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“Is this another grown up play?” Henry asks, and his mother smiles, bending down to fix his little bow tie and petting his hair.
“Sort of. But Bea, Philip and I will all tell you the story on the way home, and you can ask your daddy if you have any questions, okay?”
“Okay. Is Daddy a good guy in this one?”
“We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?” She asks, smiling. “Do you remember what this one’s called?”
“Hamlet,” Henry says. He’d lost his front tooth a few days ago, and the word still sounds strange with the gap. “Daddy plays Claudius.”
“That’s right.” His mom smiles at him, taking his hand as they go out to a waiting car. Henry’s feet are just barely too short to touch the floor, so he swings them as they drive through London. They’re ushered into a theater and led to a private box, and Henry and Bea play tic-tac-toe on the back of a program while they wait for the show to start. When it does, Henry sits back, paying attention as hard as he can so he can tell his dad what he liked.
He does like it. He likes the ghost and the sword fights. He’s planning to tell his dad that, but when the sword fights are done, something shifts. Maybe it’s something with the lights, or the fact that the whole theatre goes quiet. But Henry pays attention.
“So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence.”
Hamlet slumps, and Horatio clutches desperately at his body, pulling him close. The theatre is absolutely silent as Horatio sobs, and Henry leans forward despite himself.
“Now cracks a noble heart,” Horatio says eventually, stroking Hamlet’s face. Henry’s heart is in his throat.
“Goodnight, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” Horatio presses a kiss to Hamlet’s forehead. It’s a long, tender thing, and Henry can’t tear his eyes away. He wants to know if the others are seeing this, if the world has changed for them, too. But he can’t move. Horatio ends the kiss, but pulls Hamlet’s body close, cradling Hamlet’s head to his own chest.
There’s a noise offstage, and the lights shift, and Henry’s released from whatever it is that gripped him. He risks a look toward his siblings, but they don’t look any different. His mum doesn’t either; none of them seem to have changed at all. They haven’t noticed the way the world has shifted, how it all seems different now.
He’s quiet on the way home. He’s not sure what to do with what he’s seen. It’s a new world, and he doesn’t quite know how to interact with it yet. His mum helps him get ready for bed, and he’s lying awake still mulling it over when his dad comes in to say goodnight. When he sees Henry’s still awake, he flicks on the lamp beside Henry’s bed. There are still bits of the dark stage makeup on the sides of his face.
“Hey there, big man. What did you think?”
“Did... Did Ho... did he really kiss Hamlet?” Henry asks. His dad was so close to it, surely he’d noticed the way everything changed. He smiles, and Henry sits up in bed a bit.
“He did. Horatio kissed Hamlet after he died.”
“Is it because he loved him?” It feels like a question that should be asked quietly. Henry’s never known a man who loved another man, at least not enough to kiss him. But his dad leans close and nods conspiratorially.
“You know what? I think he did. I think he loved Hamlet like I love your mum, and that’s why he was always so sad when Hamlet was upset. That’s why he cried and kissed him when he died. What do you think?”
Henry grins. They do this every time he has a question about his dad’s plays; his dad will ask for his thoughts, nodding and treating them just as seriously as anyone’s.
“I think so, too. Maybe Hamlet loved him, too, and that’s why they spent so much time together, like how you go to things you don’t like so you can be with Mum. I think maybe Horatio did that for Hamlet too. I don’t think it would be very fun to be there unless he really liked Hamlet.”
“I think you’re onto something,” Arthur says, ruffling Henry’s hair. “It didn’t seem like a very fun time in Denmark at all.”
Henry smiles at him, and his dad gets him to lie down, tucking the blankets up to his chin. He’s about to go when Henry says, “Daddy? Is it okay for a boy to kiss another boy before he dies? And can they kiss on the lips like you and Mum do, or are there different rules for boys?”
His dad stills for a minute, then nods. “Of course it’s okay, H. It’s perfectly okay for boys to kiss other boys.”
“Like you and Mum?”
“Just like me and your mum. People can kiss anyone they want as long as the other person says it’s okay.”
“Okay. Goodnight,” Henry says, snuggling into his blankets. His dad smiles, smoothing a hand over Henry’s hair.
“Goodnight. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Henry says with a yawn. He’s asleep a few minutes later, and his dad leaves, but not before swearing to himself that he’ll do everything he can to keep Henry safe.
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Dear Professor McAllister,
I hope you are enjoying your weekend. I realize this is a bit of an odd request, but I’m writing to ask if I could write my final paper about a play other than Hamlet. My father is currently in the hospital battling cancer, so you understand I am not necessarily in the headspace to write about a boy mourning and avenging his own dead father.
I feel that MacBeth would work for the prompt about the supernatural in Shakespeare’s work, and I would be happy to write about that or to meet to discuss further.
Best,
Henry Wales
He/Him
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On the day of Arthur Fox’s funeral, the Daily Mail runs an article that begins with “now cracks a noble heart”.
Henry hides in his room to cry, his copy of Hamlet open in front of him as he remembers the way his dad talked about it and tries to convince himself that his dad loved him.
