Hamlet’s Soliloquies: Shakespeare’s Unconventional Use of Soliloquies
by Yiming Huang
As one of the most renowned playwrights, Shakespeare was a pioneer of theater in a lot of aspects. One of the most important theatrical elements that he made popular was soliloquy. He led a trend of featuring soliloquies in the play. Hirsh in his Shakespeare and the History of Soliloquy says that “until the middle of the seventeenth century, soliloquies in European drama represented speeches by characters and did not represent the thoughts of characters” (1). Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy became a paradigmatic soliloquy because scholars identify it as a demonstration of Hamlet’s own thoughts instead of a representation of the character, and thus made soliloquies a feature of Shakespearean tragedies including Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. The soliloquies in Hamlet are also significant because Shakespeare uses the conventions of soliloquies in a more dramatic way; he followed the rules yet also broke the rules.
Soliloquy is a serious, and usually long speech in a play. It is a “one-man talk” in which there are no other characters on the. Soliloquy takes place under the context that none of the other characters know the content of the soliloquy and the character is talking to himself or herself. While they are talking, characters are also built under the assumption that any other characters can break in at any time.
The characteristics of soliloquy lays out some conventions of using soliloquy. One of the suggestions is that Hamlet’s soliloquies tells his unspoken thoughts. In reality, people talk to themselves, outspoken or unspoken, about all the innermost thoughts that they cannot share with other people around them. It could be either a moment of self-reflection that evokes the epiphany of our lives, or an outlet of the complex emotions that we are not able to share—love, hate, disappointment, satisfaction, desire, or a mixture of all of the above. While the dialogue serves as an outward conversation, soliloquy is an inward communication. It is the communication between the side of a person that is showing to the public and the side of the same person in his or her own heart. In a play, soliloquy works exactly in the same way. Even though such inward conversation is presented in a theatrical space opened to the audience, the character still acts as if he or she is talking to themselves. Soliloquy gives characters an opportunity to have an inward conversation with themselves in a not-so-private theater.
However, this cannot be the whole picture. Soliloquy does not merely tell the character’s unspoken words. It also blurs the boundary between the actor and the audience and ignites a special chemistry between these two. While the actor is talking to himself, the playwright has intentionally built the soliloquy into the play to let the audience to hear it. So the nature of soliloquy is paradoxical: a psychological, private, and innermost talk that is designated to be heard by the audience who are on the other side of the theatrical space. In such sense, soliloquy serves as a way of communicated hints from the character to the audience.
Shakespeare makes full use of this characteristics to employ the soliloquy as a thread of the web of the plot. After Rosencrantz and Guildenstern left, Hamlet opened his third soliloquy at the end of Act II by saying “Now I am alone” (2.2.576). He suggests that he is saying the following speech for the purpose of letting other characters know. He was talking to himself, letting out his emotions, and most importantly, sharing his thinking process with the audience. He blames himself for not taking action for the revenge of his father’s death and speaks all the wicked words against Gertrude because she did not show enough grief for his father. At the end of the soliloquy, by saying that “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” (2.2.233-234), Hamlet hinted the audience that the revenge is going to happen through a play and if Claudius has conscience he will feel guilty about what he has done. With such metaphor in mind, the audience will easily understand the metaphors and the context of the second scene in Act III when the play actually was put on in front of Claudius and Gertrude.
As an essential part of the play, Shakespeare’s soliloquies become very special and different from monologues in Greek tragedies. Monologues, similar to soliloquies, are also long speeches performed by one single actor. However, monologues involve an addressee, who can be another character, or the audience. In Euripides’ Medea, Medea has made a very feminist speech in the beginning of the play. Her opening remark was “Women of Corinth” (7), identifying the addressee that she was talking to. It was an outspoken declaration representing the powerless female community. In contrast, Hamlet’s most famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy in the Act 3 Scene I is very spontaneous. It is not within the context of a conversation, not is it a direct result or reaction of the previous scene. He just comes onto the stage, without anyone else surrounding him, and starts talking to himself sharing his innermost thoughts.
Traditionally, people use soliloquy for the above three reasons stated: to share the unspoken words of the character, to show the innermost feeling of the character with the audience, or to needle soliloquy into the web of the plot. Shakespeare’s uses of soliloquies in Hamlet go beyond what people traditionally think about soliloquies. He uses soliloquies more than just a confession of the character or the part of the plot; he uses soliloquies as a dramatic element in Hamlet to build up the magnitude of the play.
