanguine. Although rejected by most of modern medicine, in this breakdown we do have the seeds that grew into personality indicators like the Meyers-Briggs test and its many off-shoots. Below is a 17th century engraving of the four - from left to right Choleric, Sanguine, Melancholy and Phlegmatic. Make of them what you will! 

Episode 26 - To The Manner Born

TEXT:

SCENE IV. The platform.

Enter HAMLET, HORATIO, and MARCELLUS

HAMLET
The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.

HORATIO
It is a nipping and an eager air.

HAMLET
What hour now?

HORATIO
I think it lacks of twelve.

HAMLET
No, it is struck.

HORATIO
Indeed? I heard it not: then it draws near the season
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off, within

What does this mean, my lord?

HAMLET
The king doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.

HORATIO
Is it a custom?

HAMLET
Ay, marry, is't:
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations:
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition; and indeed it takes
From our achievements, though perform'd at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.

NOTES:

Doubling
There is always a good deal to say about doubling of roles in Shakespeare's plays. It's reasonable to assume that The Lord Chamberlain's Men (and, as they were later known, The King's Men) had no problem with doubling up on roles so that actors were kept busy and utilised in performance. Most of the current Arden editions feature a casting/doubling table as an appendix, and these can be helpful in terms of tracking how performers might be cast. Our first instance of it is Bernardo, who doesn't appear in this scene (Act 1 Scene 4). The actor might return soon enough as Reynaldo, Polonius' steward. The same actor, and the performer playing Marcellus, could likewise reappear as the various messengers who appear in the later acts of the play. 

Drunkenness
Hamlet's distaste for Claudius' drunken revels is an unusually negative response to alcohol in Shakespeare. Falstaff is, of course, the Bard's most celebrated boozer, and there's a case to be made for substantial alcoholism in Macbeth's Scotland. Hamlet's negativity towards it is interesting - scholars who enjoy the hunt for biographical clues in the plays might suggest that it's a reflection of Shakespeare's own views, but I find this unlikely. 

Wassail
The word wassail comes from Old English was hál, related to the Anglo-Saxon greeting wes þú hál , meaning "be you hale"—i.e., "be healthful" or "be healthy". It grew to be associated particularly with Christmas - wassailing and mumming were integral parts of the Medieval Christmas celebration. It's easy enough to trace the phrase back towards Old Norse, and Scandinavia in general, and imagine Shakespeare including it as an appropriate reference to Danish drinking. 

EPISODE 25 - SPRINGES TO CATCH WOODCOCKS

TEXT:

OPHELIA
My lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honourable fashion.

POLONIUS
Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to.

OPHELIA
And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.

POLONIUS
Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both,
Even in their promise, as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. From this time
Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence;
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him, that he is young
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you: in few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
The better to beguile. This is for all:
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,
Have you so slander any moment leisure,
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to't, I charge you: come your ways.

OPHELIA
I shall obey, my lord.

Exeunt

NOTES:

Woodcocks
The woodcock, or snipe (with the fabulous Latin family name Scolopax) is a family of birds notorious for being easy to catch - primarily because they aren't particularly sharp. Shakespeare uses the bird as an example of being easily had in several of the plays, particularly when characters play an elaborate prank on someone. Notable examples are Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and Parolles in All's Well That Ends Well. The term crops in similar fashion in a good few other plays, too. There's a neat little flourish from our dear author in Hamlet - Polonius advises Ophelia not to be caught up in Hamlet's traps (or springes), and then towards the end of the play Laertes laments the fact that he gets caught in the one he sets for Hamlet - using the same metaphor of the poor, unwitting woodcock. 

EPISODE 24 - A GREEN GIRL

TEXT:

LAERTES
Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.

POLONIUS
The time invites you; go; your servants tend.

LAERTES
Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well
What I have said to you.

OPHELIA
Tis in my memory locked,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

LAERTES
Farewell.

Exit

POLONIUS
What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you?

OPHELIA
So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.

POLONIUS
Marry, well bethought:
Tis told me, he hath very oft of late
Given private time to you; and you yourself
Have of your audience been most free and bounteous:
If it be so, as so tis put on me,
And that in way of caution, I must tell you,
You do not understand yourself so clearly
As it behoves my daughter and your honour.
What is between you? give me up the truth.

OPHELIA
He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.

POLONIUS
Affection! pooh! you speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?

OPHELIA
I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

POLONIUS
Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby;
That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly;
Or - not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus - you'll tender me a fool.

