“To be-”
Being Jack Ford was awesome. Even now. Even here away from Hollywood, slumming it on a Broadway stage. Even with this Shakespeare crap spilling from him. Being Jack Ford was awesome. Because he was the man everyone other man wanted to be, and every woman wanted to be with. Because his movies made stupid money. Because he made stupid money. Because his jawline was fantastic.
“-or not to be, that is the question:”
What a dumb question. Why would he not want to be? Why would this Hamlet guy not want to be? He was a prince. He was medieval Jack Ford. Who cares what his uncle and mom were doing?
Jack should fire his agent. He shouldn’t have paid attention to those reviews. He didn’t need to prove his acting chops to anyone. He shouldn’t have agreed to any of this.
“whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,”
Talk about outrageous fortune. The critics had not been kind to Jack’s interpretation of Hamlet. “Clumsy.” “Ham-fisted.” “Total disregard for nuance.”
It was the director’s fault. That’s what critics never understood. The director was where the buck stopped. And this guy was a creep. A straight-up weirdo. He’d seemed normal back when they organized the deal. But when Jack showed up for rehearsals he seemed to have stopped showering. A strange look had entered his eyes. He muttered to himself way too much.
And now this bullsh*t “special production,” for some “special audience.” Another reason Jack should fire his agent: the contract that was forcing him up here. And with the lights in his eyes, he couldn’t even see who he was acting to. The whole place could be damn empty for all he knew.
“or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,”
The knife was another thing. Right before the play had started, the director had pressed it into the hands of Eddie Franklin who played the ghost. It was nothing the props department had come up with. It was black with runes along its blade that squirmed every time Jack looked at them. The whole thing gave him the creeps. And Eddie Franklin seemed to have been having a nervous breakdown just off-stage ever since he pressed the clammy metal into Jack’s hands.
“And by opposing end them:”
Honestly this whole thing was bullsh*t. Jack should end it now. Just bring the whole production to a stop. Go home. Watch the game.
He forced himself to look beyond the lights. To see who the hell he was performing to.
As if on cue, the lights went down. And Jack saw—really saw—who was out there. What was out there.
“to die, to sleep No more; and by a sleep, to say we end,”
Hamelt’s words tumbled from Jack’s lips. He moved by rote. All other thought was reduced to one emotion: terror.
There were bodies that were not bodies. There were oozing, oscillating, swarming, squirming things. There were eyes and teeth devoid of recognizable anatomy. There were insides that were out. There were things that were that should not be.
To not be. Jack got it now. Oh hell, he understood. Better to take this knife and slit his throat than to be consumed by… God, what were they? What had this director summoned up from what bowel of hell? Oh Jesus. Oh sh*t. Oh no.
“The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That Flesh is heir to?”
He raised the knife, brought it toward his throat.
A sound that wasn’t a sound. A sigh that wasn’t a sigh. It was something that Jack—in the miasma of his shock—could hang onto: an audience reacting.
Something in Jack’s head rebelled. Some primal childhood memory of performance rose up. The initial spark that first put him on stages rekindled. These bastard monstrosities were here for a show. Well, he would give them something to see. He would act. He would tear their emotions loose and cause a storm in them.
He wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t not be. He would be. Because they wouldn’t be able to kill him if he just acted out all of his heart.
“'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished.”
And so Jack Ford acted. Acted as he hadn’t acted in years. Acted as he had when he was young and hungry and desperate for the limelight. Jack Ford, in that moment, was Hamlet body and endangered soul. He was a man balanced on the knife blade between revenge and suicide. He lived and breathed his role. He was brilliant.
“To die, to sleep, To sleep, perchance to Dream;”
And Jack’s audience did not care. He could feel their dispassion for him emanating in waves. Everything he gave them was met with utter disinterest.
They were not here for him, he finally understood. He was, he saw in a moment of hideous empathy, less than a speck of fly sh*t to them. He was beneath notice. Nothing. No-one. His entire humanity was meaningless. And he could never fathom or understand what it was that they were here to behold.
He was and he was not, and neither mattered at all.
“aye, there's the rub, For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?”
Despite the negative reviews for Jack Ford’s Hamlet, most critics hailed it as a turning point in his career. Because after that moment he became the actor of his generation. He became a man who would lose himself utterly in a role. Whatever was required, he would throw himself into it without hesitation. He was lauded. He was celebrated.
And if he had some oddities, so be it. What were they in the face of genius? And so in between those sparks of life that lit up stages an screens, he was left to his own devices, left to stare up at distant and uncaring stars, muttering over and over, “to be or not to be?”
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