In Poetics, Aristotle concludes his definition of magnitude as something “in which a series of events occurring sequentially in accordance with probability or necessity gives rise to a change from good fortune to bad fortune, or from bad fortune to good fortune” (14). Magnitude adds an artistic beauty to the plot by ensuring the carryout of the plot as well as the right amount of astonishment and reversals.
The sixth soliloquy in act three is a perfect example of how Shakespeare use soliloquy of add up the dramatic elements. First of all, the sixth soliloquy follows all the conventions that have been discussed above. It is definitely Hamlet’s unspoken thoughts, talking about his decision-making process. It is also an essential part of the plot. All the actions that Hamlet has taken in this soliloquy are crucial to the further plotting in the future. In act three, Hamlet seems to be determined to put his revenge into action. He says at the end,
Now might I do it <pat>, now he is praying,
And now I’ll do’t. (3.3.77-78)
At the moment, Hamlet finds a perfect chance to put his revenge into action and he draws his sword out while he acknowledges that. He wants to revenge Claudius with the same villainy as he did to his father.
If thing had happened as Hamlet’s first thought, the last half of the play would have been rewritten. Shakespeare inserted a crucial reversal here: a reversal in Hamlet’s thinking process. He asked himself why he would let Claudius die at such a cartharthis moment of praying, while he had killed his father “grossly, full of bread, with all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May” (3.3.85-86). He sheathes the sword and has decided to murder Claudius in a more horrible and painful way,
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damned and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days. (3.3.98-101)
All the dark and twisted that have been employed here, “damned and black”, “sickly days”, and “hell”, collectively magnifies the extent of the hatred that Hamlet has.
Soliloquy is the best option to be employed here because it allows Hamlet to unwind his murder scheme which should definitely be kept secret from all the other characters in the play. Without this soliloquy, the audience would not even know such mental reversal had been taken placed. The audience might have already imagined that such a tragedy would end up with most of the characters being dead. However, the process of plotting, of how the situation evolves, of how the murder scheme would be carried out, are where the thrill of the play really lies. Shakespeare is not just satisfied with presenting a story, but also presenting in a dramatic way and adding thrills to the theater experience. Hamlet who hates Claudius to such an extent that he actually will sacrifice the content of killing him now for murdering him later in a more cruel way.
The magnitude of the hatred is what strikes the audience’s nerves. It also makes the rise of next phase of emotions and events more probable and plausible. By inserting soliloquy here, Shakespeare not only did all of the conventional use of soliloquy—speaking the unspoken words, binding into a part of the plot, but also injects the exact right amount of astonishments, reversal, thrill, and hatred. The magnitude that soliloquies have helped achieve captivates generation after generation to enjoy reading and watching Shakespearean plays. Shakespeare used the conventions of soliloquies, but also revolutionized the functions of soliloquies.
Works Cited
Aristotle. Poetics. New York: Penguin, 1996. Print.
Euripides. Medea and Other Plays. New York: Oxford, 2008. Print.
Hirsh, James. "Shakespeare And The History Of Soliloquies." Modern Language Quarterly 58.1 (1997): 1. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012. Print.
by Yiming Huang
As one of the most renowned playwrights, Shakespeare was a pioneer of theater in a lot of aspects. One of the most important theatrical elements that he made popular was soliloquy. He led a trend of featuring soliloquies in the play. Hirsh in his Shakespeare and the History of Soliloquy says that “until the middle of the seventeenth century, soliloquies in European drama represented speeches by characters and did not represent the thoughts of characters” (1). Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy became a paradigmatic soliloquy because scholars identify it as a demonstration of Hamlet’s own thoughts instead of a representation of the character, and thus made soliloquies a feature of Shakespearean tragedies including Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. The soliloquies in Hamlet are also significant because Shakespeare uses the conventions of soliloquies in a more dramatic way; he followed the rules yet also broke the rules.
Soliloquy is a serious, and usually long speech in a play. It is a “one-man talk” in which there are no other characters on the. Soliloquy takes place under the context that none of the other characters know the content of the soliloquy and the character is talking to himself or herself. While they are talking, characters are also built under the assumption that any other characters can break in at any time.
The characteristics of soliloquy lays out some conventions of using soliloquy. One of the suggestions is that Hamlet’s soliloquies tells his unspoken thoughts. In reality, people talk to themselves, outspoken or unspoken, about all the innermost thoughts that they cannot share with other people around them. It could be either a moment of self-reflection that evokes the epiphany of our lives, or an outlet of the complex emotions that we are not able to share—love, hate, disappointment, satisfaction, desire, or a mixture of all of the above. While the dialogue serves as an outward conversation, soliloquy is an inward communication. It is the communication between the side of a person that is showing to the public and the side of the same person in his or her own heart. In a play, soliloquy works exactly in the same way. Even though such inward conversation is presented in a theatrical space opened to the audience, the character still acts as if he or she is talking to themselves. Soliloquy gives characters an opportunity to have an inward conversation with themselves in a not-so-private theater.
