The Soliloquy

Bruin Fisher

bruin@fastmail.fm

A long time ago, in a land far away—well, Denmark actually—there lived a handsome young prince.

Our prince, let’s call him Hamlet, was in trouble. He knew what he wanted in life, and he knew what his uncle, who had recently become his stepfather and therefore king, wanted for him, and those two things were very different. His mother took the side of her husband, so Hamlet felt a lot of pressure to go along with Stepdaddy’s design.

The truth was that Hamlet was ‘de trop’ in the palace. The new king wanted him gone; he was cramping his style. Maybe also, he didn’t want Hamlet to discover that he had murdered the young prince’s father in order to marry his mother.

There was a grand hunting lodge called Notterby in the royal gift, and the king thought to settle it on Hamlet with the proviso that he must live there and run the estate, managing the deer population so that the king and his hunting parties would have good sport.

This would have suited Hamlet very well. He wanted his independence, and the further from his stepfather the better. There was a problem, though: Toby.

Hamlet had developed a close friendship with a young man in his family’s employ, a groom called Toby. They were the same age, and both loved horses. Hamlet spent as much time as he could around the royal stables and rode out on Bucephalus, his beautiful black stallion, accompanied whenever he could arrange it by Toby on one of the other mounts from the king’s extensive stable.

In time Hamlet had grown to love Toby, and to believe that Toby felt something for him beyond subservience. The relationship was difficult since Toby was employed by the king, but Hamlet had been thinking for some time how they might take their relationship further. This Notterby proposal from the king, however, would take our young prince far away from his friend.

So it was that one fine morning prince Hamlet stood at the window of his bedroom and watched Toby grooming horses in the yard below.

His soliloquy went like this: “Toby or Notterby? That is the question.”