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Shakespeare's characters can often appear far-removed from our modern day world of YouTube, Beyoncé and grime. Yet they were certainly no less interested in music than we are now, with music considered to be at the heart of Shakespeare’s artistic vision. Of course our offerings have come a long way since Shakespeare's day, but we think it is a shame that they never had a chance to hear the musical delights of Katy Perry or Slipknot.
Translation of Shakespeare’s works is almost as old as Shakespeare himself; the first German adaptations date from the early 17th century. And within Shakespeare’s plays, moments of translation create comic relief and heighten the awareness that communication is not a given. Translation also served as a metaphor for physical transformation or transportation.
At the outset of an undergraduate Shakespeare course I often ask my students to make a list of ten things that may not, or do not, exist. I say “things” because I want to be as vague as possible. Most students submit lists featuring zombies and mermaids, love charms and time travel. Hogwarts is a popular place name, as are Westeros and Middle Earth. But few students venture into religious territory.
In anticipation of Shakespeare celebrations next year, we asked Oxford University Press and Oxford University staff members to choose their favourite Shakespeare adaptation. From classic to contemporary, the obscure to the infamous, we've collected a whole range of faithful and quirky translations from play text to film. Did your favourite film or television programme make the list?
Our two most ambitious and sublime authors remain Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. Whitman creates from the powerful press of himself; Melville taps his pen deeply into the volcanic force of William Shakespeare.
Inspired by Stanley Wells' recent book on Great Shakespeare Actors, we asked OUP staff members to remember a time when a theatrical production of a Shakespeare play shocked them. We discovered that some Shakespeare plays have the ability to surprise even the hardiest of Oxford University Press employees. Grab an ice-cream on your way in, take a seat, and enjoy the descriptions of shocking Shakespeare productions.
Stanley Wells’ latest book, Great Shakespeare Actors, offers a series of beautifully written, illuminating, and entertaining accounts of many of the most famous stage performers of Shakespeare from his time to ours. In a video interview, Wells revealed some of the ‘lesser’ remembered actors of the past he would have loved to have seen perform live on stage. The edited transcript below offers an insight into three of these great Shakespeare actors.
Saxo, who lived in the latter part of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, was probably a canon of Lund Cathedral (then Danish). He was secretary to Archbishop Abslon, who encouraged his gifted protégé to write a history of his own country to emulate those of other nations, such as Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Absalon was able to supply him with a large amount of material for the last few of the 16 books, since, as a warrior archbishop, he had taken a leading part in the Danish campaigns against the Wends of North Germany.
The work is a prosimetrum: in the prose text of six of the first nine books he inserts poems, some quite substantial. The poetry, he tells us, are meant to put into metrical Latin verse some of the narratives he had found in old Danish (and probably Icelandic) heroic poetry, such as the courageous last stand of Biarki and Hialti defending their lord after a Swedish ambush on the royal palace. He begins his work with the ancient myths and legends. Only in Book Nine does he start to introduce recognizable historical figures, after which he proceeds through the lives and activities of Viking kings, like Cnut the Great, ending in 1185 with the earlier exploits of Cnut Valdemarson.
Iconographie de l’historien danois Saxo Grammaticus par le dessinateur et peintre Louis Moe. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
As the first major Danish historiographer, Saxo’s work is a valuable fund of material, even though, like many other medieval historians, his accuracy can be variable, sometimes to the extent of invented episodes. Nevertheless, he is the only source available for the period in places. Needless to say, he favours the Danes against neighbouring nations like the Swedes and Germans (we read a great deal about the treachery of the Holy Roman emperors), and he is keen to trace the rise and spread of Christianity in Scandinavia.
The Gesta Danorum is also the first outstanding work of Danish literature. Although his general style is elegant and complex, he is a consummate story-teller, and when he gets his teeth into a good yarn, he can relate it in a swift and lively manner. These narratives range from heroic tales like those told of the tough old warrior Starkath (who loathes German sausages), to the tender love stories in Book Seven, and the early books are full of dragons, witches, wizards, and tales of the supernatural, including one about a vampire. He often displays a wry sense of humour, as in the story about a drunkard who persistently defies the king’s edict forbidding the brewing and consumption of beer. One of Saxo’s claims to literary importance is his inclusion of the first-known version of the Hamlet story. The fortunes of his Amleth foreshadow those of Shakespeare’s hero in surprising detail.
Whatever his merits as a historian, and they are many, Saxo always provides a good read, and generations of Danish children have been entertained by his tales at their mother’s knee.
As Mother’s Day approaches in the United States, we decided to reflect on some of the mothers to be found between the pages of some of our classic books.
Mrs Bennet is surely one of the best-known mothers in English literature. She has five girls to raise, and is determined to make sure they marry well. So, in one memorable scene when Elizabeth turns down a proposal from the perfectly respectable Mr Collins, she is beside herself and goes straight to her husband to make sure he demands that their daughter change her mind. However, it doesn’t go quite to plan:
‘Come here, child,’ cried her father as she appeared. ‘I have sent for you on an affair of importance. I understand that Mr Collins has made you an offer of marriage. Is it true?’ Elizabeth replied that it was. ‘Very well–and this offer of marriage you have refused?’
‘I have, sir.’
‘Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists upon your accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs Bennet?’
‘Yes, or I will never see her again.’
‘An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.’
Elizabeth could not but smile at such a conclusion of such a beginning, but Mrs Bennet, who had persuaded herself that her husband regarded the affair as she wished, was excessively disappointed.
Mrs March – or Marmee, as she is affectionately known by her daughters – is basically the perfect mother. She works, she helps charity, she contributes to the war effort, all at the same time as being a loving mother to her girls, not to mention keeping the house looking beautiful. She is strongly principled, supported by her rock-steady faith, and despite at one point admitting that she used to have a bit of a temper, never appears to be angry. Most strikingly for the time at which it was written, though, she ensures that her daughters get an education, and encourages them to make decisions for herself, rather than marrying at the earliest opportunity.
Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, causes deep resentment in her son when she swiftly married his uncle Claudius after the death of Hamlet’s father. However, despite the fact that Hamlet sees her as a living example of the weakness of women, she continues to watch over him with affection and concern. The relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude has been the subject of much academic debate. One famous reading of the relationship was by the psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, who in the 1940s published a collection of essays on what he saw as Hamlet’s Oedipal impulses.
In The Yellow Wall-Paper our narrator is a young mother suffering from depression. In a controversial course of treatment she is separated from her son and denied the opportunity to even read or write. She is forced to spend her time locked in a bedroom covered in yellow wallpaper, in which she starts to see a figure moving as her madness tragically develops.
Mrs Jellyby might be a relatively minor character in Dickens’ mammoth novel, but she is definitely memorable. She has a husband and several children – most notably her daughter Caddy – but devotes her time to Africa’s needy. She spends all day writing letters and arguing for their cause, but all the time forgetting the saying “charity begins at home” and is blind to the fact that her own family is suffering badly from neglect.
Esther Waters is a young, working-class woman with strong religious beliefs who takes up a job as a kitchen-maid. She is seduced and abandoned, and forced to support herself and her illegitimate child in any way that she can. The novel depicts with extraordinary candour Esther’s struggles against prejudice and injustice, and the growth of her character as she determines to protect her son. James Joyce even called Esther Waters ‘the best novel of modern English life’.
Kirsty Doole is Publicity Manager for Oxford World’s Classics.
For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. You can follow Oxford World’s Classics on Twitter, Facebook, or here on the OUPblog. Subscribe to only Oxford World’s Classics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
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Image credit: Hamlet and his Mother by Eugene Delacrois. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
On 23 April 2014 we celebrate the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth. Nearly 400 years after his death he is still a source of inspiration for countless authors, composers, and artists all over the world. His plays are performed again and again in hundreds of languages, and have been the inspiration for numerous operas, ballets, and films. The most well-known and highly acclaimed Shakespeare films are the trilogy made in the 1940s and 50s, starring Sir Laurence Olivier and featuring music written by a famous William of the twentieth century — William Walton.
Walton and Olivier had met in 1936 on the set of As You Like It (another Shakespearean film featuring music by Walton) and again at a BBC recording of Christopher Columbus. By 1944, when he was approached to write the film score for Henry V, Walton had already made a name for himself with his ceremonial and dramatic music (including Crown Imperial March for the coronation of George IV in 1937), and music to accompany various patriotic films during World War II. Olivier and Walton were to work together on three films: Hamlet (1948), Richard III (1955), and their most successful partnership, Henry V (1944).
All three film scores where highly acclaimed in their day, Henry V and Hamlet attracting Oscar nominations. What made them so very successful was Walton’s unerring ability to reflect the nature of each play in his music; he knew exactly how and when to heighten emotions, create tension, and provide moments of light relief. The scores for both Richard III and Henry V rely heavily on pastiches of “Shakespearean-style” music, including folk songs (at the suggestion of another OUP composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams), brass-heavy battle fanfares, and the use of the harpsichord, whilst Hamlet has a darker, motif-led, more brooding score, again reflecting the mood of the play.
The original film score of Henry V was arranged into two suites; in 1945 by Malcolm Sargent and again in 1963 by Muir Mathieson (the conductor on the original film soundtrack). Henry V remains not only Walton’s most well-known film score but also one of his most popular orchestral works. In fact, in an interview given to the BBC in 1977, Laurence Olivier himself remarked that the film would have been “terribly dull” without the music. High praise indeed.
In March 2014 Oxford University Press published the final volume in its magnificent William Walton Edition. Walton’s entire output, including his film music, is now available to scholars and performers in a definitive and fully practical edition.
Bethan Greenaway is Production Controller for Printed Music at Oxford University Press.
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William Shakespeare was born 450 years ago this month, in April 1564, and to celebrate Oxford Scholarly Editions Online is testing your knowledge on Shakespeare quotes. Do you know your sonnets from your speeches? Find out…
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Image credit: The Droeshout portrait of William Shakespeare. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The death of Richard Burbage in 1619 caused a minor scandal. So lavish was the outpouring of grief that it threatened to overshadow official mourning for Queen Anne who had died a few days before. Shakespeare’s leading actor had a legendary status in the seventeenth century. It is also a minor scandal that he is not more famous today. While there is exhaustive scholarship on the playwright’s texts and sources, the earliest manuscript elegies for the man who first performed Hamlet, Lear, and Othello remain unedited and obscure. This is a shame not only because it is an injustice but also because it stops us seeing the way Shakespeare worked.
It was the first performance of Hamlet around 1601 that projected Burbage into the national imagination. The earliest surviving elegy begins by saying that there will be ‘no more young Hamlet’ after the death of the star:
Oft I have seen him leap into a grave
Suiting the person, which he seemed to have,
Of a sad lover, with so true an eye
That there (I would have sworn) he meant to die.
A 1605 pamphlet notes how the ‘one man’ who plays Hamlet stands at the apogee of his profession, with ‘money’, ‘dignity’, and ‘reputation’ that are destined to earn him a ‘lordship in the country’. The play was ‘diverse times acted by his highness’s servants in the City of London as also in the two universities of Cambridge and Oxford and elsewhere’. It functioned as the calling card of its leading man.
Hamlet proved the making of Burbage, but I suggest that Burbage also had a good deal to do with the way Hamlet was made. Three things about the actor were essential. First, his wealth and playhouse investment. Second, his style of performance. Third, competition with the leading man of a rival company, Edward Alleyn.
