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Reynaldo is very good at what he does and what he does is a little bit of everything. He gets home from curating, with Laertes’s help, a summary of what he’s discovered from spying on Laertes, and the first thing he does after opening the curtains on the sleeping king and queen is to help the king connect with the ambassador from Norway.
He hands Polonius a letter from Hamlet to Ophelia, to read aloud to the king and queen. He hands the king and queen the wired earpieces to hear what Polonius has to say to and about Hamlet. He hands Ophelia a book to color her loneliness when Hamlet asks what she’s doing here. He knows exactly what to reveal and to whom, whether to pull it into the light or drag it into the dark.
Marcellus handles the cameras and the shaping of public image, and Reynaldo handles reconnaissance and the gathering of actionable information. He can’t make a pretty picture because all too often nothing about the picture is pretty and it’s better to face that instead of dressing it up with a fancy frame. But Marcellus is good at what he does, and it’s good to give the general gender a reason to have faith, even and especially when everything is falling apart.
Hamlet is dangerous even after Reynaldo gets the gun out of his hands. The idea of Hamlet is dangerous, because the prince that everyone outside this castle knows is not the prince trapped inside these walls. Everyone sees the bright and shining vision, incisive even in his melancholy; no one sees the madness driving him to cruelty and carelessness, and so he cannot be removed cleanly, like a bad tooth. They must be delicate.
Polonius will stay till he comes, says Hamlet, and Reynaldo really can’t tell if he thinks he’s funny, just wants to waste his time, or if he’s sincerely imparting information that might not be obvious in his own mind. What he knows for sure, now, is that Elsinore is responsible for both princes, the public and the private, and a third which is the tension between them. The only way to save Denmark from Hamlet is to save Hamlet from Denmark. Even if he never returns.
And then. And then Laertes returns with a wildness in his eyes, a furious hunger that Rey’s never seen there before. He’s looking for the truth of his father’s death, and he’s looking for the truth he gets to be different from the one he keeps hearing. But no one can give that to him, not without lying, and Laertes deserves so much more than to be lied to.
Laertes deserves so much, and what Laertes has is a gun he clearly doesn’t want to be holding. But when someone mad with grief surges towards the royal family impetuous as a force of nature, it doesn’t matter if he wants to be doing it. It doesn’t matter that he’s known this family all his life, that he’s practically a second son to the queen, and it certainly doesn’t matter that Reynaldo is still deeply, desperately, in love with him, because what matters is that he is someone to be defended against.
He has a job to do, and this is exactly what he’s good at, the kind of situation Rey thought he’d escaped for good when he took this position. But history has a way of resurfacing, and some habits never go too far away. First and foremost, to keep Claudius and Gertrude out of danger. Second, to deescalate however he can and once more ease a weapon from the shaking hand of a frightened youth.
Finally, a private goal and not part of his job, but if they all make it through this, even if only some of them do, then he wants — he needs — he wants so badly to take Laertes in his arms and hold him close and warm. It wouldn’t be enough to put the world back together, especially when Reynaldo knows what Laertes doesn’t yet, how this terrible world has affected Ophelia. He knows already that seeing his sister is going to destroy him, but if he’s by Laertes’s side at least he won’t be alone with it. Rey’s world is shattering too, and neither of them should be alone.