At the Forgetters show last Thursday, Blake Schwarzenbach and bandmates ex-Against Me! drummer Kevin Mahon and bassist Caroline Paquita from Bitchin’ played a solid show at the Bell House, punctuated by short and sweet Hamlet riffs. Mr. Schwarzenbach pulled out his literary chops for the almost-middle aged punk crowd still humming his (somehow) less angsty lyrics from Jawbreaker’s heyday. At the merch table after the show, Mr. Schwarzenbach revealed to us that their forthcoming record will be self-released in a few months. But on stage he would twice quote the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, ACT I SCENE V of Shakespeare’s tragedy, where early on Hamlet follows his fathers spirit and learns the ghost desires his son seek revenge on his murderous uncle. Below are the two sections Blake decided to quote for the crowd, which you can watch in the video along with a song (skip the first minute if you don’t care about Shakespeare).
Now, Hamlet, hear:
‘Tis given out that, sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leperous distilment; whose effect 70
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigour doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood.…
I am thy father’s spirit,
Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
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