DO TELL

by James Lincoln Warren

I have three busts of famous people, heroes of mine, sitting on top of one of my bookshelves.

One of them is of William Shakespeare, perhaps the greatest story teller of all time. Shakespeare’s genius did not lie in his plots, which he almost always cribbed from some other source, but in the depth of expression and understanding of human behavior. It doesn’t hurt that he had a way with words like no other, too. Like the Bible and Classical mythology, Shakespeare is an inexhaustible mine for me in terms of the riches he provides.

When I worked at Barnes & Noble, we carried a series of Shakespeare’s plays that featured the original text on the left and a translation into “modern” English on the right. Never mind, of course, that Shakespeare is already in modern English. All right, I admit that Shakespeare’s language is difficult for contemporary speakers, but it is hardly unintelligible. The biggest problem is that the “modern” versions are anemic compared with the muscular and evocative originals. (If you’re at all interested in this topic, you might visit No Fear Shakespeare or Shakespeare in Modern English at eNotes.com.) But there are words that Shakespeare used completely differently from the way we use them today. It seems to me that the best way to explain these variances would be with footnotes, like the old Folger Library editions I was familiar with in high school, rather than having “translations”, which discourage the reader from parsing out the meaning for himself.

But I’m getting a little far afield from my point about Shakespeare’s perspicacity. It’s just that the passage I had in mind contains one of those misunderstood words.

Hamlet, Act III, scene ii: The melancholy Dane has prepared a play which parallels the murder of his father the King to put pressure on his mother Gertrude, who has cast off her widow’s weeds to marry Hamlet’s Uncle Claudius, who murdered her husband to gain the throne.

The Player Queen on stage proclaims her love for her (first) husband:

Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light,
Sport and repose lock from me day and night:
To desperation turn my trust and hope,
An anchor’s cheer in prison be my scope,
Each opposite that blanks the face of joy,
Meet what I would have well and it destroy:
Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife
If once a widow, ever I be wife!1

Which essentially says that if the Queen should lose her husband, she would prefer to be afflicted by misery than ever to remarry. Hamlet wants to know if his mother has gotten the point:

Hamlet. Madam, how like you this play?

Queen. The lady protests too much, methinks.

And here we have it. In Shakespeare’s day, the verb to protest did not mean to object to or to demonstrate against. It meant to affirm in a solemn manner, or to formally proclaim, from the Latin protestari.

So Gertrude is not saying that the Player Queen is being contrarian, but rather that she’s going overboard in her declaration of love by claiming she would rather embrace a life of misery than remarry if her husband should die. In other words, Gertrude is contrasting her own behavior with that of the Player Queen.

But is that all?

Of course not.

The Player Queen does not keep her word, and does remarry after her husband is murdered, just like Gertrude. By protesting too much, the Player Queen shows her hypocritical hand to the audience—even Gertrude realizes that the Queen on stage is lying. She is being a drama queen. (All right, I could not resist that little joke, but the point is valid.)

In poker, an action that telegraphs a player’s strength is called a tell. Sometimes these are completely physical and involuntary, such as dilating eyes, shaking hands, or a sudden flush, but usually they are exaggerated reactions intended to conceal excitement on the one hand or disappointment on the other. If somebody leans back in his chair immediately after getting a card and tries to seems nonchalant, it almost always means he got the card he needed and is trying to avoid notice. Likewise, a disproportionately high bet usually indicates a bluff—instead of trying to suck his opponent in, the bettor is trying to scare him off, which he wouldn’t do if he believed he had the stronger hand. Of course, a professional poker player will deliberately use false tells (so please don’t enter the World Series of Poker based on my advice).

You see such tells all the time during criminal interrogations. As soon as a suspect exclaims, “I had nothing to do with it, I swear to God,” the odds are better than even that he’s lying—he wouldn’t have invoked the oath if he were confident that no connection could be made between him and the crime. A good interviewer will pick up on such details—such perceptions are mother’s milk to shows like Lie to Me and The Mentalist.

The Player Queen’s tell is false only in the sense that it is meant to be detected, because Hamlet intends that it be understood by Gertrude. Through it, he’s accusing her. As with all really good writing, the exchange illuminates more than one character at the same time. It simultaneously demonstrates Hamlet’s sly anger as well as Gertrude’s sardonically pragmatic view of life—their disastrous collision cannot be long delayed. For a crime story, it’s a perfect moment.

Shakespeare obviously got it.

In case you were wondering, Hamlet informs Polonius that the title of the play-within-a-play is The Mousetrap, an apt title, since it is sprung to avenge a murder. Agatha Christie obviously thought so, too.

1. No Fear Shakespeare translates this as:

   May the earth refuse me food and the heavens go dark, may I have no rest day and night, may my trust and hope turn to despair—may the gloom of a prison overtake me, and may my every joy be turned to sorrow.
   May I know no peace either in this life or the next one, if I become a wife again after I am a widow.

   eNotes paraphrases it thus:

   Earth won’t me give food, or heaven light!
   I will avoid leisure and rest day and night!
   My trust and hope will turn to desperation!
   An anchor’s cheer in prison will be my aim!
   Every opposite feeling that makes the face of joy blink,
   Connect with what I would do well, and destroy it!
   Both here and hereafter unending pain follow me,
   If, once I am a widow, I ever become a wife!

   As far as I’m concerned, the first goes too far in making the language plain, elucidating its meaning but removing all emotional impact, and the second eviscerates the poetry without bothering to explain anything at all. What the Player Queen means by anchor is not a weighted metal hook used to keep your boat from drifting away on the tide, but a shortened form of anchorite: “A person who has withdrawn or secluded himself from the world; usually one who has done so for religious reasons, a recluse, a hermit.” (OED) [↩]