NOTES:

Mothers and Daughters
As mentioned in this episode, mothers and daughters very seldom share the stage in plays by Shakespeare. The only ones I can think of Queen Isabel of France and her daughter Katharine in Henry V, Mistress Page and her daughter Anne in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Thaisa and Marina in Pericles, Hermione and Perdita in The Winter’s Tale, Lady Capulet and her headstrong child in Romeo & Juliet, and perhaps their distant cousin the Widow Capilet and her daughter Diana, who is instrumental in making sure that All’s Well That Ends Well. A formidable trio of women appears in Coriolanus (Volumnia, his mother, Virgilia, his wife, and Valeria, 'a noble lady of Rome') - but they are not directly mother and daughter. Lear, Prospero, Titus Andronicus, Duke Senior, Shylock, and Brabantio have fascinating children, but none of them have wives any more. It's such a startling absence from what is otherwise so rich a canon of characters and human experiences.

Marry
There's a long tradition of what are known as 'minced oaths' in Shakespeare - given that he was writing under the watchful eye of a censor, in a time when Puritans were gaining influence he couldn't write the full versions of any curses or swearwords or expletives. As a result we have various items - sblood, zounds, and the very common 'Marry' - which is a contraction of 'By the Virgin Mary'. There's even an argument that the word 'bloody' as a curse word came into use as a contraction of 'By Our Lady'! 

Mrs. Polonius
As promised, here is the link to Anne Harris' (hopefully deliberately) hilarious exploration of the evidence for the character of Mrs. Polonius, published in The Spectator in March 1933. I'm not sure if it's out of copyright, so I haven't included the entire text on the website. 

Doll Display
I think that Ninagawa's use of the hinadan, or doll-display stand, is one of his most ingenious staging devices in all of the Shakespeare plays he put on. The idea featured repeatedly in several of his productions of Hamlet over the years, and in some cases was extrapolated further through the play in different ways. Jon Brokering wrote an excellent article on this - you can access it here (if you have a way of getting in to JSTOR!) 

A traditional hinadan (雛段) - the idea of it is also memorably used in Akira Kurosawa's film Dreams. 

EPISODE 23 - TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE

TEXT: 

POLONIUS (continued) 

And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

NOTES: 

Henrik Ramel
Ramel was a Danish diplomat, born in Poland sometime in the 1550s. Notably, he appears in Wikipedia only in Danish! He is mentioned in Keith Brown's essay on the play in English Studies Vol. 55 (1974). 

Precepts for the Well Ordering of a Man's Life
William Cecil, Lord Burghley, wrote these for his son Robert before HE left for Paris in about 1584. You can read the entire set right here, but the ones that are particularly interesting for their parallels to what Polonius says are as follows:

Precept V - Be sure you keep some great man always to your friend, yet trouble him not for trifles; compliment him often, present him with many, yet small gifts, and of little charge, and if you have cause to bestow any great gratuity on him then let it be no chest commodity or obscure thing, but such a one as may be daily in sight, the better to be remembered…

Precept VI - Neither undertake law against any man before you be fully resolved you have the right on your side, which being once so ascertained, then spare neither cost nor pains to accomplish it. 

Precept VII - Beware of suretyship for your best friend

Precept VIII - Towards your superiors be humble yet generous; with your equals familiar yet respective; towards your inferiors show much humility, with some familiarity…

Precept X - be not scurrilous in conversation, nor satirical in your wits… jest when they do savour of too much truth leave a bitterness in the minds of those that are touched.

EPISODE 22 - THE PRIMROSE PATH OF DALLIANCE

TEXT:

OPHELIA
I shall the effect of this good lesson keep,
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.

LAERTES
                                               O, fear me not.
I stay too long: but here my father comes.

Enter POLONIUS

A double blessing is a double grace,
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.

POLONIUS
Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee!

NOTES:

Primrose
Primroses are famed for blooming early in Spring, and crop up quite frequently in Shakespeare's plays. Ophelia's mention of them here is quite a lovely inversion of her brother's concern that she, like a flower blossoming too fast, might be rejected. Shakespeare so liked the image (or got such mileage or praise for it) that it shows up again in Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 3: "the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire". 

Dalliance
The word appears in Shakespeare only seven times, but always with the sense of dallying, of wasting time on carefree pleasures rather than anything serious. In contemporary English the word means rather more specifically a romantic entanglement - although not a very serious one. Again, Ophelia turns the tables on Laertes by inferring that it's not her that needs to be weary of the concept. 

