Nay, answer me; stand and unfold yourself.

Dear Blue,

Hamlet begins with a person who pretends to be a person named Barnardo--"a guard”--whose opening question—Who's there?—we all hear.

The world where people pretend to be other people divides from the world where people pretend to be ghosts, the line that divides a mirror of selective reflection

Anyone in the audience might well answer but, instead, we stay silent, instead we guard the authority of pretend, instead we look through the mirror because that is how we get it to refect. 

Who is the first sentry of this world?  Bernardo or us?

Who is first to

Meanwhile, a person pretending to be Francisco says:

Nay, answer me: stand and unfold yourself.

Francisco is also ‘a guard.'

First a question and now these commands: Answer . . . Stand . . . Unfold.

And still we do nothing.

To obey Francisco's commands would mean what? That I say my name and then get up from my seat?  Even though I just sat down?

Unfold myself? As from a chair?  Like a flag?  As a map?  Some kind of paper? 

Unfold yourself? Isn’t that another way to describe life?

Who's there?  The person with this map of who I have been?  Who I am . . . a kind of answer to "who are you?"

The authority of pretend and our role as ghostly-guards established in the first line is reinforced in the second. 

Any "act" (speaking, standing) that crosses the barrier between our world and the world of Barnardo and Francisco would violate the scripture of theater.

How do you feel about the use of the word scripture in that sentence?

On what ground do you object, if you do.  That Hamlet was obviously not written by god?  That's a fair objection.  That the theater is a place for the profane, not the sacred?  

For the god of theater to matter to us, we cannot let our own matter get in the way. 

Our own matter must not matter. 

*

On stage, Bernardo and Francisco work to identify each other.

Since Francisco asks Bernardo to stand, we might imagine Bernardo sitting. But that would be odd.  Most likely, "stand" here means, “present yourself.”

(If you were Bernardo would you wonder which self to present? The self you use with your friends? The one you use with your family? Maybe the one you use when taking a test.? Your brave self? Your guard self? If this is the kind of situation where an enemy might kill you and so end your self, which self should you unfold and present?

*****

An unfolding self is the self we bring to the drama of recognition, which is what Bernardo and Francisco are dealing with in the most “literal” sense.

But the drama of recognition is also a drama you and I live with every day.

If Shakespeare did not exactly invent the drama of recognition, he is its chief explorer and his plays map this drama extensively. As the drama of recognition is so central to the “who’s there?” problem, it will make sense to talk about it at some length. 

When we see someone across campus and wave at them and they wave to us we say, casually, that we "recognize" each other.  But to "re-cognize" someone, as a closer look at the word reveals, means less to know than to re-know.
Tomison, for instance, can recognize Sean on Tuesday because he knew Sean on Monday.

Yet now imagine if Sean looked like himself on Monday and then, on Tuesday, looked like Simba or The Hulk or Harry Potter.  In that situation, Tomison would need quite a bit of convincing to believe Sean is "there."  Luckily, Sean is not likely to change so much in how he looks in just a day and the fact that we more or less keep our physical form during our lifetime makes it possible to manage reality and to ‘re-know' one another from day to day or even year to year.

Overall it is a good thing that the atomic particles that hold the world together don't suddenly re-shape everything all the time.  This is one of the ways the limits of reality offer an advantage over the limitlessness of art.

(On the other hand, if those atomic particles were always reshaping everything all the time and we always lived in a clean slate then we would never produce the history and traditions and culture which become a source of the ghosts we feel haunting us when we are with another person or look in the mirror or are alone wondering how we can best guard ourselves against dangerous influences.)

Our solidity in time generates agents of matter-less-ness that both tie us together and divide us.

As it happens, the drama of recognition, and the struggle to know one another do not (usually) come about because of fantastic physical changes like Sean suddenly undergoing a metamorphoses and looking like the Hulk or Simba.

What if, for instance, on Monday night Sean got rejected from university?  Or accepted?

Now, who's there in Sean's body on Tuesday? Not Simba, perhaps, but also a different Sean, one that must be "re-known" by Tomison.

Now you see someone across the quad who looks familiar but also different: l

Look at the way that guy is hunched over as he walks?  Is that Sean?

Look at the way that guy is walking with his chest puffed out?  Is that Sean?

What does it mean to be Sean now?   Ashamed and hunch or proud and tall?  Which self of Sean is unfolding now? 

Who's there in the moment before he got the news about university and who's there the moment after?

Who are you?  Sean, always Sean.

But . . . who's there? The guy feeling unhappy or boastful about college.

Do I need to tell you how complicated this drama can get if you see Sean acting a little more hurt or a little more arrogant than you think he should?  As someone you might now see as a player? Do you say something like this? "I barely recognize Sean since he heard about college."

And . . .

And, what about you?  What about how you see the world and so see Sean?  Has he changed in the wake of his news about college or are the eyes you look through shaded or ill-focused or fated to see what you want them to see by your pity for or jealousy of Sean?

You say you barely recognize Sean but maybe he can't "act" like himself around you because he feels you looking at him as a failure or with envy?

"Ever since I heard about college,"  says Sean, "you see me differently . . . or don't see me as who I am now, as I am . . . here.”

What I am calling the drama of recognition becomes especially powerful and tricky because you are not only seen by some other person, you also see how other people see you.  You see them seeing you.

In life, you see people seeing you.

*

If you do not think seeing others seeing you is a formative part of life, let's imagine another scene, one as reductive as Sean and university: You are twelve years old and you go home with a bad grade on a test and tell dad you got an "F."

Do you see him seeing you with shame and thus feel humiliated or do you see him seeing you with love and feel O.K.?

Or maybe you got a great grade on that test tell Mom you got an "A."

