Hamlet I-III

Act II, Scene II

QUEEN GERTRUDE
"More matter, with less art.'

Or in other words - stop mucking about and just tell me!  Lord Polonius is explaining to the king and queen that their son Hamlet is mad and takes about 4 pages to do so.  After one particularly poetic and fluffy paragraph the queen tries to refocus Polonius by telling him to get to the meat of the story.  The part that drew my attention was how she addressed Polonius' fluff - she called it art.  She knew that oration was an art form, a skill, a talent!  Just like Moses in ancient times knew that public speaking was a huge asset when he called Aaron to be his speaker.  Today we call it Rhetoric, AKA the Art of Persuasion, because we scientifically know that there is value to the manipulation of language.

A second thought that I had about Polonius is that he was probably known for having a sly tongue.  The queen didn't wait long before calling quits to his lengthy explanation.  I remember a few friends from high school that could talk their ways out of anything.  You couldn't beat them in an argument, they could often convince teachers of reducing their work load, and they could rally people together like no other.  These kids were gifted with the ability of language.


Act II, Scene I

HAMLET

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:"

I can't help but think of Bradley Whitford in Billy Madison whenever I hear the beginning Hamlet's 3 page monologue...  Eric Gordon (Whitford) has to compete against Billy in order to prevent Billy from inheriting his father's hotel company.  One of the final activities that the two compete in is acting out Hamlet's monologue.  The connection comes here: I didn't know enough about the play (until recently) to realize that the monologue is a contemplation over suicide...  So! The guinnesses that wrote Billy Madison timed it perfect when Eric Gordon chooses to do "to be, or not to be" for his monologue because the tides have started to turn against him in the competition.