Wealth is important because power (just as in modern Hollywood) did not come from talent alone. Before 1599 Burbage had been just one in an acting company of eight equals and his roles in Shakespeare’s plays were commensurate with that stake. But the building of the Globe in 1599 made Richard newly preeminent. He and his brother Cuthbert secured 50% of the venture, with Shakespeare and the four other ‘housekeepers’ having just 10% each. Burbage’s business dominance had immediate implications. Once Burbage was a bigger investor, the company’s playwright wrote him bigger parts. From this point on central characters become more prominent: Henry V, Duke Vincentio, Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Timon, Antony, and Coriolanus (all products of the early Globe years) are not simply longer in their line-counts, they are also grander, more self-defining, roles. Most can be linked with certainty to Burbage and all are very likely to have been played by him. Hamlet (at 1338 lines) is by some measure the largest part in the Shakespeare canon and that statistic connects pretty directly with the actor’s business share.
Of course, Burbage was not just powerful but also gifted. Ben Jonson called him the ‘best actor’ and that reputation was founded, as one elegy put it, on performing ‘so truly to the life’. According to the testimony of Richard Flecknoe:
He was a delightful Proteus, so wholly transforming himself into his part, and putting off himself with his clothes, as he never (not so much as in the tiring house) assumed himself again until the play was done: there being as much difference betwixt him and one of our common actors as between a ballad singer who only mouths it and an excellent singer.
This distance from common actors is vital to Hamlet because it makes possible the Prince’s declaration that ‘forms, moods, shapes of grief’ are merely ‘actions that a man might play’ but that he ‘has that within which passes show’.
A final element, though, was the rivalry between Burbage and Alleyn. Exactly like Burbage, Alleyn was an actor who had recently become a big-scale playhouse investor. In 1600 he built the Fortune playhouse to the north of the city, deliberately copying the Globe. To launch his theatre Alleyn revived the roles that had made him famous in the early 1590s: Tamburlaine, Faustus, and other leads in Marlowe plays. Amongst these was Marlowe’s Dido, in which he spoke the following lines:
At last came Pyrrhus, fell and full of ire,
His harness dropping blood, and on his spear
The mangled head of Priam’s youngest son…
In Hamlet (written while Alleyn conducted these revivals) the Prince meets a player and requests an old speech that has a very similar ring:
The rugged Pyrrhus like th’ Hyrcanian beast…
—’Tis not so. It begins with Pyrrhus.
The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble…
Burbage, at the Globe, was pretending awkwardly to remember lines that closely resembled those of his rival on the other side of the Thames. The unpopularity of the ‘tragedians of the city’ (which has forced the player to travel to Elsinore) thus becomes a very local affair.
The player’s long speech (which ‘pleased not the million’ and bores Polonius) is partly a dig at Alleyn, but it is also something more complex. Hamlet admires the old player and behind this there is surely also admiration for Alleyn, with whom Burbage had learned his craft as a travelling actor a decade before. His character’s inability to ‘drown the stage with tears, / And cleave the general ear with horrid speech’ is an expression of limitation. But it also announces a new kind of acting in which the feelings of characters are not so easily known. Alleyn had starred as Cutlack the Dane with eyes of ‘lightning’ and words of ‘thunder’; Burbage would command the stage in a different way. ‘To be or not to be’ was a question of acting method. The performer whose death Thomas Middleton would describe as an ‘eclipse of playing’ had an artistic vision of his own.
Bart van Es is Lecturer in English at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Catherine’s College. He has previously written books on Edmund Spenser and has a special interest in the writing of history in the Renaissance. Shakespeare in Company is his first work on drama and was supported by the award of an AHRC Fellowship.
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Subscribe to only literature articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS. Image credit: Portraits of Richard Burbage and Edward Alleyn used with permission of Dulwich Picture Gallery. All rights reserved.
I must admit when I started to write my cycle of three novels set on Hayling Island ( off the south coast of England), Hidden, Illegal, Stuffed - I didn’t give a thought to Shakespeare, but somehow the Bard has presented himself on the Island in more ways than one. As a natural fan I have embraced it with open arms.
Hamlet appeared first. Perhaps I should say here that apart from being one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, as far as I’m concerned Hamlet is a teenager, about to be sent over to school in England and this is why he never really takes the plunge and avenges his father’s murder. When writing, Illegal, with the main character Lindy Bellows as a vulnerable lonely girl from a dysfunctional family, I decided that Hamlet is the play she’s studying in school. At the back of my mind I had a quote from an article written at the time Paul Schofield died, which described Hamlet as a ‘spiritual fugitive.’ But that altered in my mind to ‘spiritual refugee’ and my image was born. Lindy starts to think of herself as a spiritual refugee in the first chapter and this image continues throughout the book. When she teams up with fellow misfit Karl, who has been mute for two years, she tells him he’s also a spiritual refugee.
However, I am not keen on books which take well known plays or books and put them centre stage. I kept a firm grip on the role of Hamlet in Illegal. Lindy is not about to turn into a literary boffin. My point was that even the most unlikely of students can be captured by the greatest literature and find something which is significant to their own lives. This is what happens to Lindy. She doesn’t suddenly become an expert on Shakespeare, but throughout the novel there is a strand which moves to the foreground from time to time because Lindy has identified with this particular Shakespeare character in her own way.
2 Comments on Othello and Hamlet on Hayling Island by Miriam Halahmy, last added: 3/28/2012
So glad you want to go to a performance - I agree, Shakespeare needs to be SEEN! And I am currently reading Hidden and find the Hamlet leitmotif skilfully and convincingly done - and I'm spellbound. So, you Dad's murderer moves in with your Mum. What do you do? Shakespeare was written for ordinary people, after all. Congrats on handling the Othello - sounds like a very challenging assignment very well done!
‘Few etymologies are perfect. Neither is this one. Yet it may be right.’
