30.09.08

“A plague o’ both your houses!”


Indeed.

Throw that one out at a party and you better have one of two things going on –

- A sword wound in your side, or
- Actually be Plague on a rampage.

As that kind of curse carries a sense of importance that needs follow up on; any hint of it being hollow will find you castrated by those you have without warrant startled and forever sounding like the Clergies favorite Castrato in the Vienna Boys Choir.

But yes, back to the plague.

Shakespeare wrote that line in Romeo and Juliet to make Act 3, Scene 1 climactic and serious, everything at that point forever altered in the star crossed loves plans to make messy, noisy animal sex, for indeed a plague set upon the two houses.

A plague that apparently decreased the collective intelligence of them all.

Especially Romeo.

Killing oneself for a chick?

Makes about as much sense as Juliet pretending to be dead and not telling the important person in her life, about as much sense as Romeo not checking Juliet was actually dead especially considering the spiritual/mystical beliefs of the time period and about as much sense as there actually being more than one character in Hamlet.



Hamlet was alone.

There were no other characters apart from the harping nasties in his head.

Hamlet thought

“The play’s the thing to catch the King”

But his mousetrap only served to catch the part of himself he did not like and so transmogrified it into his Uncle who had killed his brother and Hamlets father then took as his Queen the current Queen – Hamlet’s mother. Oedipus Complex anyone? Although this was before Freud’s cocaine fueled ramblings so the reference would be seen as anachronistic. Even the neutral part of the cerebella cortex needed to be taken out, past associates Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were surgically excised on the supposed trip over seas – Paul Simon understood this as clearly A Bridge Over Troubled Waters, waters that Hamlet could not cope with in regards to his sexuality and so Ophelia was dispatched to the rivers depths after she would not take herself to a Nunnery, of course him killing Polonius, her father, added guilt to an already over catholicized mind trip.

And so each stroke of Hamlet’s sword drew him closer to the truth, one he could not imagine or comprehend especially as he was essentially not killing others but parts of himself, the ones he railed against were of course aspects of himself he reviled and could not cope with, those he saw as enemies and in need of destruction, he was acting like an anaphylactic allergic reaction against himself and his mind, there was nothing left of the real and only the spiral downwards he had committed himself to.

So we come to the final scene where death was everywhere.

There was poison in wine and on swords, there were deals that were double and then perhaps triple, you could take a step to the left and then a jump to the right to avoid trouble to only find another way to meet death.

More and more died, the ravenous Uncle King, his Mother the Queen and the son of Polonius he admired.

Hamlet felt weak in body and mind.

He thought he was dying as he had been wounded with a poison sword tip,

but in reality,

Hamlet was dying because he had destroyed so many parts of himself that he could not self sustain.

But for him death in this manner was the only acceptable outcome.


Interesting way to get to the truth.


Whatever that may be,


Apparently it’s out there.


Sitting next to his mate Insanity.




I would have chased the Dragon myself.






I believe that Shakespeare got most of his material from lunatic asylums.



And most likely,





He lived in one.








(This piece was meant to be about my children being Plagues, bearers of unknown sickness and them being portable Petri dishes but I got distracted.)