William Cecil, Lord Burghley
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (13 September 1520 – 4 August 1598) was an English statesman, and the chief advisor of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign. When she was crowned queen in 1558, he was made her secretary. He stayed in her service until his death, and in that time he served twice as Secretary of State (1550–53 and 1558–72) and thereafter became Lord High Treasurer from 1572 until he died in 1598. His son Robert had an equally impressive political career that spanned the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. 

EPISODE 21 - FEAR IT, OPHELIA

TEXT:

LAERTES (continued)
Then, if he says he loves you,
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
As he in his particular act and place
May give his saying deed; which is no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain,
If with too credent ear you list his songs,
Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
To his unmastered importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
If she unmask her beauty to the moon:
Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes:
The canker galls the infants of the spring
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed,
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary then; best safety lies in fear:
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.

NOTES: 

-ment
Shakespeare is clearly on a roll in Hamlet, cooking up new words as they come to him. Already in the play we have heard condolement and now blastment. I'll keep the Index entry on this family of words up to date whenever we meet a new one in the play. 

Botany
Laertes finishes his speech to Ophelia with quite an involved set of botanical images - cankers, dews and contagious blastments all besetting the 'infants of the spring'. It's worth always bearing in mind that Shakespeare grew up in the country, and was deeply aware of the life of the seasons. No surprise that there are enough botanical references in Shakespeare to fill a book - and a lovely one, too - Gerit Quealey has put together "An Illustrated Compendium of All the Flowers, Fruits, Herbs, Trees, Seeds, and Grasses Cited" - you can find it here.
 

EPISODE 20 - THE TRIFLING OF HIS FAVOUR

TEXT:

SCENE III. A room in Polonius' house.

Enter LAERTES and OPHELIA

LAERTES
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell:
And, sister, as the winds give benefit
And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,
But let me hear from you.

OPHELIA
Do you doubt that?

LAERTES
For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour,
Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,
A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute;
No more.

OPHELIA
             No more but so?

LAERTES
                                       Think it no more;
For nature, crescent, does not grow alone
In thews and bulk, but, as this temple waxes,
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,
And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
The virtue of his will: but you must fear,
His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own;
For he himself is subject to his birth:
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself; for on his choice depends
The safety and health of this whole state;
 

NOTES:
Greek Mythology
Although Shakespeare was decried as having "small Latin, and less Greek" there is plenty of reason to believe that he was well-versed in classical mythology and literature from both civilisations. Whether he could read ancient Greek is up for debate, but certainly his astonishing breadth of reference is never in doubt. Laertes gets his name from Homer. As discussed in this episode, there are perhaps echoes of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus (one of the wonders of the Ancient World) and the letters of St. Paul to the Corinthians - also written in Greek. 

Violets
These pretty flowers appear very often in Shakespeare as flowers that bloom early in Spring, smell very sweetly, but fade quickly. In Sonnet No. 12, they are mentioned in manner reminiscent of this scene - "violets past prime". In King John, in the speech from Act IV.ii that gives us the phrase 'to gild the lily' (in fact a misquote!) the perfume is so synonymous with the flower that to add any would be to likewise overdo it. Shakespeare packs an incredible depth into Laertes' comments on Hamlet - not only is his love as intoxicating and as pretty as the lovely flower, but also as untrustworthy and as likely to fade early. 

EPISODE 19 - FOUL PLAY

TEXT: 

HORATIO
It would have much amazed you.

HAMLET
Very like, very like. Stay'd it long?

HORATIO
While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.

MARCELLUS & BERNARDO
Longer, longer.

HORATIO
Not when I saw't.

HAMLET
His beard was grizzled, no?

HORATIO
It was, as I have seen it in his life,
A sable silver'd.

HAMLET
I will watch to-night;
Perchance 'twill walk again.

HORATIO
I warrant it will.

HAMLET
If it assume my noble father's person,
I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape
And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight,
Let it be tenable in your silence still;
And whatsoever else shall hap to-night,
Give it an understanding, but no tongue:
I will requite your loves. So, fare you well:
Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve,
I'll visit you.

All
Our duty to your honour.

HAMLET
Your loves, as mine to you: farewell.

Exeunt all but HAMLET

My father's spirit in arms! all is not well;
I doubt some foul play: would the night were come!
Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.