She says "good job" but you see in her eyes that your good grade is still not good enough.

But wait, we’ve just begun to deal with this drama.

Is mom’s reaction “real” and “authentic” or what you imagine you see? Is your mom always so demanding (you think) that you cannot help but see her as seeing you as “not good enough?” Is there anything you can do to impress her

Perhaps you are so desperate to see mom seeing you with approval that nothing she does will ever make you feel the pride and love you want to feel from her.

You have become convinced she is never going to give you the praise you want so that just like the friend who looks at Sean with too much pity or jealousy you look to your mom with more need and desperation than she can ever satisfy.

*

You may say this has gone on too long, but I am afraid we have only started because while the simple or obvious or “literal” version of “Who’s there?” is easy enough—Fransisco saying "stand" or Sean feeling bad about college or you with you “A”—the psychology (and history and tradition and culture) of the drama of recognition is almost endless or, at least, can be seen as such.

*

There is not enough love in the universe for even a single child, Freud says, or should have said.

Our need to be seen and known is bottomless and we want to be known and re-known with just that much bottomless love every moment of our lives. 

Indeed, let's return to the script of you and your good grade, your “A” and Mom and this bottomless need for love we all carry with us.

As it happens, on the day you tell mom about your "A," a friend—let’s call this friend Jimcale—has accompanied you home. To Jimcale you complain: “My mom never celebrates my accomplishments.”  “Really,” replies Jimcale in surprise, “she smiled and said ‘good job.’ I sure wish my mom would be that effusive about my accomplishments."

You see something absent in how your mom sees you.  As a result of this you react with longing.  Yet Jimcale sees your mom seeing you with surplus.

The problem is not in how your mom is there, seeing you as never good enough, but rather in how you see her seeing you.

Why does your mom unfold one self for Jimcale and another for you?  Because those selves differ or because you see them differently?

Obviously no single such moment shapes us forever and for the sake of example these scenarios are simplified. They are placeholders meant to suggest actual scenarios.

Yet despite how many steps I build into the drama of Sean and Tomison or you and your mom, there are actually many more, since how we see ourselves being seen happens at the speed of light.

Still, such moments shape who we "are," how we see, and how we see ourselves being seen, with our being re-known in one moment shaped by and shaping how we have been known in another moment, or all other moments.

You could say our heated debates about “identity” are just another way of trying to capture (to hold a place for) all the ways we have been seen and want to be seen, a way of answering: Who’s there?

*

The drama of recognition gets still more complicated when you add in the limitlessness of imagination.

For surely as you go home with that "F" or that "A" and before you tell Dad or Mom about your grade, you imagine how they will react, how they will see you.

You may imagine with great fear your dad's scowl or with desperate hope your mom's smile.  You are so in your drama, imagining it, that whatever happens may be secondary, even unbelievable.

Your imagination of what you fear or what you hope for as you walk home with your test informs (or pre-informs) your reality to such a degree that you can't possibly see dad or mom accurately, may even doubt Jimcale when they give you an audience-like view.

Jimcale says you mom seemed happy and you say: What? Didn’t you see her offer faint praise?

How, you say to Jimcale, can you be my friend if you do not take my side? How can you fail to see my drama as I see it?

Indeed, maybe your friend does fail to see what you see.  After all, you know your parents better than Jimcale does.  But then maybe their eyes were not clouded by your knowledge and imagination.  Does the theater in your head keeps you from seeing as clearly as someone who is watching the drama unfold? 

Jimcale, to say it again, just knows your parents where as you re-know them, or fail to re-know them, because of how you see them knowing and re-knowing you.

Who has the best hold on the reality of all this? Mom? Dad? You? Your friend?

Is it more informative to be the actor involved in the drama of recognition or the observer (almost a ghost), trying to know that drama?

Back on campus what I have been saying might--might--sound like:

I just know Sean will be unbearably proud if he gets into college . . .

I won't be able to see him without resentment  . . .

I will see him seeing me as "less than."   . . . As a result I will act distant and resentful towards him. 

Except that if you can think all this ahead of time you are much faster and more self-aware than any actual human.  Because such back and forths, such, recognitions of our self in the drama of seeing and being seen are rarely this clear to us.  They happen too fast and ‘matter' too much.  As we all know, as we all “recognize.”

*

Hamlet (as all art does to some degree) freezes this light speed back and forth so that we can consider it.

We can lay out the map of knowing and imagining, see ourselves looking through the eyes of a character, haunt their world without being known, go back over it as many times as we wish.

If we go slowly enough, as I am trying to do, we may yet hang on to some part of what comes with knowing, being known, and being re-known. Another  opportunity to grasp the infinite.

Because, "Nay, answer me" can be understood as:

Who are you now that you see someone here who can see you . . .see you there?

And,

Before I bring to you the whole drama of how you might see me or how we might imagine ourselves seeing each other . . .

"Stand, and unfold yourself."

Unfold the flag you wave from across campus so I can see whether you walk with pride or shame.

Unfold the map of where you have been every moment of your life--parents, school, friends--so I do not disappoint you, nor you me, in how we see each other.

Unfold the script that has been written for you up to this point and which we will, now, write together as our future.

*

Life does not allow us to step back altogether from the drama of recognition. 

Art does.

It is a theater of the head we can walk around in, study, learn from, and enjoy.

*

The friend who sees me seeing how I am seen by my dad or mom—my Jimcale—enters the drama of my stage.  They are less a ghost than we are now, in the audience, watching Hamlet.

More matter. Less a ghost.

In the theater, where we cannot be known by those on stage, we will not be re-known as someone we are not. We are free to not exist.

In reality, where we exist and are known, how we know and re-know one another will depend on the authorities we appeal to and create.

More on this, should you be there, next time.

--Mr. Ted