Mostly Hamlet
Nov. 8th, 2016 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
heliopausaReading Shakespeare for the stageoffools fest was terrific fun - of course I'd read most of the plays before, one way or another, but reading for a story exchange gave a different perspective.
For starters, there was reading to decide which plays I'd ask (or offer) stories for. For both, I felt I had to stick to plays I knew fairly well - though I was very tempted by The Merry Wives of Windsor (one of those I hadn't read before) and may yet return to it one day. And the fest rules precluded the history plays and the Roman plays, so in the end it came down to Macbeth, Hamlet, Tempest, Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night's Dream - I think that's all I offered And then I had to read those even more intensively, to be ready for whatever might be asked - and my, but I found Hamlet an interesting read! full of new (to me) directions and possibilities.
Though I guess this goes back to a rather Brechtian production I saw last year, which posited that Hamlet senior was a rotten, self-indulgent, bad-for-the-kingdom king - a position bolstered by his canonical willingness to wager a province (and its population) on the outcome of a single combat. (That approach to kingship - treating a kingdom as possession, property, to be gamed away - turns up in Lear, too - another rotten, bad-for-the-kingdom king.) The point is boosted, too, by the prince's later declaring the madness of a war over "a little patch of ground that hath no profit in it" bringing "the imminent death of twenty thousand men ... for fantasy" - a condemnation of the macho style of kingship which makes personal vanity more important than ruling for stability and peace.
So I started thinking about the whole business of kingship in Hamlet - and found out what I guess is well known to Shakespeareans - that kingship in Denmark was elective - that Hamlet junior was therefore not ever (as he's sometimes considered) an ousted rightful heir - that Claudius (saving the murder, about which more anon) had every right to the kingship, having been elected. Which explains why everybody in Denmark has fallen into line, of course, and why nobody's running a rebellion as the play opens - until Hamlet sparks one by killing Polonius, in fact - the people blame Claudius for the death, since Claudius has protected Hamlet by concealing his role in that killing.
(The younger Hamlet certainly had hopes of being elected - he says so in Act II, Scene 2, but why he could have imagined anyone in their right mind would elect him, when he'd been away from the kingdom and showing no interest whatever in it, I can't imagine.)
Side-note: Minor point of interest for people better versed in history - Hamlet was being written as the aged Queen Elizabeth was coming to the end of her life - the question of the succession could well have raised interest in Denmark's then-elective monarchy - maybe even bolstered by the fact that James VI, the likeliest successor, was married to Anne of Denmark.
Then again, I was struck by how full of lies and deceptions the whole play is - everybody lies and conceals. Including Hamlet, of course - which is why I asked for a story pivoting on his pirate-story being a lie. (And got the lovely plotty story I mentioned yesterday, full of politics and machinations.) So why on earth need we believe the ghost? At the absolute best, by its own account, if we can believe it so far, this ghost is a sin-tormented soul, bound in sulphurous and tormenting flames, the last remnant of a violent man and careless king, his 'crimes broad blown', now actuated solely by the desire for vengeance on the man who married his widow. Why should we trust the ghost, any more than all the other liars in Denmark, as to how the king was killed, or why?
But is it a ghost? On reading again, I saw that nobody's really certain that it is - Horatio says it has "usurped" the likeness of Hamlet's father, and warns that it may shift that guise for some horrible form, to destroy Hamlet, or drive him mad. Hamlet himself wonders if it might be a 'goblin damned', before making a conscious willed decision to believe, or at any rate to act as if he believes - "I will speak to thee; I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane.".
So Hamlet decides to believe - but I don't see that we need to. Things really are rotten in the state of Denmark, and it may be that, as the witches lured Macbeth with half-truths to bring disaster on Scotland, this is an evil spirit similarly luring Hamlet with half-truths to bring disaster on Denmark.
Of course, Hamlet himself is a jerk throughout - most obviously to Ophelia, but also to Polonius, to Laertes, to Gertrude ("you can't call it love at your age", by the way), to Rosencrantz, to Guildenstern. Given that Claudius has his brother's death on his conscience - who may have been killed for the sake of stability in the kingdom - how many more deaths has Hamlet to his account? Who has done most damage, overall, to Denmark?