Exit

NOTES:

HELLMOUTH
The hellmouth was frequently a spectacular scenic effect in medieval dramas and pageants. Sometimes it was elaborately constructed and had its own wagon - as in the illustration here. Hamlet (or at very least Shakespeare) doubtless saw some kind of performance featuring such an effect, and it's likely he has it in mind in his theatrical speech in this week's segment of the text. 

SABLE AND SILVER
As mentioned in the episode, there are heraldic connotations to sable as a colour. As well as being a rather luxurious (and warm) fur, to which Hamlet himself will make reference later in the play, there's a long tradition of sable being a colour used in heraldry. Shakespeare had already linked the two in his twelfth sonnet:
When I do count the clock that tells the time, 
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; 
When I behold the violet past prime, 
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard, 
Then of thy beauty do I question make, 
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow; 
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.


Sable shows up in several royal coats of arms throughout Europe, and is often matched with argent, or silver. Shakespeare's own coat of arms is described thus, in a draft from October 1596:
The arms are blazoned. “Gold, on a bend sable, a spear of the first, steeled argent [a gold spear tipped with silver on a black diagonal bar]; and for his crest, or cognizaunce a falcon his wings displayed argent, standing on a wreath of his colours, and supporting a spear gold steeled as aforesaid, set upon a helmet with mantles and tassels as hath been accustomed”
So, it looked something like this:

EPISODE 18 - DREADFUL SECRECY

TEXT: 

HORATIO (continued)
                                           This to me
In dreadful secrecy impart they did;
And I with them the third night kept the watch;
Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time,
Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes: I knew your father;
These hands are not more like.

HAMLET
But where was this?

MARCELLUS
My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd.

HAMLET
Did you not speak to it?

HORATIO
My lord, I did;
But answer made it none: yet once methought
It lifted up its head and did address
Itself to motion, like as it would speak;
But even then the morning cock crew loud,
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
And vanish'd from our sight.

HAMLET
'Tis very strange.

HORATIO
As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true;
And we did think it writ down in our duty
To let you know of it.

HAMLET
Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
Hold you the watch to-night?

MARCELLUS & BERNARDO
We do, my lord.

HAMLET
Arm'd, say you?

MARCELLUS BERNARDO
Arm'd, my lord.

HAMLET
From top to toe?

MARCELLUS & BERNARDO
My lord, from head to foot.

HAMLET
Then saw you not his face?

HORATIO
O, yes, my lord; he wore his beaver up.

HAMLET
What, look'd he frowningly?

HORATIO
A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

HAMLET
Pale or red?

HORATIO
Nay, very pale.

HAMLET
And fix'd his eyes upon you?

HORATIO
Most constantly.

HAMLET
I would I had been there.

NOTES:

BEVOR
While googling images for this particular piece of armour the surprising thing was how many Renaissance Fayre- style reconstructions showed up. Armour continues to fascinate, it seems - and I am sure there are passionate folks out there who might argue that Shakespeare was wrong to describe the folding visor of a helmet as the bevor, since for some the bevor was specifically a neck-covering plate of armour. As ever, it is safest to assume a) that Shakespeare does know what he is talking about, and b) that it's the effect of the image that is important, rather than specifics. 

TWAS A ROUGH NIGHT
In the aftermath of Duncan's murder, the Porter appears to break the tension and to answer the earnest knocking at the door. He opens to greet Macduff and Lennox, who describes the strange events of the night - 

LENNOX
The night has been unruly. Where we lay, 
Our chimneys were blown down and, as they say, 
Lamentings heard i'th'air, strange screams of death, 
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events
New hatched to the woeful time. The obscure bird
Clamored the livelong night. Some say the Earth
Was feverous and did shake. 

MACBETH
'Twas a rough night.

EPISODE 17 - METHINKS I SEE MY FATHER

TEXT: 

HAMLET (continued)
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
My father! - methinks I see my father.

HORATIO
Where, my lord?

HAMLET
In my mind's eye, Horatio.

HORATIO
I saw him once; he was a goodly king.

HAMLET
He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.

HORATIO
My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

HAMLET
Saw? who?

HORATIO
My lord, the king your father.

HAMLET
The king my father!

HORATIO
Season your admiration for awhile
With an attent ear, till I may deliver,
Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
This marvel to you.

HAMLET
For God's love, let me hear.

HORATIO
Two nights together had these gentlemen,
Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,
In the dead waste and middle of the night,
Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father,
Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,
Appears before them, and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd
By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes,
Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distilled
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
Stand dumb and speak not to him.

