smallhobbit

Hamlet had always enjoyed cloud watching. As a child he’d look up in the sky and his mother, Gertrude, would say, “What do you see there?”

“An elephant.” The young Hamlet pointed to an elongated cloud. “See, there’s his trunk sticking out on one side.”

Gertrude agreed and added, “And that wispy bit of cloud at the other end, that’s his tail.”

“That’s right. And what about that cloud?”

“Let me think. I think it’s a stallion, just waiting for his rider.”

“He’s pawing the ground, longing to charge. Do you think I’ll ride a charger like that one day?”

“I’m sure you will.”

And then Claudius appeared. Hamlet said, “We’re looking at the clouds, Uncle Claudius. Which animals do you see in the sky?”

“I have little time to stand and stare, Hamlet. There are too many affairs of state to deal with.” Claudius turned to Gertrude, and Hamlet saw him raise his eyebrows slightly.

“I’m afraid I shall have to go too now, Hamlet. There are matters I need to take care of,” Gertrude said. “But we’ll do this another day.”

~~~

Hamlet had then tried asking Laertes what he could see in the clouds, but Laertes had looked at him as if he was soft in the head and said, “I don’t know. Sheep?”

“But where are their legs?” Hamlet asked.

“Legless sheep?”

And Hamlet stopped bothering to ask Laertes anything which wasn’t about sporting activities.

~~~

Ophelia was better. At least she saw things in the clouds.

“That one’s like a daisy. See, it’s breaking up and all the petals are floating off in different directions.”

Hamlet couldn’t really make out which cloud she was talking about, but he agreed anyway.

“And that one’s a cake made by a fairy. There’s the icing the fairy’s decorated it with.”

Even Hamlet felt Ophelia’s descriptions came more from her imagination than from looking at the shapes the clouds made.

~~~

Once he asked his father what he saw in the clouds.

Old Hamlet had looked up and said, “There’s a storm coming. Go inside, boy!”

In Hamlet’s experience, the clouds weren’t dark enough for a storm, but it didn’t do to argue with his father, so he went indoors anyway.

~~~

All of which meant that when Polonius came to tell him he was wanted by Claudius and his mother, Hamlet was only too happy to insist on his own ridiculous interpretations of the clouds simply to watch the old man squirm and feel as wrong-footed as he had in his youth, and as he continued to do now he was older.