Preach! I feel like Angela Landsburry in Murder She Wrote. I’m just trying to do my job and everywhere I go I stumble upon crime. What am I supposed to do? ignore the bodies?

Hamlet is a terrible boyfriend. Not even a “I’m sorry I killed your dad.”

To err is human! To autocorrect is to sometimes annoy, such as now when my phone kept on trying to turn “err” into “Robert.”

J. D. Vance getting kicked out of the Catholic Church on the eve of publishing book about how he converted to Catholicism would be the funniest thing. The pope should do it for the comedy value alone.

Make America Competent Again.

Not that Rubio has any diplomatic experience either. One wonders if Vance was sent out to be the public face of failure after garnering positive coverage through leaking in the NYT.

Ditch Randi.

Also, did Shakespeare’s initial audience think that R&J went to hell for their suicides? Any early modern or Shakespeare scholars want to chime in?

Also, for a dude in purgatory it sure seems like he might be setting up his son to burn in hell.

King Hamlet (the ghost) isn’t very demonstrative to his son. If you want him to kill your murderer, maybe a hug is called for. Tussle his hair. Call him kiddo. Something.

But while everyone is worrying about incest, the state is in disarray. I suppose if you are going to be distracted by something, that’s pretty distracting, but dudes, there’s a warlord on the make.

What strikes me about the beginning is the looming threat of Fortinbras, which most of the characters ignore most of the time because . . . DRAMA.

About half way through now.

Along with R&J, this is the Shakespeare play that I’ve read the most: high school, undergrad, and grad school.

Rereading Hamlet. It slaps.

April is for depressed homicidal princes. I’m reading Hamlet.

Stick a knife in me, I’m through.

But perhaps these final acts teach us about caution, mixed motives, and that, as Arendt also teaches, the outcome of any political action is not certain.

Act 4 & 5 are a big part of why this reading doesn’t work.

But the play makes for a terrible anti-fascist play. Its politics around democracy and republic are too ambiguous. The plebeians are rabble. It’s unclear if Caesar was a would be tyrant. Brutus is noble, but his conspirators are not.The end result of their actions, more tyranny.

Part of my attraction to the play had been the anti-fascist production of the 1930s.

Act five still seems a little too long, but not as bad as I remembered.

Upon my recent reading I enjoyed it more. I had always found acts four and five disappointing.

Which very quickly seemed too hard and I regretted it.

I even made it harder for myself for reading the play within a class where our theme was the US Civil War. What did this play mean at a time when the Booths had stared in the production and John Wilkes shot Lincoln and declared always this to tyrants, had been our class question.

I immediately decided that Shakespeare wasn’t worth the effort in an introductory Critical Thinking and Literature class.

This was the last Shakespeare play I taught, when I first got my current position more than 13 years ago.

I was cautious around the Ides of March and read Julius Caesar last month.

It is just this amazing coincidence that young Republicans keep on attracting would-be fascists.

I use Mac Mail for all my email. For now, no AI features.