Hamlet.

Oh the heavy burden associated with this one word. If you are a dear friend who has not heard from me in ages, this is why. This week I am wrapping up my teaching of this opus. The play that has had me breaking out in cold sweats at just the mention of it. Having never taught it before, I seriously considered putting it off til the spring. And then maybe, just maybe we'd run out of time and have to - god forbid - cut it from the syllabus. What's strange is that the procrastinator in me surprisingly lost this battle. Instead, I decided to dive right into my uncertainty, and during the busiest fall ever. In the middle of college rec writing, parent-teacher conferences, grades & comments, not to mention life, I was cramming Hamlet. My goal was to make sure that my students weren't scared of it the way I was in high school. All I remember about reading that play senior year was my failure to comprehend it. So, we act it out every day; we watch the glamorous Kenneth Branagh and Kate Winslet; we debate the true nature of Hamlet and Ophelia's relationship; we talk out our confusion. Some classes go well; others are messy. The burden I was feeling has lifted, though. After all, as a wise teacher once told me of trying to teach Moby Dick, this is only their first Hamlet. Their senior year Hamlet. There will be many more readings or viewings to come, and with these, many new ways to understand the play. Hamlet at 17 is invariably a different play than Hamlet at 21 or 33.

As an older reader now, I have to say, I'm mesmerized by it. This transformation occurred for me in Act V, along with Hamlet's own transformation. He finally gets out his head, stops dwelling on things outside his control, and decides to leave a few things up to fate. There is a lightness to his language that is missing in the earlier acts, even when he is jesting (albeit bitterly) under his antic disposition.

Hamlet's epiphany to live in the moment reminds me of my favorite line in Beowulf: "Fate goes ever as it must." Similarly, Hamlet tells Horatio, "There's a divinity that shapes our ends,/Rough-hew them how we will - / That is most certain."

It's the hardest thing in the world to do sometimes: to surrender. Particularly for those of us who think we can map life out, solve all of its quandaries intellectually. Apparently I'm not as far off from Hamlet as I first thought. I'm pretty sure I told several people at the outset of this little endeavor, "I just don't relate to this guy." Ha. The joke was on me.

Really, my favorite moment in the play (aside from when he's messing with Rosencrantz n' Guildenstern) is when he and Horatio are discussing his upcoming duel with Laertes. The duel is unlooked for; it's just been thrust upon him by Claudius. And it's happening right now, no delay. Get thee to the Great Hall for the show. Horatio, sensing Hamlet's discomfort (this, after all, wasn't in Hamlet's plans), says he'll stall the duel and tell the gang they'll just have to wait. (What a good friend, that Horatio.) And Hamlet the planner, Hamlet the thinker, Hamlet the procrastinator would do just that. But the new Hamlet has a better approach: just wing it.

Horatio: I will forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit.

Hamlet: Not a whit, we defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come - the readiness is all. Since no man aught he leaves knows, what is't to leave betimes? Let be.

I love it! It is the perfect answer to his "to be or not to be" moment. Hamlet just "is" here. He accepts what is to come with grace and dignity(I admire his apology to Laertes). Maybe I'm terribly misreading, but to me, he becomes a true king in these moments.

Thank you to the kind souls who shepherded me through Hamlet this fall.
You know who you are.