Journal Entry

Journal Entries:
Moore wrote in his journal: What, what an interesting family. Shame really that it ended, as, it, did—I wonder how Laertes is. He adjusted the light. He really does have it rough, that boy. His sister, too. I would love to have had a session with that Hamlet, hero among the people, scourge among the royal. He inked his pen. I wonder if Laertes is alright. Poor boy, he suffers more than his sister. Much more. He inked his pen. Polonius’s fault, too. If he hadn’t been so into other peoples’ business, he might’ve lived past 60. He sighed, “OCD’s a strange thing.” OCD’s a funny thing. Of the many ways it can show itself, Polonius displayed the classic three: obsessive thoughts, obsessive behavior, and anxiety likely resultant of obsessive thoughts and behavior. OCD is one of those diseases that you know you have, but can’t help. Like a self image problem.
Moore picked a cassette off the shelf: “Polonius 27.”
“Polonius, I’ve been your family counselor for a while now, right?”
“Well if by “your” family counselor you mean our family counselor because the counselor of a family is the family of the counselor.”
“Yes.”
”And ‘we’ includes ‘you’ and so ‘our.’”
“Yes, Polonius--”
“Yes?”
He was always an annoying character, always trying to be witty, and eloquent, and distinguished, but he never did really get the hang of it. Probably would’ve been better off talking as he normally would. He wasn’t dumb. “Sure acted it though.” He reached for the journal at the far edge of his desk:
“’My liege, and madam, to expostulate what majesty should be, and duty is,’ etcetera etcetera. This guy goes on forever. ‘Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward,’ yadda yadda. This guy really did know how to milk it.” (II.ii.85)
Following his learning of Ophelia’s strange encounter with Hamlet, Polonius began building stress. This stress was likely a composite of his worrying for Ophelia and his growing frustrations with Hamlet. (There’re also his warped concerns for his son.) Shortly after his meeting with the King and Queen, Polonius found himself alone with Hamlet and engaged him in conversation. He flipped the cassette. It was a rather hostile conversation. And although Polonius was the one suffering Hamlet’s abuses, he managed to contain his frustrations. Though, in his frustrations he noticed that Hamlet was miles ahead of him in wit and its uses. “How pregnant sometimes his replies are! A happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of.” (II.ii.127)
Moore stretched his shoulders. “He’s delusional!”
Polonius knows full well that he isn’t the smooth talking, joke cracking genius he tries to be. But because he suffers from OCD, he can’t help but keep trying. And his repeated failure stresses him to no end. This stress that’s carriaged in by his inability to acknowledge his limits causes him to feel like he doesn’t have control, and so pays a man to spy on his son, Laertes, in order to cope. (II.i.1) Then, though, as he thinks on it, Polonius tells the spy to spread harmful, disreputable rumors about Laertes, presumably to keep Laertes in check, but probably to keep Laertes from surpassing his insecure father. (II.i.59) Moore inked his pen.
Laertes, now, doesn’t interact with his father much—at least not of his own accord.
He inked his pen.
There is one recorded instance, though, where Laertes talked to his father. Ophelia was there too. (I.iii.1~150) Laertes was being seen off by his father and sister but got in a few words with Ophelia alone beforehand. Polonius, as their obsessive compulsive father, then asks Ophelia what Laertes had talked to her about before he’d arrived. Ophelia says Hamlet, and so, Polonius being the worriedly controlling father he is, tells Ophelia to take Hamlet’s words as words and nothing more because Hamlet is a prince and has no capacity to love a simple noble.
Moore inked his pen.
Here Polonius, similar to how he deals with Laertes, is keeping his daughter from dating Hamlet in order to cope with his own incompetence. Though, here there is a more reasonable excuse for exercising control over his daughter, because it may be well that a prince does not have the choice to love any noble, and that if she continues she will simply end up losing that which is most precious her, her virginity, while Hamlet moves on to some other unsoiled arranged bride.
Because Polonius’s words have influence over Ophelia, Ophelia feels more uncomfortable about her relationship with Hamlet, and it is really at this point that Ophelia and Hamlet fall away from each other. (At their next meeting, Ophelia attempts to confirm Hamlet’s madness by talking to him. Moore sighed. “I’d really like to’ve been Hamlet’s counselor.”
The cassette player popped open. “Thirty-one. Thirty. Twenty-nine. Ah, twenty-seven.” He put the cassette tape back and took out another: “Polonius 14.”
“I hear him coming. Let’s withdraw, my lord.”
Likely to further separate Ophelia from Hamlet, as well as to perhaps confirm that Hamlet was not in his right mind, Polonius has Ophelia meet Hamlet, as if by accident, and talk to him normally. She does so, but Hamlet, being a suspicious and shrewd character, suspects her, and so her father’s suspicions are recognized.
So, to summarize, Polonius’s obsessive compulsive impulses manifest themselves as a conscious need to speak above his means, and because he realizes that he can’t, is stressed. This stress manifests itself in his need to monitor and control the lives of his children to a powerful degree and therefore, perhaps, plays a key role in developing the psychosis of Laertes, while unmistakably tearing Ophelia from Hamlet and Hamlet from Ophelia, a very significant happening in this recent tragedy.