For starters, there was reading to decide which plays I'd ask (or offer) stories for. For both, I felt I had to stick to plays I knew fairly well - though I was very tempted by The Merry Wives of Windsor (one of those I hadn't read before) and may yet return to it one day. And the fest rules precluded the history plays and the Roman plays, so in the end it came down to Macbeth, Hamlet, Tempest, Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night's Dream - I think that's all I offered And then I had to read those even more intensively, to be ready for whatever might be asked - and my, but I found Hamlet an interesting read! full of new (to me) directions and possibilities.
Though I guess this goes back to a rather Brechtian production I saw last year, which posited that Hamlet senior was a rotten, self-indulgent, bad-for-the-kingdom king - a position bolstered by his canonical willingness to wager a province (and its population) on the outcome of a single combat. (That approach to kingship - treating a kingdom as possession, property, to be gamed away - turns up in Lear, too - another rotten, bad-for-the-kingdom king.) The point is boosted, too, by the prince's later declaring the madness of a war over "a little patch of ground that hath no profit in it" bringing "the imminent death of twenty thousand men ... for fantasy" - a condemnation of the macho style of kingship which makes personal vanity more important than ruling for stability and peace.
So I started thinking about the whole business of kingship in Hamlet - and found out what I guess is well known to Shakespeareans - that kingship in Denmark was elective - that Hamlet junior was therefore not ever (as he's sometimes considered) an ousted rightful heir - that Claudius (saving the murder, about which more anon) had every right to the kingship, having been elected. Which explains why everybody in Denmark has fallen into line, of course, and why nobody's running a rebellion as the play opens - until Hamlet sparks one by killing Polonius, in fact - the people blame Claudius for the death, since Claudius has protected Hamlet by concealing his role in that killing.
(The younger Hamlet certainly had hopes of being elected - he says so in Act II, Scene 2, but why he could have imagined anyone in their right mind would elect him, when he'd been away from the kingdom and showing no interest whatever in it, I can't imagine.)
Side-note: Minor point of interest for people better versed in history - Hamlet was being written as the aged Queen Elizabeth was coming to the end of her life - the question of the succession could well have raised interest in Denmark's then-elective monarchy - maybe even bolstered by the fact that James VI, the likeliest successor, was married to Anne of Denmark.
Then again, I was struck by how full of lies and deceptions the whole play is - everybody lies and conceals. Including Hamlet, of course - which is why I asked for a story pivoting on his pirate-story being a lie. (And got the lovely plotty story I mentioned yesterday, full of politics and machinations.) So why on earth need we believe the ghost? At the absolute best, by its own account, if we can believe it so far, this ghost is a sin-tormented soul, bound in sulphurous and tormenting flames, the last remnant of a violent man and careless king, his 'crimes broad blown', now actuated solely by the desire for vengeance on the man who married his widow. Why should we trust the ghost, any more than all the other liars in Denmark, as to how the king was killed, or why?
But is it a ghost? On reading again, I saw that nobody's really certain that it is - Horatio says it has "usurped" the likeness of Hamlet's father, and warns that it may shift that guise for some horrible form, to destroy Hamlet, or drive him mad. Hamlet himself wonders if it might be a 'goblin damned', before making a conscious willed decision to believe, or at any rate to act as if he believes - "I will speak to thee; I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane.".
So Hamlet decides to believe - but I don't see that we need to. Things really are rotten in the state of Denmark, and it may be that, as the witches lured Macbeth with half-truths to bring disaster on Scotland, this is an evil spirit similarly luring Hamlet with half-truths to bring disaster on Denmark.
Of course, Hamlet himself is a jerk throughout - most obviously to Ophelia, but also to Polonius, to Laertes, to Gertrude ("you can't call it love at your age", by the way), to Rosencrantz, to Guildenstern. Given that Claudius has his brother's death on his conscience - who may have been killed for the sake of stability in the kingdom - how many more deaths has Hamlet to his account? Who has done most damage, overall, to Denmark?
