(Magpie 58, ABC Wednesday, Writer's Island and Sunday Scribblings)
“J” is for “January.”
Hamlet is very excited.
It’s January and it’s a bitter cold night in Denmark. We’re on a battlement of Elsinore Castle, where the young Prince has just learned that his late father was murdered, murdered by his own brother, the present King.

And Hamlet learned this from his father himself, who has appeared in the form of a Ghost who begs his son to avenge his murder.
Hamlet’s mind ranges wildly: was that really his father? Or could it have been an evil spirit, a fiend trying to trick him into performing an evil deed – to kill his uncle?

And of course there’s the possibility that he had imagined the whole thing. He has got to find out the answers to his questions.
He comes upon his two friends, who had also previously seen the Ghost.
Hamlet: “Good friends, as you are friends, scholars and soldiers, give me one poor request.”
Horatio: “What is it, my lord. We will.”
Hamlet: “Never make known what you have seen tonight.”
Horatio and Marcellus: “My lord, we will not.”
Hamlet: “Nay, but swear it.”
Both his friends readily swear to it.
But that’s not nearly enough for the young Prince. An oath is all well and good, but this is serious business. It calls for a special kind of oath.

Hamlet: “Upon my sword.”
Marcellus: “We have sworn, my lord, already.”
Hamlet: “Indeed, upon my sword, indeed!”
Quite astonishingly, the Ghost calls out from beneath the stage: “Swear by his sword!”
They swear again. Horatio's amazement is unlimited.
Horatio: “O day and night! But this is wondrous strange!”
Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Magpie 44

This week’s prompt of a sled immediately brought to mind a strange, curious passage in the play “Hamlet.”
Hamlet’s dad, the late King, is of course dead as the play begins. However, he has returned as a ghost to encourage his son to seek vengeance for his murder.
Problem is, young Hamlet, who has not as yet seen the spirit, can’t be sure that the phantom is really his late father.
His friend Horatio, however, has seen it, and is convinced it is the ghost of the late King. He was on the guard-platform of the castle when it appeared.
Sentinel: “Is it not like the King?”
Horatio: “As thou art to thyself. Such was the very armor he had on when he the ambitious King of Norway combated.”

Horatio: “And so frowned he once when in an angry parley he smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.”
According to the text, the late King had been in various battles – more or less something to be expected from a king – and was involved in a fracas with some Polish guys who were on a sled. The Elizabethans used what for us today is a politically incorrect term, “Polacks,” for Polish people, but it was the 16th century and they knew no better. :-)
In other words, the way the old King had looked during this battle on the ice, this skirmish on sleds, is exactly how he looked when he showed up at the castle as a spirit. So the ghost must be legit.

Whether he is an authentic phantom or some evil spirit just pretending to be the late King is a key problem, which Hamlet spends a lot of time trying to figure out.

Magpie 38

The Magpie prompt this week immediately brought up memories of the greatest graveyard scene ever created in what was possibly the greatest play ever created: the graveyard sequence in “Hamlet.”

You’re probably familiar with the action of the scene, but let’s run through it again.
A couple of gravediggers are doing their thing in Act 5, digging away, and at the same time making jokes. Shakespeare has been criticized by some scholars for mixing humor – or what passed for humor four hundred and some years ago – with tragedy. After all, that’s Ophelia’s grave they’re digging.
But as Quentin Tarantino has assured us, mixing humor with tragedy is often powerfully effective.
Sample of grave-digger humor:
First G-D, to Second G-D: “Who would build the best house? A carpenter, a mason or a shipwright?”
Second G-D (sort of bored): “I don’t know.”
First G-D: “Well, don’t wear out your brains on it. The answer? A grave-digger! The houses he builds last till doomsday!”
Now, come on; that’s not bad – for the sixteenth century. :-)

Anyway, Hamlet and his close friend Horatio come upon the scene. There’s a skull that the G-D has tossed aside. It’s Yorick’s skull.
Hamlet: “I knew him, Horatio!”

The picture of Hamlet with the skull has become one of the best known images of the play. It is clear that the Prince has been greatly affected by what he has seen and learned. In fact, it’s not too much to say that when he learns of Ophelia’s death it’s as though he becomes at least somewhat deranged.
When her funeral procession arrives, Hamlet, for no reason whatever, attacks her brother Laertes, who had always been his good friend.
Laertes: “Lay her in the earth. And from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring!”
Hamlet, leaping forward: “What is he whose grief bears such an emphasis? I loved Ophelia! Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum!”
There has always been a question as to whether Hamlet became really a bit insane or was just acting that way. Let’s examine closely what he shouts at this moment of high tension.
Hamlet: “What would you do for her, Laertes? Would you drink vinegar, eat a crocodile? Well, I would!”
The King: “Oh, he is mad, Laertes!”
Eat a crocodile? This is just part of his raving. Hamlet has definitely become unhinged, at least for the moment.
It’s a powerful scene, worth recalling when regarding this week’s Magpie prompt.