A Word of Advice

This post is not specific to Hamlet, but is rather a light interlude.  Granted, it is courtesy of Slings & Arrows, so there is a slight connection.  The story, a conversation between Nahum and Geoffrey, could be encouragement or warning to any playwright considering a work that courts controversy.

Nahum:  "I had a young writer in my company in Nigeria who wrote a very provocative play.  He told the actors that he expected it to offend the audience and that if it didn't the actors should punch him as they stepped off the stage."

Geoffrey:  "What happened?"

Nahum:  "Oh, the writer was beaten to death."

Geoffrey:  "Not very good, huh?"

Nahum:  "Oh, it was excellent.  He was beaten to death by the audience."

Le Moyne College Welcome!

Greetings Fellow Dolphins!

To those of you who have found this blog and are enrolled in Hamlet: Views and Variations, I bid you welcome.  As a sometime student and now Le Moyne College alumnus (Class of 1997), I hope that you enjoy the class, which I was never fortunate enough to be able to take, and that the posts on this blog may help to deepen your appreciation of Hamlet...or at least help you to graduate.

Best wishes on your study of Hamlet this semester!

Hamlet's Delay

In his work Hamlet:  A Study in Critical Method, A.J.A. Waldock takes up the subject of the main character's procrastination.  It is an issue much discussed.  Why doesn't Hamlet act?  Why does he wait so long to exact revenge?  Why does it take five acts?

In part, the matter of delay may be one of reading versus performance.  Waldock comments that the delay is more impressive when one reads the play than when one sees it performed.  Beyond that, it is more impressive when one reflects upon the play after having read it; that is the curse of hindsight in this case.  The reader is left to ponder why it was that Hamlet took so long when it may not have seemed that way at all while seeing the play live.  Waldock's opinion of the delay is that it may be the reader or critic protesting too much.

"We are here in an Einstein world, where time has strange oddities, where intervals are a delusion and durations a snare.  What does it matter that a month or two have gone by between Acts I and II?"

For Waldock, the issue of delay is less important than it has been for others.  The delay exists only inasmuch as it is conveyed, and the play does not convey it directly to a marked degree.  Waldock sees the grand problem of Hamlet as this:  "to know exactly how much 'delay' there is in the play...how important...the 'delay' motive was meant to be."  Asking "Why the delay?" presupposes that we know the answer to the question of importance.

Waldock uses Hamlet's soliloquies as evidence of the importance of the delay motive.  Only two soliloquies reflect the issue:  "O, what a rogue..." and "How all occasions...."  The latter is often omitted from performances, leaving only one speech to discuss the issue.  It becomes a minor sticking point, then, and not one on which to judge the entire play.  That soliloquy is a "slight bump in the highway of the plot."

The difficulty that readers and critics encounter is "to square meanings that will not square" as if the play were an historical document and not merely a work of art.  We are left with puzzles, but "what would Hamlet be without its puzzles...?"  Shakespeare was rarely sound in invincible logic of plot, and it would be wrong to look for it in Hamlet.

Waldock wraps his article by summarizing what Shakespeare has given us in Hamlet, and it mirrors other favorable perspectives on the work.

"The portrait of a man who seems to express (and the more in his sufferings and his disasters) all that Shakespeare found of greatest beauty and worth in the human spirit.  There is no one, in history or in literature, like Hamlet.  All that humanity is, all that humanity might be, seem figured in him."

S & A on Hamlet

Aside from its tremendous dramatic enjoyment, Slings & Arrows provides several answers to the question "What is Hamlet?"  As I hope that the posts on this blog have displayed, there are as many answers to that question as there are people who have seen or read the play.  Presented below, for your consideration, are several opinions on the subject from characters in the series.

"The ineffable tragedy of the human spirit that still resonates, even today"  (Nahum)

"This play is dead...[It] has been dead for over 300 years...[It has been] strip mined for quotations and propped up like Lenin in his ice cave...[It is] a decomposed vessel somewhere between swamp and sewer." (Darren Nichols)

"Single greatest achievement in Western art"  (Geoffrey Tennant)

"Six soliloquies and the rest...is silence" (Geoffrey Tennant)

Slings & Arrows

How does one take a play that is several hundred years old and make it new again?  It is a worthwhile question for any director.  One way is to create a television series that revolves around staging Hamlet.  That is the premise behind the first season of Slings & Arrows.  Within that premise, the viewer is taken on a trip to a theatre festival's attempt to stage the play, with all of the requisite complications.

I have no intention of spoiling the plot of the series here.  My hope is that it will be of sufficient interest that readers will find the series for themselves.  Believe me, it is well worth your time.  If you happen to be a fan of Hamlet, then this is absolutely a must-see.

Under the guise of television drama are presented many philosophical observations on theatre in general and Hamlet in particular.  Early in the season we encounter a minister whose description of the theatre arts would be at home in Oliver Cromwell's England.

"Satan hath not a more speedy way nor a fitter school to bring men and women into concupiscence and filthy lust of wicked whoredom than those places of plays and theatre."

