Today’s prompt: Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?
I’d rather share about someone else’s moment of love.
It was the winter of 1997 and I was stage managing Hamlet at Park Square Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was a huge cast and the actors portraying Ophelia and Horatio were dating.
In case you are unfamiliar with the play, Ophelia (spoiler alert) goes nuts and dies. Horatio, on the other hand, is generally stable and a survivor. He’s Hamlet’s best bud. Super loyal. When (spoiler alert) Hamlet dies, Horatio says the famous line, “Good night, sweet prince.”
Back to Ophelia. At her funeral, Hamlet’s mom Gertrude famously says, “Sweets to the sweets” as she sprinkles flowers on Ophelia’s corpse. This signals the other mourners (and there are dozens) to pass by the dead girl and pay their respects in all the typical ways.
Older characters like Polonius move slowly as they shake their heads with old timey grief.
Young maidens scuttle by, carefully avert their eyes, lightly sniffle and generally keep their shit together.
Ophelia’s brother Laertes, on the other hand, weeps dramatically and threatens to throw himself into the grave cuz he’s a dork.
King Claudius (Hamlet’s step-dad) acts corporate and solemn cuz he’s a prick.
Funeral scenes can be a lot of fun. If you’ve ever seen or done Oklahoma! then you surely agree that “Pore Jud Is Daid” is delightful, haunting, hilarious and sad all at once. But in Hamlet, Ophelia’s funeral…meh…it was pretty much what you’d expect.
Except for the following aforementioned “positive example”:
The actor portraying Horatio gave the dead Ophelia’s foot a little squeeze as he passed by her during the funeral procession. It wasn’t blocked — it was never discussed, rehearsed or directed. It was just something the actor started doing once the show opened. He’d pass by the deceased, squeeze her little foot, and move on. It was so sweet and tender. I’m telling you I could feel the love! Not just the respectful love Horatio had for Ophelia, but the love the actor portraying Horatio had for his girlfriend the actor portraying Ophelia.
I always felt that one little squeeze encapsulated Horatio’s character. Horatio saw it all, felt deeply about it all and he lived to tell about it. That little squeeze summed that up for me.
It was a good show — I love Hamlet — but the foot squeeze was the moment I found most impactful. It made Ophelia’s death that much sadder, and somehow heightened the sensitivity of the play for me. Good stuff. And I know that moment only existed between those two actors. I’ve seen may stagings and film versions of Hamlet but only one production had the foot squeeze.
***
A year or so later, the couple married. Not long after that, they had a baby then moved to the north woods of Wisconsin to live off the grid and I haven’t seen them since.
I just googled their names and they’re still living their dream. I love that for them and I love that I got to see the foot squeeze.
Constance Kuntz 