The Great Shakespearean Adventure: Hamlet

Feb 22, 2008 12:59

Well, after exhaustive market-testing and subject research, I have struck upon a way to present my Shakespearean forays to the blogosphere. I found a copy of the play online and I'm cutting and pasting lines I've got something to say about.

Don't think of this as an essay, a formal critique, or anything you could possibly get a grade for in an English class. Think of this as...riding along in my brain as I read the play quietly to myself.

Just tell yourself there are worse places to be. There aren't many, but they do exist.



So, I'm just going to jump right in.

MARCELLUS
Holla! Bernardo!

BERNARDO
Say,
What, is Horatio there?

HORATIO
A piece of him.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, HORATIO? No, seriously, what. Why are you just a piece of yourself? Where are the other pieces? Were you torn apart by Fortinbras's army of Norwegian zombies? Or is it 'cause you haven't seen Hamlet since the last time your Melancholy Brooding 401 class met in Wittenberg? For the record, I should add that while I am trying to interact with the text only in these readings, my appraisal of Horatio was permanently bent at an impressionable age by Nicholas Farrell, who, if you've seen practically any relatively modern Shakespeare film adaptation, will be familiar to you as the tall mournful fellow with the mustache who always plays The Quite Clearly Subtextually Gay character. He was Antonio in Twelfth Night, and...right, can't actually remember the others, but, you know. Haven't slept in about a week here, cut me some slack.

Also, HOLLA AT YA BOY, MARCELLUS.

HORATIO
Well, sit we down,
And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.

BERNARDO
Last night of all,
When yond same star that's westward from the pole
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one,--

Enter Ghost

Oh, man. That stage direction. Picture it in your head. That right there is a very fine moment of OMGWTF, folks. Oh, actually, you know what that moment is? That's the moment when you're a kid, and you've been sitting around a campfire listening to your cousin who's sitting next to you tell the "who stole my big toe?" story for the first time, and then he grabs you at the very end and screams "YOU'VE GOT MY BIG TOE!" and you wet yourself.

Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about.

MARCELLUS
Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!

BERNARDO
In the same figure, like the king that's dead.

MARCELLUS
Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

I'm sorry, that last line has NEVER NOT CRACKED ME UP. That line tells you absolutely everything you will ever need to know about Marcellus. "Hey Horatio, you know how to read, obviously this means you have MASTERED OCCULT LORE. Banish this shit back to the darkness from whence it came." I'm sure that made sense in your head, Marcellus. I'm sure it did.

BERNARDO
Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.

HORATIO
Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.

BERNARDO
It would be spoke to.

You know, I've seen very little theater---wasn't really a part of the world I grew up in, and lately I lack opportunities. In fact, I don't think I have ever seen a single Shakespeare play performed live. I've seen practically every film adaptation of Hamlet, though, and none of them answers the question I always have at this point: "It would be spoke to," says the text. HOW DO THEY KNOW THAT. What is the hand gesture, or facial expression, or hip-waggle that says "SPEAK TO ME, SLIGHTLY DIM NIGHTWATCHMEN AND GAY SCHOLAR FRIEND OF MY SON"? Legitimate question here, people. Have you ever seen this dealt with in a production? If not, then it's time for the theater folks to speak up---tell me how you would deal with it, if you were in charge.

HORATIO
What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march?

Occasionally during the course of these readings I will simply stop to reproduce a few lines of text and drool.

BERNARDO
How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on't?

HORATIO
Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.

"Because, and no offense guys, no one with a university degree is going to take the word of you two yokels seriously on anything."

MARCELLUS
Is it not like the king?

HORATIO
As thou art to thyself:
Such was the very armour he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
'Tis strange.

In my head, this is hilarious, because...okay. You know how whenever J.K. Rowling describes certain peripheral characters, she uses the same words to describe their facial expression or tone of voice consistently over all the books? Like, Pansy Parkinson always shrieks. Every time she opens her mouth, except for that one scene in Half-Blood Prince, she's described as shrieking. I mention this because every time the Polacks come up in Hamlet, they're on sleds. And in my mind, I see Shakespeare going,

"Poland, Poland. What the fuck have they got in Poland. They have...snow. Hmm. Sleds. Yes, that's much more evocative than warhorses. Sledded Polacks it is."

And so on and so forth.

MARCELLUS
Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

HORATIO
In what particular thought to work I know not;
But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

You see that last line there? That's why we had to establish from almost the moment of his appearance that Horatio is a scholar. 'Cause that way everyone in the audience who wasn't a scholar can say "I don't get the connection between the ghost and the threat to national security myself, but what the hell, he's a scholar. He knows about shit."

Somewhere, someone has undoubtedly staged a production of Hamlet in which the king's ghost is holding a Homeland Security Advisory System chart with the threat level indicated as Red.

Actually, I'm kidding. Occult phenomenon is a well-established harbinger of mortal upset in drama, but to my brain there is still a leap of judgment inherent in Horatio's conclusion. I'm happy to go along with it, but it's interesting that Horatio launches into this whole monologue about Denmark's battle with Norway, and then Bernardo replies at length, before Horatio starts back up with the reason behind his conclusion, citing the campfire story historical precedent of ghosts haunting the streets of Rome before bad shit went down there. Apparently, the upcoming information about Norway is important enough for that to wait. Hmm.