So wrote the eminent scholar Anatoly Liberman in 2007, in a beautifully-crafted OUPblog post entitled ‘Hamlet and Other Lads and Lasses: Or, From Rags to Riches’. That post explored the origins of the name of Shakespeare’s Prince of Denmark, and – with wonderful spark and spirit – revived an old theory that ‘Am-lothi … is the correct division [of the name], with Am- and loth- being related to Engl. em(ber), and lad respectively (-i is an ending).’ The name ‘ember boy’ as a whole was, Liberman noted, suggestive of ‘a despised third son of fairy tales, known in British folklore as Boots.’
This wholly Germanic etymology may, indeed, be right. But, in an article published online last week in the OUP journal Review of English Studies, I have set out my own – no doubt even less perfect – theory, which I hope will be of as much interest to artists of various kinds as to scholarly specialists.
In this new article, I conclude that Hamlet probably came ultimately from Gaelic Admlithi: a name attached to a player (or ‘mocker’) in a strange and violent medieval Irish tale known in English as ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’. If I’m right, this means that some version of the Hamlet-name was associated with players hundreds of years before Shakespeare lived or wrote.
What does Admlithi mean? It has proved tough to translate – particularly for me, as a specialist in Old Norse, rather than Gaelic. But once I’d found the name (sent to me years ago by a friend who knew I had an interest in medieval player-figures), it was impossible to let go. Partly, this had to do with the fact that it clearly had something to do with the concept of grinding, which I knew was a key element in two important early Nordic ‘Hamlet’ texts; but which also seemed to have plenty of powerful cultural potential of its own. (Just think of the range of its contemporary connotations!) In the end, I plumped for not one but three weird-yet-interesting interpretations of Admlithi: Great Grindings; Greatly Ground (plural); Due-To-Be-Greatly Ground.
But what did these really mean, in the Middle Ages? To Gaelic-speakers? To Norse-speakers? To people who spoke bits of both languages?
Once I started asking these questions in earnest, one of the answers I found was that yes, Gaelic words connected with grinding probably did (as we might guess) suggest violence, or sexual activity. But they could also imply low or ambiguous social status: sometimes linked to gender, sometimes to categorization as a ‘fool’ of some kind. In other words, use of the peculiar name Admlithi – grammatically hazy, yet bursting with meaning – could probably have said more about the character tagged with it than lines and lines of straightforward description. Just as well, in fact, for Admlithi has scarcely been mentioned in surviving versions of ‘Da Derga’s Hostel’ before he’s gone – out of the picture entirely.
So … Was this Irish player, Admlithi, Hamlet?
No!
Hamlet is Hamlet!
But, as I discuss in the RES article, I do think there is a fair possibility that Gaelic Admlithi was known as a player-name in medieval Scandinavia, and that this somehow contributed to the development of a riddling figure called Amlethus, long identified as an early version of the
0 Comments on Hamlet, and his secret names as of 1/1/1900
I'm pretty much positive I'm not the first or only person to notice the similarities between these plays, but I definitely couldn't pass up a chance to talk about something that jumped out at me as I read Julius Caesar. In fact, if you read my summaries of Act II, scenes 1 and 2, Act IV, scene 1, and Act V, scene 5, I've already flagged some of them. It's not just the similarities in the natures of some of the characters - for instance, Brutus is extremely noble, as is Hamlet. There are some factual similarities, too: Both talk to ghosts. Both suffer the loss of their female love interests. Both are seeking to bring down someone who has wrongfully taken power. Both are recognized as extremely worthy, noble men at the close of the plays in remarkably similar terms.
I assure you that this post is based on my personal observations and thoughts - I didn't manage to quickly find an essay on this topic. So you will forgive the lack of actual scholarliness, I hope.
In addition to factual points of comparison, the plays share similar language in places. One of the most memorable lines in all of literature comes from Hamlet: "To be or not to be, that is the question." That line is so memorable because it kicks off Hamlet's second soliloquy, in which he again considers killing himself (as he did in his first soliloquy). In Julius Caesar, we have Brutus pondering a different sort of quandary. He's wondering whether Julius will be a good leader, and he says "How that might change his nature, there's the question." Now, it's possible that the "To be or not to be" line wasn't as iconic in Shakespeare's time as it now is. And it's possible that Julius Caesar came before the final version of Hamlet, although likely that it came after the first version (sometimes referred to as Ur-Hamlet). Julius Caesar is believed to have been written around 1599. The "final" version of Hamlet was written between 1599 and 1601 (so, possibly at the same time as JC), though it's widely believed that an earlier version of the play existed as much as a decade earlier.
Which line came first? Shakespeare knows, but he's not saying. Still, the similarity is striking. But when it comes to comparing these plays, it's not just this line from JC, Act II, sc. 1 and the one from Hamlet, Act III, sc. 1, that are similar.
There are other similar lines - as when characters in both plays make references to smiling villains (Hamlet in Hamlet, Act I, sc. 5 and Octavius in Julius Caesar, Act II, sc. 2), both have references to defying augury/ignoring portents (Hamlet in Hamlet, Act V, sc. 2, and Caesar in Act II, sc. 2), and the closings of both plays sound remarkably similar (Hamlet, Act V, sc. 2 and Julius Caesar, Act V, sc. 5).
And there are some similarities between the characters of Hamlet and Brutus. Hamlet spends a lot of time thinking about suicide, as we can tell from his first soliloquy ("O that this too, too solid/sullied flesh would melt"), which dealt with suicide, and his second ("To be or not to be"). Similarly, Brutus mentions the idea of killing himself early on in the play, as a noble way of avoiding improper servitude or submission to an unworthy ruler.
Between their discussions of death and the general set-up, it's pretty clear from early in both plays that Hamlet and Brutus are probably going to end up dead, in part because both of them embrace the notion so fully. Hamlet would prefer death because he is so distraught over his father's death (and then all the subsequent turns of event that make continued survival such a living hell - like knowing that his mother and
0 Comments on Julius Caesar and Hamlet - some thoughts as of 1/1/1900
…wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” is the famous line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but I’m using it for today’s post to direct your attention to two things — 1) the new PT issue that went live on June 2 that is all about children and play, and 2) about Shakespeare plays and poetry. The word “play” has various meanings and one of them refers to drama. Children naturally act out stories with each other or their toys, and create little ‘plays,’ as it were. And so taking them to see plays is a natural extension, I think, of that basic child-like impulse to create them.
Last year, I wrote a post about the Shakespeare play, Twelfth Night, put on by the Unicorn Theatre in London. We also went to see Romeo and Juliet at the Globe theatre. I was convinced by my experiences there that children (and parents) need not be intimidated by Shakespeare’s plays. Of course, for most people, it is the poetic language of Shakespeare (the plays are mostly written in blank verse which is unrhymed iambic pentameter) that can be off-putting; however, if one gets to see the play acted, the language does not appear nearly so opaque and in fact contributes to the pleasure of watching the drama. In Winnipeg where I live, we have a local theatre company, Shakespeare in the Ruins, that puts on a Shakespeare play every summer in outdoor venues. This year they staged the Merry Wives of Windsor. We took both our children to the play and they enjoyed watching it.
Have you ever taken your children to a Shakespeare play? What was it and did they enjoy it? Does your city have a local company that stages plays for children? Do tell us here at PaperTigers.
I know. I said I was moving on to The Tempest and I am. But I really wanted to talk about Hamlet's first soliloquy before moving on. It is usually performed as follows, which is basically the text from the First Folio (from 1623, put together after Shakespeare's death), cleaned up with modern spellings and punctuation:
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God, God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't, ah fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
However.
In the Quarto published during Shakespeare's life (in 1604), the "s" word in that first line is "sallied", a form of the word "sullied".
You can see scans of both versions in this post, which does nothing to resolve the issue as to which version is "correct." Modern editions of the play pick one and roll with it, based on their own determinations as to which source is more reliable. (On the one hand, "solid" seems to go better with thawing and melting; on the other, "sullied" seems like Shakespeare's original choice, but who knows what sort of oversight there was in the printing of the Quarto?) Modern actors pick one and roll with it as well. David Tennant,Kenneth Branagh, Mel Gibson, Kevin Klein and Laurence Olivier all say "solid" in their film versions, but "sullied" is still sometimes selected.
Oh, and how much do you love the play of words on "canon/cannon" here? (I know I love it SO MUCH!)
Here's Kenneth Branagh's reading for you:
0 Comments on Hamlet, part 7 - Solid or sullied? as of 1/1/1900
I have to say that I've always taken issue with how Ophelia is portrayed. And so has my friend, Lisa Mantchev, author of the books Eyes Like Stars and Perchance to Dream. In fact, Ophelia and Hamlet are characters in Eyes Like Stars, with Hamlet being a selfish prince (I almost replaced those last three letters with a "ck") and Ophelia being . . . well, I can't tell you if you haven't read it.
We had a discussion about Ophelia this morning, and this is how it went:
Lisa: As a teen reader (and a student in AP English) I never had any use for Hamlet. In my mind, he was the same sort of melancholy introvert as Holden Caulfield, one of those moody emo boys with floppy hair and a tattered copy of some book I'd never heard of shoved in his back pocket . . . the sort of guy I would try to speak with during lunches in the tri but could never get to talk to me.
Thus (but not just by default!) all my affections and sympathies aligned with Ophelia. Here was a girl, I thought, being bossed around by her father and brother for their own advantage. If ever there was a girl trapped by time period and conventions and socio-political obligations, Ophelia was that girl. And, as a teen reader, I desperately, desperately wanted her to tell everyone to bugger off. I wanted her to sprout a spine and tell them all to get bent. I wanted her to have a life outside the role that had been written for her. When she couldn't manage it, I was angry; with her, with the world, with the constraints women in the past have had to deal with, and with myself for ever thinking that a boyfriend would be just the thing to solve all my problems.
Kelly: I didn't read Hamlet in high school - we did Macbeth and Othello and Julius Caesar, but not Hamlet. So my first exposure to him was my own leisure reading of the play when I was in my 20s, prior to the Mel Gibson release. I was drawn to Hamlet the same way I was kind of drawn to Heathcliff - that tragic, brooding guy who couldn't have what he wanted and was therefore a bit of a bastard. That said, I am with you in wishing that Ophelia would have developed a spine, or at least shown a bit of spunk - and really, Helena Bonham Carter's version of Ophelia managed to show a bit of sass: even though she was constrained to follow Polonius's command, she obviously did it grudgingly. And she sure as heck didn't go quietly into that good night.
The problem with so many depictions of Ophelia is that she's too tame, and then too crazy. That's certainly true of the Ophelia in the Tennant/Stewart production - she seems a bit wooden to me, and then completely crazy-cakes, and it was true in the recent Broadway production, where she appeared all unfocused and then shrieky. I don't really care for a feckless Ophelia. My preferred readings of that character are more nuanced. Kate Winslet was awesome in the Branagh movie version, bringing a fragility to the role and displaying so much confusion early on that her descent into madness didn't seem like a complete hop off the cliff, but I'm still waiting for the reading I most want to see. I mean, I know that Ophelia drops her basket (to borrow a term from the Ya Ya Sisterhood), but "though this be madness, yet there is method in it" - the songs she sings and the flowers she references (in conjunction with their recipients) show that she wasn't completely out
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Death is one of the major themes in Hamlet. I find it interesting that most of the deaths were not anticipated by the characters – kinda notable in an age when warfare was common. And given that Hamlet spends most of the play deciding to kill Claudius and Claudius spends it thinking Hamlet might be out to get him, it's kind of funny that Claudius doesn't truly see it coming until it's there (since he's so smug that he thinks Laertes has it all under control and that will be that).
Want to test your knowledge of who dies and how? You can always take this quiz.
Meanwhile, nearly all the main players die except Horatio. I figured I'd tackle them in order of death.
How do they all die? Let me count the ways:
1. King Hamlet: murdered prior to the start of the play by Claudius through the cunning use of poison in the ear. In real life (to the extent that the play is based in fact, after all), the brother stabbed King Hamlet and there were witnesses. Shakespeare's decision to switch up the mode of death accomplishes two things:
a) It shows that Shakespeare was familiar with the latest scientific discoveries of his time. (Check out this New York Times article from 1982 for further details.) and
b) It makes the means of death less obvious, thereby creating some doubt in Hamlet's mind as to whether the ghost is truthful or a liar, and as to whether Claudius could have commited "murther most foul".
Since King Hamlet had not made his final confession before his untimely death, his soul is doomed to purgatory, or so his spirit intimates in Act I.
2. Polonius: stabbed by Hamlet because he thought it was Claudius. Not that Hamlet had any love for Polonius, but neither did he have it in for him. Hamlet "lugs the guts" from the chamber and stashes it in a stairwell. Polonius is buried in "hugger-mugger", a term encompassing both notions of secrecy and of confusion or muddle. We must assume that Polonius can't go straight to heaven, either.
3. Ophelia: drowned. Not of her own volition, really, so it's not technically a suicide, but when she fell in the water, she didn't try to save herself, either; hence, the church's quarrel with burying her in sacred ground, and the conversation between the gravediggers about what does and does not constitute a drowning by suicide. If she truly wanted to die and ended up dead, then she would never, ever get to heaven (under the Elizabethan understanding of things). Poor Ophelia was so terribly depressed, what with Hamlet forsaking her and her father dying and Laertes skipping about Paris and all, that she probably didn't have the energy to fight the current. To say nothing of the weight of her robes/gown/whatever. Or the fact that noblewomen in Denmark might not have been taught to swim back then. I could go on, but I won't.
4. Rosencrantz & Guildstern: executed in England as a favor to Denmark. The English court thinks they're responding to a request from Claudius, but it's Hamlet who signed their death warrant, assisted by his father's ring (which bore the requisite seal). Hamlet doesn't feel any remorse for these deaths, since he's all Hammurabi about it (kind of "an eye for an eye", even though it's a two for one exchange).
If you haven't recently read (or seen) Hamlet, might I recommend my summary of the play that I wrote last year?
Last year, my third Hamlet post was entitled "Who's there?", and in it I examined the many faces of so very many of the characters, and also asked you to consider who was hiding for some of the scenes. For example, Polonius is a notorious hider - both in the "To be or not to be" scene and in Gertrude's bedchamber, when he gets run through (or shot, depending on the production), but there are other incidences of people being there, but out of sight. Having just re-read that post, I realize there's some overlap with today's selection, but to my way of thinking, the focus this time is more on the nature of the characters mentioned.
The play opens with a night watchman saying "Who's there?", which is a fine way of announcing at least one of the major themes of this play. Because this play is truly about who's there – who are these characters, really?
CLAUDIUS
Claudius is king – but that doesn't make him a good (or bad) guy.
At first, he sounds like he's running the country well – staving off young Fortinbras, negotiating with England, taking an interest in the welfare of his subjects (including Laertes and Hamlet). We're not sure he's entirely wrong about Hamlet being too mopey, even.
But who is Claudius? He's the younger brother who killed off the king in order to wear the crown and bed his sister-in-law, Gertrude. In fact, it's not clear which of those two objectives was more important to him. He becomes more politically invested in keeping the crown as the play goes on, which is evidenced by his communications with Polonius, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, the letter to England (on which Hamlet later reports), and even his comments to Gertrude after she tells Laertes about Ophelia's death.
Claudius himself seems uncertain who he is, in his prayer scene in Act 3, scene 3, where he wonders whether he can be forgiven by God while still keeping his ill-gotten gains. And although he seems to desperately want to retain his crown and queen, he obviously drops the ball when it comes to keeping tabs on what Fortinbras is up to, since he comes marching in at the end of the play (or at least in some productions of the play), having invaded Denmark, basically. So in the end, he's not even that good at being king, really.
HAMLET
Hamlet the King was a man of action. He's firmly established as such in the first act, where he's described as a valiant warrior. Hamlet the Prince is eventually revealed to be an excellent fencer, but he is otherwise not really a man of action; rather, he's a thinking man – a scholar, a philosopher.
When his father's ghost charges him with avenging his murder by killing Claudius, thoughtful Prince Hamlet is being asked to assume his father's action role, which is not something that sits easily with him. In keeping with his philosophical nature, it takes a while for him to figure out who he is – and whether he can be a guy who acts to kill Uncle Claudius.
So, is Hamlet a good guy or a bad guy?
To determine who's there – a good or bad guy – you need to look at the totality of Hamlet's reality, and depending on where you stand when you see or read this play, your conclusion might differ from mine – or from yours on a different day, even. Because Hamlet is a fully-fleshed out, complex character, not a cardboard cut-out. Not only that, he's an especially compelling character - one who, like Falstaff, Shakespeare had to kill off because the character was taking over, essentially. Or so says Harold Bloom in Hamlet Poem Unlimited, where he opines "It is Hamlet's Triumph over Shakespeare...that the prince
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Picking up on the backstory extravaganza that occurs in Act I of this five-act play, we skip to the inside of Polonius's house, where we first meet Ophelia. In some stage and movie productions of the play, she is among the guests in the big party scene of Act I, scene 2, but she has no lines until Scene 3, so she doesn't actually "need" to appear until now. And depending on the particular time period used to set the play and on the "take" of the actors and director, there can be valid reasons for keeping the fair Ophelia at home, depending on how young the character is supposed to be, and on whether she is supposed to be a virginal maiden or not. (Somewhat similar to considerations in Regency and Victorian times as to whether a young woman was "out" in society or not.) But I digress.
So, here we are in Polonius's house, where we first meet Ophelia, who is having a conversation with her elder brother, Laertes. Laertes is about to board a ship to France, and has decided to provide rather overbearing advice to his sister, through which we learn a little something about Ophelia and the nature of her relationship with Prince Hamlet.
Backstory and foreshadowing, courtesy of Laertes
Right off the bat, Laertes tells Ophelia not to rely on Hamlet's love and affection. He claims it's a youthful infatuation, no more and will fade. In doing so, he specifically invokes the image of the Violet. He seems to imply that Hamlet's love will wilt, the way that violets do.
However, Shakespeare's audiences would've been better versed in the meaning of flowers than are modern readers, and they might have seen the flaw in Laertes's logic. Let me tell you a bit about the violet: violets in general mean humility or faithfulness, blue violets have the meaning of "watchfulness", and sweet violets have the additional meaning of "modesty". Shakespeare's audience would also have been familiar with the story about Cupid and Venus, in which Venus asked Cupid who was more beautiful - herself or a group of young maidens. Cupide favored the maidens, so Venus beat them until they turned purple-blue, and they were turned into violets. Not exactly a happy history with that flower.
It seems likely, therefore, that Shakespeare's audiences would understand that if it was violets that best symbolized Hamlet's affection, then he was faithful to her. They might also have suspected that the use of violets here presaged some violence for poor Ophelia, given that the violets were negatively dignified (to borrow a term from the Tarot) by virtue of being spoken of slightingly and as if they were a weak flower rather than a vital harbinger of spring time, since they are perennials that come back, and were known to have healing properties - real ones, too, as it turns out that violets contain salicylic acid. And Laertes's mention of violets in his conversation with his sister foreshadows her connection with flowers later on - Ophelia herself mentions that the violets all withered with her father's death, which could mean that Polonius was the watchful one, but is now gone, or that her humility and modesty all disappeared after his death. But again, I digress.
Laertes continues with advice to Ophelia, beginning by telling her that Hamlet might not be free to marry where he chooses, and then steering into words that border on the obscene, if you have an Eliz
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Unlike, say, Romeo and Juliet, which opens with a poetic prologue explaining the set-up, Hamlet begins in media res - "into the middle of affairs". And truly, once you factor in the backstory that Shakespeare's going to work into the play, that's almost precisely where this play starts: pretty much smack in the middle of a story arc that starts with Claudius's decision to kill his brother, good King Hamlet, and ends with pretty much everyone by Horatio dead.
There's no prologue to tell us the set up, and no mystical mumbo-jumbo afoot as there was in Macbeth, where the witches arrive to announce the theme of the play ("fair is foul and foul is fair"). No, this is more like King Lear, where actors arrive on stage and the audience has to sort out what's going on for themselves - with significant backstory help from the actors, of course.
ACT I, SCENE 1 - at least 50% backstory
We do not meet our protagonist, Hamlet, in Act I, scene 1. Rather, we get a mix of backstory and foreshadowing, which can be summed up as follows:
First bit of backstory in Act I, scene 1:
Hi, we're Francisco and Bernardo, members of the night watch, and we're on the lookout for Horatio and Marcellus, two upstanding individuals who are completely and totally trustworthy. (Exit Francisco)
Hi, we're Horatio and Marcellus. Horatio here doesn't believe Marcellus and Bernardo, who have seen a ghost walking about the platform. He calls "bullshit" on their claims.
Bernardo establishes what the ghost's habit has been, et voilà, the ghost turns up right on schedule, looking just like the dead king. At which point our first bit of backstory ends, and Horatio tries to chat up the ghost, who's having none of it.
Second bit of backstory in Act I, scene 1:
The cue for this bit of backstory comes from Marcellus: "See? Didn't that ghost look like the king?"
At which point, Horatio waxes eloquent about the king - emphasizing first what a warrior/man of action dead King Hamlet was - combatting Norway, slaying Poles. His ghost prowls about in a martial way.
Time out for foreshadowing
Shakespeare interrupts his backstory for a bit of foreshadowing with Horatio's line, "This bodes some strange eruption to our state." This presages Marcellus's later opinion (in Act I, scene 4) that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark." It is also a pun and a triple entendre. The phrase "strange eruption to our state" means all of the following:
1. something disturbing is about to unfold 2. like a volcano, something is about to blow 3. like acne or the pox (or venereal disease), the body of state is infected/festering
Third bit of backstory in Act I, scene 1:
Marcellus again asks the question that cues more backstory: "What's up with all the making of cannons and arms and the building of ships?"
Horatio knows the answer, which involves a history lesson, given in an "as you know, Bob" manner:
King Hamlet had a run-in with Fortinbras (Sr.) of Norway, who challenged King Hamlet. King Hamlet killed Fortinbras, thereby winning a bunch of land. Young Fortinbras is a hot-blooded upstart who wants those lands back and has been raising an army to try to take them, so Denmark is preparing to stave him off.
Bernardo says, in effect, "Aha - no wonder the ghost of the dead king is here, he was always such a great soldier." This backstory foreshadows later events, in which Fortinbras marches on Denmark after all.
A final bit of foreshadowing, product placement, and present action
H
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I’m currently reading Alan Gratz’s book, Something’s Rotten. It’s a blatant take-off on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Every character is named after a Hamlet character, the main character named Hamilton. The plot echoes Hamlet: Hamilton’s father was murdered and he suspects his uncle, who has married his mother. And the book works! Why? It’s the power of myth.
Think of the movie, “O, Brother, Where Art Thou?”, which is a retelling of the Odyssey, the famous epic poem by the Greek Homer.
