Act Two
Act
Two Scene Two
Sub
Scene Eight
The
interlude with the players.
“Ah…the
Lenten players are here,” Hamlet exclaimed with glee.
“You
are welcome, masters; welcome all.—I am glad to see thee well.” Hamlet
approached the troupe.
“I
was to tell you of this but ….” Polonius cut in to explain his call then.
“Hush!
The walls hold ears. They may listen in.” Hamlet feigned once more his madness,
or perhaps he was.
“Welcome,
good friends.—O my old friend!” Hamlet reached out to hug each of the troupe
players. He knew them all, and then met some new ones.
“Why,
thy face is valenced now you met me. Comest thou to beard me in Denmark?”
Hamlet smiled at the new actors dazed by his presence. He moved from them to
the ladies he once interacted with.
“What,
my young lady and mistress! By ’r Lady, your Ladyship is nearer to heaven than
when I saw you last”
“I
have aged, my Lord.” The lady replied. “As you have grown.”
“By
the altitude of a chopine. Pray God your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold,
be not cracked within the
ring.” Hamlet praised the lady for her vocals. He then stepped back and did a
bow to them all.
“Masters,
you are all welcome. We’ll e’en to ’t like French falconers, fly at anything we
see. We’ll
have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your quality. Come, a
passionate speech.”
“I
do need the freshness in this dreadful castle,” Hamlet whispered to the leading
actor.
“What
speech, my good lord?” The actor asked to appease Hamlet.
“I
heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted, or, if it was, not
above once; for the play, I remember, pleased not a million to was caviary to
the general.” Hamlet praised the players for those well-remembered lines that
he felt when it was said then but not all may stand with his call, some took
the higher tone above him, to discount the effectiveness of the lines.
“
But it was (as I received it, and others whose judgments in such matters cried
in the top of mine) an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down
with as much modesty as cunning,” Hamlet recalled.
“I
remember one said there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savory,
nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of affection, but
called it an honest method, as wholesome as sweet and, by very much, more
handsome than fine. One speech in ’t I chiefly loved.”
Polonius
ate at those words. Sallets are the added spices of eggs with salted meat; a
rich combination that at times ‘dished’ the meals to the appetite. As a
playwright, he made his ‘sallets’ on the lines to make the play more than it
was. He looked to Hamlet, as one with too many ‘sallets’ to his mind, that it
was unsavory to the servings more so to be shared with his daughter.
“Sallets
are on his mind,” Polonius muttered. “Madness is the taste. Vulgar is his
appetite.”
It
was then Hamlet called out the players.
“I
recalled now. Twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido, and thereabout of it especially when
he speaks of Priam’s slaughter. If it lives in your memory, begin with this
line—let me see, let me see. It begins with this line.” Hamlet was all excited
to hear that he spoke the lines as if he was in the play.
"The
rugged Pyrrhus, like th’ Hyrcanian beast,” Hamlet growl out the roar. “This not
so; it begins with Pyrrhus: The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms, black as
his purpose, did the night resemble hen he lay couchèd in a th’ ominous horse,
hath now this dread and black complexion smeared with heraldry more
dismal.:
Hamlet
had taken to the nearby seat and sat astride it as he was on the mount. Pyrrhus
was a conqueror then who cared not about the cost of victory so long he wins.
His battles were huge in the losses and his retribution brutal. The ‘pyrrhic victory’ was how he was
remembered then.
“Head
to foot, Now is he total gules, horridly tricked With the blood of fathers,
mothers, daughters, sons,
Baked and impasted with the parching streets, That lend a tyrannous and a
damnèd light to their lord’s murder.”
“Roasted
in wrath and fire, and thus o’ersizèd with coagulate gore, with eyes like
carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks."
So,
proceed you…” Hamlet passed the stage play toward the players.
“Fore
God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good discretion.” Polonius
appreciates food lines delivered without flaws in the play.
“Act
for your audience awaits you.” Hamlet prompts the players.
No comments:
Post a Comment