HORATIO
That can I;
At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,
Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet--
For so this side of our known world esteem'd him--
Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal'd compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
And carriage of the article design'd,
His fell to Hamlet.

"Basically, old King Hamlet killed King Fortinbras. The brother took the throne, and now his hotheaded nephew, son of the murdered king, is stirring shit up. Good thing we grow princes more stable than that in Denmark. Our Hamlet would never let a little regicide interfere with his judgment."

ETA: FUCKIT. I misread the text quite fundamentally here, thankfully pointed out to me on AIM by angevin2, so let's try this passage again.

Hamlet's father is the big mystery of the play, for me. As far as I can tell, Hamlet Sr. and Hamlet Jr. had nothing in common with each other. As a matter of fact, I suspect young Hamlet probably annoyed the shit out of his father. King Hamlet was apparently grave and warlike (and probably a total dud in the sack, which is why no one but Hamlet blames Gertrude for liking the sexy sexy Claudius better, but ANYWAY) and, in my experience, grave and warlike old men are rarely amused when their sons turn out to be complete and total smart-asses who go to university instead of apprenticing warcraft, and don't even protest when their uncle steals their throne. No, I've always figured that old Hamlet thought his son was about as useful as a daughter (oooh, SNAP) and Hamlet's feelings for his dad were even more of a cypher to me.

What makes this passage interesting is that it's just about the only picture of the old king in the play that isn't one of young Hamlet's peculiarly uninsightful elegies (barring, perhaps, the simple and beautiful "he was a man, taken for all in all/ I will not see his like again" in the next scene.) Not that there isn't a significant degree of uncritical elegy in Horatio's account of him, but I tend to feel Horatio's is more reliable.

HORATIO
A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.

THAT LINE. HOLY SHIT, THAT LINE. "This idea, it's like a speck of dust that lands on your eyeball, only the eyeball is YOUR BRAIN." The paralyzing inadequacy I feel as a writer is entirely worthwhile, to experience a line like that.

In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.--

Horatio reads his Roman history in The Sun.

Seriously, he is awfully freaking superstitious for A SCHOLAR.

HORATIO
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it: stay, and speak!

LOL, Horatio. The majesty of buried Denmark does not give a shit about the price of textbooks at the Wittenberg University campus bookstore.

HORATIO
Stop it, Marcellus.

MARCELLUS
Shall I strike at it with my partisan?

Yes, folks. Horatio is THE SCHOLAR and Marcellus is obviously the dumbass with heavy weaponry and a credulous air of childlike faith. It's okay that he wants to hit the incorporeal spirit with with something sharp and heavy, 'cause he's the muscle, and Horatio is the brains.

HORATIO
Do, if it will not stand.

LOL WAIT.

MARCELLUS
'Tis gone!

Exit Ghost

Well, shit. Marcellus is psychic. Did not see that one coming.

MARCELLUS
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.

Remember the thing I said earlier about Horatio being the smart one? Forget I said that.

MARCELLUS
It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

God, that is a beautiful fucking poem. Shakespeare instinctively understands the gut level, superstitious appeal of certain aspects of Christianity, though I'd never call him a believer. This is...going out on a limb, but I've long held a belief that Shakespeare was Catholic the way Michael Jackson is black---born that way, but changed his mind somewhere down the road---and there's a thing about Catholicism, a degree of pageantry and ritual lost in most Protestant traditions, even in the 16th century, especially during the Christmas season, where you are made to feel your spiritual isolation as a being on this earth, and bell and book and candle become your shelter from the howling midwinter darkness and the things that roam it. And you know what? Marcellus is not a dud. 'Cause he gets it, too.

Also interesting: in Horatio's speech, preceding Marcellus's above, he says essentially the same thing, but not quite so evocatively, only his religous/spiritual imagery is, for the second time, pagan, as opposed to Marcellus' Christianity. Not to spoil the end for anyone, but it's a nice bit of shading for a character who claims to be more antique Roman than Dane.

HORATIO
So have I heard and do in part believe it.
But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill:
Break we our watch up; and by my advice,
Let us impart what we have seen to-night
Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

MARCELLUS
Let's do't, I pray; and I this morning know
Where we shall find him most conveniently.

DUM DUM DUUUUUUUUUM.

You know, I've never read the play like this before (I am, for reference, using the text reproduced at http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/hamlet/2/) where there is some kind of physical break involved in proceeding from one scene to another. It gives you a new appreciation for the structure and pacing---for some reason, it never hit me before that that's the end of a scene, because when you read the play on paper it all sort of melds together. It's a great end for a scene. It's exactly like the most frequently used segue dialogue overlapping cuts in movies. SHAKESPEARE IS STILL TEACHING US OUR BUSINESS, FOLKS.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment of The Great Shakespearean Adventure: Hamlet, Act I, Scene 2, aka, Claudius Might Have Killed Your Dad, Hamlet, But Let's Face It---He's Really Fucking Hot.

shakespeare, reading: hamlet

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