It's a tradition: annual Christmas Hamlet quote

That's right, it's that time of year again, which means it's time to quote  what the sentry Marcellus has to say about Christmas as he stands on the battlements of the castle of Elsinore in Act 1 Scene 1 of Hamlet.

The tone of the scene is pretty ominous. Things aren't going great in Denmark. King Hamlet (senior) has died under mysterious circumstances. Gertrude, his widow, married Claudius, his brother, with unseemly rapidity. Meanwhile, Fortinbras, the young Norwegian prince, is making warlike moves.

If all that wasn't enough, two guards on the night watch have seen what seems to be the ghost of the dead king on the battlements--and they're convinced this is an ill omen.

The guards, Marcellus and Bernardo, have invited the student Horatio, Hamlet's best friend, to join them in their lonely vigil, where for some nights past a ghost has appeared resembling the late King Hamlet, father of the prince who is the main character of the story.

Horatio represents a prototype of modernity, an intellectual familiar with the tradition but skeptical of it. Yet even he must concede the power of the unknown after witnessing the phantom, which he takes as a portent of bad things to come.

Marcellus then points out that there are also sometimes portents of good, particularly at this season of the year:

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

At this point, all I can do is say with Horatio something that has become a mantra of mine on many things spiritual, "So have I heard and do in part believe it."

Would that it were so this holiday season and beyond.

Annual Christmas Hamlet quote

That's right, it's that time of year again, which means it's time to quote the sentry Marcellus as he stands on the battlements of the castle of Elsinore in Act 1 Scene 1 of Hamlet.

The tone of the scene is pretty ominous. Marcellus and Bernardo have invited the student Horatio to join them in their lonely night vigil where for some nights past a ghost has appeared resembling the late King Hamlet, father of the prince who is the main character of the story.

Horatio represents a prototype of modernity, an intellectual familiar with the tradition but skeptical of it. Yet even he must concede the power of the unknown after witnessing the phantom, which he takes as a portent of bad things to come.

Marcellus then points out that there are also sometimes portents of good, particularly at this season of the year:

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

At this point, all I can do is say with Horatio, "So have I heard and do in part believe it."

Would that it were so this holiday season and beyond.

Absent thee from felicity awhile

Goat Rope is winding down a long series on Hamlet. We're now at the dead-bodies-all-over-the-floor part, which in Shakespeare is a pretty good sign the end is near.

Hamlet has been poisoned and is shuffling off this mortal coil, but he still manages to get in some great lines. One that I've always wondered about was this:

You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time--as this fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest--O, I could tell you--
But let it be.

What would he have said that he hadn't said already?

His last request is that Horatio to "report me and my cause aright/ to the unsatisfied." Horatio, claiming to be "more antique Roman than Dane" reaches for the cup of poison. Hamlet stops him with lines that have always struck me for their beauty:

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.

Horatio agrees and as the curtain closes prepares to tell the tale to those who have stumbled onto the scene of carnage. It's kind of a circular ending, with the story we're just seen or read about to be told. And so it rolls on through the centuries.

GIT R DONE. Here's the latest twist on health care reform. I say get it over with.

THE OTHER WARM BEVERAGE. Here's an item from the UK Guardian on the Coffee Party.

URGENT ANCIENT CHINESE MUMMY UPDATE here.

TENDER SUBJECT. El Cabrero was surprised this morning to find this article on Alternet that suggest goats are the new cows. It starts like this:

Goat is a great way for people to eat locally grown, humanely raised, tasty foods. And unlike the cattle industries, there aren't any massive, industrialized goat farms.

That's probably because if goats ever became a class of urban proletarians, there would be no way of containing their revolutionary militancy.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Give me that man that is not passion's slave

Goat Rope is still meandering through Hamlet, although you can skip down to the links section if this isn't your thing.

Horatio, Hamlet's true friend, is one of the most admirable characters in this play. A poor scholar, older than his friend, he is a stand in for the audience as witness to Hamlet's verbal gymnastics. Hamlet does give him great praise not just as a good friend but as one who deals with whatever life throws at him with equanimity.

Here's what he had to say:

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.

I've never quite had that ability.

GAME ON. Here's NPR on what is at stake in President Obama's health care summit today.

HONEY, WE SHRUNK THE LABOR FORCE. The latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute shows that people are leaving the labor force in large numbers in the wake of the recession.

A PLEA FOR THE TEACHING OF LABOR HISTORY is here.

POLITICAL DEMOGRAPHICS. Americans under age 30 lean towards progressive politics.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A mote to trouble the mind's eye

The opening scene of Shakespeare's Hamlet does a masterful job of setting the mood. It is midnight on the battlements of Elsinore castle. Bernardo and Marcellus relieve their fellow soldier Francisco.

They are basically grunts, far down the chain of power and command, but they sense something is amiss. Old Hamlet, their king, died under mysterious circumstances. His brother Claudius married the widowed Gertrude and displaced young Hamlet from the succession. There are rumors of war with young Fortinbras of Norway and a military buildup is in progress which "does not divide the Sunday from the week." On top of everything else, a ghost resembling Old Hamlet has been seen in full war gear the last two nights.

Bernardo and Marcellus have invited the scholar Horatio to witness this for himself. Horatio, full of the "modern" learning is skeptical but is convinced when the ghost appears. All agree this is a bad sign, one which reminds Horatio of those said to have occurred at the time of Caesar's assassination:

A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.--

I especially like his courteous if unsuccessful effort to converse with the spirit:

Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me:
If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me:
If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid,
O, speak!
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death...

The spirit remains silent and they resolve to tell young Hamlet of it the next day. It's a scene that has worked to get the audience's--and the reader's--attention for the last 400 years.

JOBS. Here's an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute on the latest trends in the jobs picture.

MINE WARS, PAST AND PRESENT. The Charleston Gazette's Jim Haught had a good column in Sunday's paper reviewing the history of West Virginia's mining conflicts--including the latest battle to get Blair Mountain listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

GRIDLOCK. Here's a discourse on the disfunctionality of the US Senate.

HERE'S A SHOCK. A coal industry-commissioned study of itself found it to be all good all the time. By the way, a belated happy birthday to Ken Ward's uber-blog Coal Tattoo!



GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED