Hamlet Blog Assignment #5

"Falling in Love with Love" from the musical The Boys From Syracuse

Lyrics:
I weave with brightly colored strings
To keep my mind off other things
So, ladies, let your fingers dance
And keep you hands out of romance

Lovely witches
Let the stitches
Keep your fingers under control
Cut the thread, but leave
The whole heart whole

Merry maids can sew and sleep
Wives can only sew and weep
Falling in love with love
Is falling for make-believe
Falling in love with love
is playing the fool

Caring too much is such a juvenile fancy
Learning to trust is just
For children in school
I fell in love with love one night
When the moon was full
I was unwise with eyes
Unable to see

I fell in love with love
With love everlasting
But love fell out with me

I know that my death is imminent; I have not delved so deep into madness, however, that I cannot choose a song to play at my funeral. I would love to have the song “Falling in Love with Love” from the musical The Boys From Syracuse chosen to play at my funeral. I feel that this song encapsulates my life here at Elsinore recently, as well as what I have learned from it.

 The lyrics of this song represent Hamlet’s and my devastating love story as well as its result: my cynicism concerning love. Just as the speaker in this song “fell in love with love one night when the moon was full,” I feel in love with love so easily. Hamlet had “of late made many tenders/ Of his affection to me” (1.3.99-100). I was in love not only with Hamlet, but also with love itself.

But just as the song’s speaker “was unwise with eyes unable to see,” so was I. I told my father that Hamlet “hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,/ With almost holy vows of heaven” (1.3.113-114). I was blinded by love and Hamlet’s sweet words to me. My father, however, didn’t see my relationship in the same way that I did; in fact, he said that “when the blood burns, how prodigal the soul/ Lends the tongue vows” (1.3.116-117). He was insinuating that Hamlet’s vows to me meant nothing. I was quite skeptical of him at the time, but I would later find out that my rose-tinted hope for Hamlet’s and my future was fading by the minute.

The speaker of the song believes that “learning to trust is just for children in school,” which I wholeheartedly agree with. I trusted Hamlet’s vows and his devotion to me. In fact, Hamlet said to me, in the his letter, to “Doubt that the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love” (2.2.113). And I didn’t doubt his love; I trusted him to love me forever. Later, however, he gave up on his love for me. He told that I “should not have believed [him], for virtue cannot inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not” (3.1.113). He even told me that if I “wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them” (3.1.136). I trusted him to love me forever, and I shouldn’t have. I trusted him to uphold his vows to me, and I shouldn’t have.

It’s just like what happened in my song about Saint Valentine’s Day, where the lady went to see her true love and was “let in the maid that out a maid/ Never departed more… Quoth she, ‘Before you tumbled me,/ You promised me to wed.’/ He answers,/ ‘So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun,/ And thou hadst not come to my bed.’” (4.5.39-40). Just as in the song, learning to trust a person is pointless. He or she will always let you down eventually.

The speaker of the song also makes the point that “caring too much is such a juvenile fancy,” which is definitely applicable to my relationship with Hamlet. After his harsh words to me, I realized that “I, of ladies most deject and wretched,/ That sucked the honey of his music vows,/ Now see that noble and most sovereign reason/ Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;/ That unmatched form and feature of blown youth/ Blasted with ecstasy. Oh, woe is me,/ T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!” (3.1.156-162). I knew what Hamlet was like before he changed so much in his affections to me, and I cared so much about him. So, I am so miserable now to bear witness to such a change in him, and it is so painful considering how much I care. The song is right, caring too much about someone just leads to pain.

The speakers of the song says that “falling in love with love is playing the fool,” which I can certainly understand since love has forced me into a state of madness. In fact, the gentleman watching over me said that I “[spurn] enviously at straws, [speak] things in doubt,/ that carry but half sense. [My] speech is nothing,/ yet the unshaped use of it doth move/ the hearers to collection” (4.5.7-10). Look where love has gotten me: I’m completely mad. I’ve turned into a fool whose “mood will needs be pitied” (4.5.2). They feel sorry for my madness, but it’s Hamlet who should feel sorry. He and his love are what did this to me.

My brother Laertes said to me “Hadst though thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,/ It could not move thus” (4.5.142-143). Even though he was referring to avenging my father’s death, I feel that this line is equally applicable to my abuse at the hands of love. My descent into madness is even more persuasive to me than if I was sane and protesting about the negative aspects of love. I fear it is time for me to take revenge on love the only way I know how: by going down to the river.