We are offered other humorous bits of wisdom.  We learn that a predilection for "After Eight" mints can lead to tooth decay.  We learn that hell may be a bad table reading of a play.  We learn that trying to sell plastics by studying Shakespearean plays may not be the most advisable notion.  We learn that uncaged chameleons also may be hazardous to one's health.

What of a study of Hamlet?  There are serious questions and comments raised.  For instance, how should one stage the play?  There is a traditional interpretation, with period costume.  One director's idea is to take the word "rotten" at face value.  This leads to a "rank and foul looking, foul acted and if possible foul smelling Hamlet," complete with garbage, a rusted shopping cart and broken car hood on stage.  Another interpretation is a minimalist approach--no set, costumes that are anachronistic if used at all and even allowing the text to be altered during rehearsal.  And when possible, use an actual human skull for Yorick.

What of the most famous speech of the play?  How can it be delivered so that the audience will actually hear it?  As Geoffrey Tennant, the director, tells his star, Jack, the actor must decide for himself.  Is Hamlet acting for the benefit of Claudius and Polonius, whom he knows to be eavesdropping, or is the speech sincere?  Jack makes the decision and delivers a memorable performance.

The matter of Hamlet's indecision is discussed as well.  Kate (Ophelia) questions Jack (Hamlet) hours before the curtain rises on opening night:  "So you're afraid to do it but you know you have to and if you don't you won't be able to live with yourself?"  It is a beautifully pithy summary of Hamlet's (and Jack's) problem, one that he is advised to use on stage.

Although the first season of Slings & Arrows is only six episodes long, it took no time at all to grow to like the characters.  In fact, like a well-staged version of Hamlet, reaching the end left me wishing that there were more to come.  Fortunately, there are two more seasons available, even if the festival moves on to other Shakespearean works.  It appears that my "to-do" list just got a bit longer.

Cheer Up, Hamlet

Finally, the holiday break from school has given me some time to get back into Hamlet!  As promised (see 12/8/13), I have begun to delve into the first season of Slings & Arrows.  It took the opening credits of the first episode to provide fodder for a post.  The theme song for the first season of the series is a witty little ditty entitled Cheer Up, Hamlet.  In the tradition of Hamlet Cha Cha Cha (see 8/14/13 and 8/19/13) and Richard Thompson's cover of The Story of Hamlet (see 10/6/13), here is one more auditory treat.  Thanks to YouTube, you can both read the lyrics and listen to the performance.

Cheer up, Hamlet!
Chin up, Hamlet!
Buck up, you melancholy Dane!
So your uncle is a cad who murdered Dad and married Mum.
That's really no excuse to be as glum as you've become.
So wise up, Hamlet!
Rise up, Hamlet!
Perk up and sing a new refrain!
Your incessant monologizing fills the castle with ennui.
Your "antic disposition" is embarrassing to see,
And by the way, you sulky brat, the answer is "To be."
You're driving poor Opheila insane.
So shut up, you rogue and peasant!
Grow up, it's most unpleasant!
Cheer up, you melancholy Dane!

Shore on Hamlet

How should one judge Hamlet?  W. Teignmouth Shore weighed in with his opinion on the matter in Shakespeare's Self (1920).  His thesis is as follows.

"Hamlet, as should all Shakespeare's plays, ought to be judged as an acting play, written for an Elizabethan audience, which revelled in horrors, jeered at madmen, loved ghostly thrills, believing in the appearance on earth of the spirits of the dead, and which delighted in watching fine sword-play."

Shore contends that Hamlet was a familiar story to playgoers of the period, and Shakespeare took the story and adapted it for his contemporary audience.  He rewrote the play, but he did not remodel it.  Had he done the latter, then he "must have been an exceedingly poor playwright."  To judge Shakespeare by modern criteria, though, takes his work out of its intended context.  Rather, he should be viewed within his particular time frame.  There is the rub.

Shore contends that Elizabethan playgoers "wanted and demanded melodrama decked out with poetics."  They were not interested in careful plot construction or subtlety in character drawing, so this is what Shakespeare gave them.  The poetry aside, Hamlet is "crude melodrama, which is quite exciting when it is acted as melodrama...."

Shore blames both the audience and the playwright for the puzzle that is Hamlet's character.  The audience is at fault for probing Hamlet as an actual person.  Shakespeare's offense is taking an actor's part and and using it as "an outlet for [his] unconquerable impulse to pour out poetry on the slightest provocation."  Hamlet babbles on matters that he, as a character, could not have had any knowledge.  Apparently he learned this loquacity from his father, whose ghost also runs at the mouth.

Ultimately, Shore finds the poetry to be the quality that makes the play fascinating.  It saves the play from its melodramatic trappings, even if the outbursts often have nothing to do with the action of the play itself.  Shore sums up his analysis with a note of thanks.  "Yet we must thank heaven that Shakespeare was more of a poet than a dramatist" (author's italics).