Or, look at the series, The Grimm Sisters. Sabrina and Daphne are the last living descendants of the Grimm Brothers, the famous collectors of folk and fairy tales in the 18th century. The sisters discover that the Grimms tales are based on true crimes. The sisters take on the “grim” responsibility of being detectives. The Author Michael Buckley says, “It’s what happens AFTER the happily ever after.”
3 Reasons to Borrow Mythic Power
Why would these two authors draw on tales that are woven into the warp and woof of our culture?
High Interest. Because readers already know the basic tale, the fun is in how this author gives it a twist. Gratz sets Hamlet in Tennessee, where the Prince family owns a paper mill.
Easily Plotted. Maybe. Again, the readers already know the basic plot. Or do they? The fun and challenge of basing a novel on a familiar myth is in adding twists and contemporary updates. In some ways, it’s simple, the plot is a given. But if all you do it repeat the old plot, it’s not going to gain wide acceptance.
Emotional Power: Think about why these stories have lasted for hundreds of years. It’s the emotional power inherent in the story of a brother poisoning a brother and seizing his family and fortune. The Grimms fairy tales are boiled down to their essence by years of oral transmission until what is left shines brightly in our imagination. These authors are borrowing the power of myth, but then bending it to their own wills as they transform the story into a contemporary novel. You can do it, too.
For more reading:
Any of Donna Jo Napoli’s books: she takes a familiar fairy tale and sets it in a specific country and specific time period. She spends lots of time doing the research on the historical setting.
Thanks very much! I had an idea today while I was stuck in traffic, and decided to flip the composition so that you discover things more slowly. Cheers again. :)
Que bien les habrá ido a estos muchachos de la Compañía teatral Del Dragón que decidieron abrir nuevamente las puertas del teatro con la reconocida obra "Hamlet". Se presentarán los días jueves 04, viernes 05 y sabado 06 de junio, a las 7:30 p.m. Cine Teatro Fenix de Arequipa.
S/. 10.00 GENERAL S/. 8.00 ESTUDIANTES.
¿No conoces al tal Hamlet?
HAMLET es una de la obras más reconocidas del escritor inglés William Shakespeare (1564/1616). En sí, la historia gira al alrededor del tema de la venganza que el joven príncipe de Dinamarca (Hamlet) es aconsejado hacer, incluso a pedido del difunto Rey que se aparece al protagonista acusando a su hermano Claudio como su asesino. En el camino Hamlet descubre verdades crueles respecto a su amada y adultera madre, quien después de conocer toda la verdad cae en un sin fin de sentimientos contrarios, llevando al protagonista casi a la locura por la eterna lucha entre el bien y el mal.
"Hamlet" tal vez no sea tan conocido como la famosa obra "Romeo y Julieta" (1595) pero sí es una obra intensa, llena de macabros hallazgos, donde se muestra complejamente la debilidad y el temor humano. En fín, si no te gusta leer, no te pierdas esta clase de obras universales llevada al teatro. Diré que el libro es algo difícil de leer, a pesar que "Hamlet" es considerada como la obra mejor estructurada de Shakespeare, algo extenso pero la historia del caos reinante y la manera de evocar las tragedias humanas es demás interesante.
Gracias a AQPcultural y al fotógrafo Julio Reaño Mesones
Zulma Roque ^__^
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William Shakespeare was born 450 years ago this month, in April 1564, and to celebrate Oxford Scholarly Editions Online is testing your knowledge on Shakespeare quotes. Do you know your sonnets from your speeches? Find out…
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Lisa: As a teen reader (and a student in AP English) I never had any use for Hamlet. In my mind, he was the same sort of melancholy introvert as Holden Caulfield, one of those moody emo boys with floppy hair and a tattered copy of some book I'd never heard of shoved in his back pocket . . . the sort of guy I would try to speak with during lunches in the tri but could never get to talk to me.
Kelly: I didn't read Hamlet in high school - we did Macbeth and Othello and Julius Caesar, but not Hamlet. So my first exposure to him was my own leisure reading of the play when I was in my 20s, prior to the Mel Gibson release. I was drawn to Hamlet the same way I was kind of drawn to Heathcliff - that tragic, brooding guy who couldn't have what he wanted and was therefore a bit of a bastard. That said, I am with you in wishing that Ophelia would have developed a spine, or at least shown a bit of spunk - and really, Helena Bonham Carter's version of Ophelia managed to show a bit of sass: even though she was constrained to follow Polonius's command, she obviously did it grudgingly. And she sure as heck didn't go quietly into that good night. 
Hamlet the King was a man of action. He's firmly established as such in the first act, where he's described as a valiant warrior. Hamlet the Prince is eventually revealed to be an excellent fencer, but he is otherwise not really a man of action; rather, he's a thinking man – a scholar, a philosopher. 
However, Shakespeare's audiences would've been better versed in the meaning of flowers than are modern readers, and they might have seen the flaw in Laertes's logic. Let me tell you a bit about the violet: violets in general mean humility or faithfulness, blue violets have the meaning of "watchfulness", and sweet violets have the additional meaning of "modesty". Shakespeare's audience would also have been familiar with the story about Cupid and Venus, in which Venus asked Cupid who was more beautiful - herself or a group of young maidens. Cupide favored the maidens, so Venus beat them until they turned purple-blue, and they were turned into violets. Not exactly a happy history with that flower. 
So glad you want to go to a performance - I agree, Shakespeare needs to be SEEN! And I am currently reading Hidden and find the Hamlet leitmotif skilfully and convincingly done - and I'm spellbound. So, you Dad's murderer moves in with your Mum. What do you do? Shakespeare was written for ordinary people, after all. Congrats on handling the Othello - sounds like a very challenging assignment very well done!
Thanks Leslie - but I think you mean Ilegal - that's the one with the Hamlet theme. Glad you felt it was handled well, tricky one to take on.