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His final year of school, he’s allowed to pick any work in the English canon for his final project. When the crown staunchly refuses to let him work on Austen, he picks up Hamlet in retaliation. He dives into the text, spending weeks swimming through it, letting the words swirl around and through him until he comes up for air, clutching his queer analysis like Excalibur.
His gran has no interest in reading his thesis. Her advisors and aides and whoever else composes her entourage pass it off as an homage to Arthur and it gets their seal of approval. It’s printed and bound, and probably just buried in a library in Oxford somewhere where no one but his committee will read it, but it doesn’t matter. He’s done it. A tiny piece of his queerness is in the world; at least this one portion of his legacy will be the truth. If nothing else, maybe someday someone will see in his thesis what he saw in the play.
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A few years later, Henry is moving into a house with the boy of his dreams. His sexuality has burst from between the pages of books and top floors of libraries, his words displayed as headlines across the world. Now that the dust has settled, he couldn’t be happier.
They're unpacking a bookshelf for their office, arguing about how they're going to arrange things while Queen plays in the background. Henry's humming along when he hears a box open behind him, followed by a snort.
“Hey, Hen? Why do we have four copies of Hamlet?”
“There’s an Oxford version, a Penguin one and an Arden one,” Henry says, not looking over. He's trying to decide if a book fits better with the creams or the yellows on his shelf. “Oxford made me buy theirs, so all my college notes are there, but I prefer the Arden. And the Penguin just had a nice cover, plus it's not annotated. It's smaller, so it's easier to carry, and it's nice to just have the play itself sometimes.”
“And there’s an actor edition? Is that different? It’s just one play, right?”
“That was my dad’s,” Henry says. He sets his book on the yellow pile and looks up with a smile. “He was Claudius when I was a kid. It... it was the first time I saw characters be gay. Horatio kissed Hamlet when he died. I... god; it was such a big deal for me."
"How old were you?" Alex asks, handing him the book almost reverently. Henry shrugs, flipping through the pages, smiling at his dad's handwriting in the margins, scribbling about blocking and inflection.
"Six, I think? Maybe seven. I'm not..." Something catches his eye in the back, and he goes still. There's writing on the back page, hidden behind glossaries and editor's notes that he's managed to miss every time he's used this book. It's his dad's handwriting, but it's in pen, meaning it can't be acting related.
"Everything okay?" Alex asks, but his voice feels distant somehow, and Henry just nods.
The handwriting is shakier than in other places, and it's dated to 2016. It's only a few months before his dad died.
Dear Henry,
I hope you'll understand why I'm leaving this to you; I hope I'm not assuming something wrong. But I want you to know that I love you. I love you, and I remember our conversation after the opening night all those years ago. It's one of my favorite memories with you. I always loved our after show talks, but that one was extra special.
I have loved every time we've talked about plays together, you with your incredible, analytical mind, and me chiming in with what little I think of from an acting perspective. I adored arguing about whether the ghost is really Hamlet's father, or the time we spent an hour trying to find a way to suspend a dagger on stage in Shakespeare's time, debating the value of having it there at all. I loved talking about how Ariel would hide or how fairies would experience gender; I loved watching you watch A Midsummer Night's Dream and spending the flight home listening to you process it.
I love you. I love the way you think about things. I love the way your mind works, and I love the way you love people. I wish so badly that I could be here to help you in university; I wish I could read your writing and help you grow into the brave, wonderful, incredible man I know you can be. I am proud of who you are, and I want you to know that whoever you become, I'm proud of you. I will always be proud of you, and I will always love you.
I would tell you "to thine own self be true", but we both know too much of the context for that to feel honest. So instead, from the bottom of my heart,
"Doubt thou that the stars are fire
Doubt that the sun doth move
Doubt truth to be a liar
But never doubt that I love"
-- Dad
P.S.- If a ghost comes telling you to avenge me, don't listen. I’ll just tell you to let your mum know I love her
"Hey, baby, it's okay." There’s a hand on his cheek, and Henry realizes he's crying. He takes it, sniffling a bit as he shows Alex the page. Alex’s breath catches, and somehow, the fact that he knows Henry’s dad’s handwriting makes Henry cry a bit more.
"He... I don't know how I always missed this," Henry says, letting the book fall closed around his finger so he can focus on Alex. "He... he wrote about how we'd talk about Shakespeare; and about the time we flew here just to see a play. And he talked about opening night of Hamlet, when I asked him if it was okay to be gay, and he said it was."
"He loved you," Alex says, and Henry nods, sniffling a bit.
"He did. He... he really did, and he loved all of me. He would have loved you, too. He'd be happy for us, and I think... I think he'd be happy I saw this now. If I'd seen it right after, I don't know if it... it would have been different. But now it's just... it's like he's here."
Alex just smiles, letting him have his moment, and Henry has never been so grateful for the life that he has.
A few days later, a framed poem appears on Henry's bedside table. It's Hamlet's letter, written in his dad's handwriting from the note. He doesn't say anything, but if he cuddles Alex a little closer that night, he trusts that they both know why.