NOTES:

Cap-a-pe
Variously rendered as cap-a-pe or cap-a-pie, this phrase comes from medieval French, and means head to foot. (It can be traced even further back to Latin, where caput = head and pedem = food. Cap a pe, indeed.) 

The noblest Roman of them all
Despite the fact that he organises the assassination of Julius Caesar (and so famously strikes the final blow) Brutus is eulogised very beautifully in Shakespeare's version of the story. His nobility is mentioned in Marc Antony's final comments, as well as the segment mentioned in this episode: 

This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators save only he, 
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;  
He only, in a general honest thought  
And common good to all, made one of them.  
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world 'This was a man!' 
(Julius Caesar, Act 5 Scene 5)

EPISODE 16 - A TRUANT DISPOSITION

TEXT:

HORATIO
Hail to your lordship!

HAMLET
I am glad to see you well:
Horatio,--or I do forget myself.

HORATIO
The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.

HAMLET
Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you:
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio? Marcellus?

MARCELLUS
My good lord--

HAMLET
I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir.
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

HORATIO
A truant disposition, good my lord.

HAMLET
I would not hear your enemy say so,
Nor shall you do mine ear that violence,
To make it truster of your own report
Against yourself: I know you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore?
We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.

HORATIO
My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.

HAMLET
I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student;
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.

HORATIO
Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon.

HAMLET
Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

NOTES:

MELANCHOLY
For a very good article by Erin Sullivan on heartbreak and Shakespeare, including some discussion of contemporary medicine and medical opinion on sadness and heartbreak, click here

EPISODE 15 - THE FIRST SOLILOQUY

TEXT: 

HAMLET
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come thus!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month -
Let me not think on't - Frailty, thy name is woman! -
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears why she, even she -
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer - married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.

NOTES: 

Soliloquy
A soliloquy is a dramatic device whereby a playwright has a character speak to themselves alone on stage. The word itself comes from Latin (solus, alone, and loquor, I speak...). Shakespeare's plays are filled with countless examples of the form, in comedy, history, and tragedy, and indeed the device has been popular from as far back as the writings of Montaigne (believed to have inspired Shakespeare) all the way as far as contemporary versions of it, such as Netflix' House of Cards. 

Suicide
There is much discussion of suicide in this play. This first of Hamlet's soliloquies starts with his wish to end his life, and the theme will of course be picked up in the more famous 'to be or not to be' soliloquy later in the play. Later in the play it is debated whether or not Ophelia can have a full Christian burial because her death might have been a suicide too - and so the issue haunts the entire play. 

Niobe
Niobe was the mother of fourteen children, but when she bragged about this to Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis, mocking her for having had only two children, the latter woman was insulted. In revenge for this hubris, Leto's divine children slaughtered all of Niobe's children, and her grief for them made her synonymous with weeping. 

Hyperion
Hyperion was one of the Titans, eventually overthrown by the Olympian gods. He was the father of the Sun, the Moon and the Dawn (Helios, Selene and Eos, respectively.)

Seneca's Hercules
Seneca's version of Hercules is a complicated, literary play that was very likely written to be read (or read aloud) rather than performed in full. It expands on Euripides' version of the story of Hercules and his madness, imposed on him as punishment by his father's wife Hera. The play (fully titled Hercules Furens) contains passages of extraordinary beauty and a variety of very quotable maxims, but as with most of Seneca's dramatic output doesn't hold its weight on stage. 

Hercules
The great hero Hercules was famous for completing the twelve labours, but in drama it is the darker sides of his story that have been immortalised. Both Euripides and Seneca wrote version of the story of how he was driven mad by the Furies, and in his madness, murdered his own wife and children. As a character particularly associated with dramatic madness, it is perhaps no accident that Hamlet mentions him even here, even this early in the play. Hamlet himself will manipulate people's assumption that he's mad as the play goes on. 

EPISODE 14 - GO NOT TO WITTENBERG

TEXT:

KING (continued)
...We pray you, throw to earth
This unprevailing woe, and think of us
As of a father: for let the world take note,
You are the most immediate to our throne;
And with no less nobility of love
Than that which dearest father bears his son,
Do I impart toward you. For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire:
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet:
I pray thee, stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.

HAMLET
I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

KING CLAUDIUS
Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply:
Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come;
This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart: in grace whereof,
No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the king's rouse the heavens all bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.

Exeunt all but HAMLET

NOTES:

WITTENBERG
The city of Wittenberg is in central Germany, and was one of the most important cities in Saxony. As well as its fame as having been home to the university that Hamlet studied at, it was also the site of Martin Luther's dramatic revolt against the indulgences in the church in 1517 (less than a hundred years before Shakespeare wrote the play.) Wittenberg is also the home, in Christopher Marlowe's play, of his title character Doctor Faustus. 

THE KING'S ROUSE
I didn't cover it in the body of the text, but there's a hint at the end of Claudius' speech that he might be something of a drinker. Contrasted with the fastidiousness of Hamlet's father (introduced to us already in the martial formality of an experienced soldier), Claudius is presented as a relaxed, even rowdy boozer. He is excited at just how much 'jocund' drinking there will be tonight, and Hamlet will likewise make reference to this in upcoming lines and scenes. 

EPISODE 13 - A FAULT AGAINST THE DEAD

TEXT:

KING
'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool'd:
For what we know must be and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven
,A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd: whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corpse till he that died to-day,
'This must be so.' 

NOTES:

Cain and Abel
In the book of Genesis in the Bible, Cain and Abel are the sons of Adam and Eve. Cain was a farmer, Abel a shepherd. When both brothers made sacrifices to God, He preferred Abel's offering, and Cain killed him. This was the first murder, and Abel, therefore, the 'first corpse' mentioned in this episode's portion of the text. Cain was thereafter punished with a lifetime of wandering, and with 'the mark of Cain', a sign from God that prevented anyone from killing him - perhaps as a warning not to commit his sin again. 

Unmanly grief
The question of what it means to be a man (and what it means to be a woman) crops up repeatedly in the play. Here's the first instance of the issue, with Claudius's dressing down of Hamlet in his grief. 

EPISODE 12 - A LITTLE MORE THAN KIN, AND LESS THAN KIND

TEXT:

CLAUDIUS (continued)
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son,--

HAMLET
[Aside] A little more than kin, and less than kind.

KING CLAUDIUS
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

HAMLET
Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the sun.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

HAMLET
Ay, madam, it is common.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
                                           If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?

HAMLET
Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

NOTES:

GOOD MOTHER
There aren't a great deal of notes to share for this episode, but it's interesting that in various texts of the play the world 'good' is also transmitted as cold, and even cooled. Each of these various words has its merits - depending on how snarky Hamlet is to be with his mother. 

ASIDE
I don't think it's really necessary to explain what an aside is, obviously, but I didn't quite manage to put into the main text of the episode the fact that sometimes in performance this first aside from Hamlet isn't actually played as one. If Hamlet says it directly to Claudius, it's even more startling as a first line, and indeed it necessitates even more handling from Gertrude. The play has an infinity of possibilities! 

EPISODE 11 - WHAT WOULDST THOU HAVE, LAERTES?

TEXT: 

CLAUDIUS
And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?
You told us of some suit; what is't, Laertes?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane,
And loose your voice: what wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
What wouldst thou have, Laertes?

LAERTES
                                                       My dread lord,
Your leave and favour to return to France;
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark,
To show my duty in your coronation,
Yet now, I must confess, that duty done,
My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France
And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

CLAUDIUS
Have you your father's leave? What says Polonius?

POLONIUS
He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
By laboursome petition, and at last
Upon his will I seal'd my hard consent:
I do beseech you, give him leave to go.

CLAUDIUS
Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine,
And thy best graces spend it at thy will!

NOTES:

Thou and You
In Old English, thou was singular and you was plural; but sometime in the 13th century, English started copying the French manner of speaking that used the plural as a polite form. So, just like vous in French, you became a means of addressing someone formally. There's a lot of status in play with who uses which form, and to whom. You was more formal, so servants would use it to their employers, children would use it when addressing their parents, and so on. It could also be a social or societal divider. You was said to those above you on the social ladder, and then thou in return was used for those below. Likewise lower social classes use thou when addressing each other. Curiously though, thou was also used to indicate a particular kind of intimacy, as when a character might speak to God. With all of this going on, it's clear that changing from thou to you or you to thou in a conversation always conveys a contrast in meaning - a change of attitude or an altered relationship. Sometimes it is as an insult - if someone uses thou to address someone to whom they owe greater respect - and sometimes (as in this episode) it's a sign of dropping formality to express closeness or intimacy.