However, this cannot be the whole picture. Soliloquy does not merely tell the character’s unspoken words. It also blurs the boundary between the actor and the audience and ignites a special chemistry between these two. While the actor is talking to himself, the playwright has intentionally built the soliloquy into the play to let the audience to hear it. So the nature of soliloquy is paradoxical: a psychological, private, and innermost talk that is designated to be heard by the audience who are on the other side of the theatrical space. In such sense, soliloquy serves as a way of communicated hints from the character to the audience.
Shakespeare makes full use of this characteristics to employ the soliloquy as a thread of the web of the plot. After Rosencrantz and Guildenstern left, Hamlet opened his third soliloquy at the end of Act II by saying “Now I am alone” (2.2.576). He suggests that he is saying the following speech for the purpose of letting other characters know. He was talking to himself, letting out his emotions, and most importantly, sharing his thinking process with the audience. He blames himself for not taking action for the revenge of his father’s death and speaks all the wicked words against Gertrude because she did not show enough grief for his father. At the end of the soliloquy, by saying that “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” (2.2.233-234), Hamlet hinted the audience that the revenge is going to happen through a play and if Claudius has conscience he will feel guilty about what he has done. With such metaphor in mind, the audience will easily understand the metaphors and the context of the second scene in Act III when the play actually was put on in front of Claudius and Gertrude.
As an essential part of the play, Shakespeare’s soliloquies become very special and different from monologues in Greek tragedies. Monologues, similar to soliloquies, are also long speeches performed by one single actor. However, monologues involve an addressee, who can be another character, or the audience. In Euripides’ Medea, Medea has made a very feminist speech in the beginning of the play. Her opening remark was “Women of Corinth” (7), identifying the addressee that she was talking to. It was an outspoken declaration representing the powerless female community. In contrast, Hamlet’s most famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy in the Act 3 Scene I is very spontaneous. It is not within the context of a conversation, not is it a direct result or reaction of the previous scene. He just comes onto the stage, without anyone else surrounding him, and starts talking to himself sharing his innermost thoughts.
Traditionally, people use soliloquy for the above three reasons stated: to share the unspoken words of the character, to show the innermost feeling of the character with the audience, or to needle soliloquy into the web of the plot. Shakespeare’s uses of soliloquies in Hamlet go beyond what people traditionally think about soliloquies. He uses soliloquies more than just a confession of the character or the part of the plot; he uses soliloquies as a dramatic element in Hamlet to build up the magnitude of the play.
In Poetics, Aristotle concludes his definition of magnitude as something “in which a series of events occurring sequentially in accordance with probability or necessity gives rise to a change from good fortune to bad fortune, or from bad fortune to good fortune” (14). Magnitude adds an artistic beauty to the plot by ensuring the carryout of the plot as well as the right amount of astonishment and reversals.
The sixth soliloquy in act three is a perfect example of how Shakespeare use soliloquy of add up the dramatic elements. First of all, the sixth soliloquy follows all the conventions that have been discussed above. It is definitely Hamlet’s unspoken thoughts, talking about his decision-making process. It is also an essential part of the plot. All the actions that Hamlet has taken in this soliloquy are crucial to the further plotting in the future. In act three, Hamlet seems to be determined to put his revenge into action. He says at the end,
Now might I do it <pat>, now he is praying,
And now I’ll do’t. (3.3.77-78)
At the moment, Hamlet finds a perfect chance to put his revenge into action and he draws his sword out while he acknowledges that. He wants to revenge Claudius with the same villainy as he did to his father.
If thing had happened as Hamlet’s first thought, the last half of the play would have been rewritten. Shakespeare inserted a crucial reversal here: a reversal in Hamlet’s thinking process. He asked himself why he would let Claudius die at such a cartharthis moment of praying, while he had killed his father “grossly, full of bread, with all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May” (3.3.85-86). He sheathes the sword and has decided to murder Claudius in a more horrible and painful way,
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damned and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days. (3.3.98-101)
All the dark and twisted that have been employed here, “damned and black”, “sickly days”, and “hell”, collectively magnifies the extent of the hatred that Hamlet has.
Soliloquy is the best option to be employed here because it allows Hamlet to unwind his murder scheme which should definitely be kept secret from all the other characters in the play. Without this soliloquy, the audience would not even know such mental reversal had been taken placed. The audience might have already imagined that such a tragedy would end up with most of the characters being dead. However, the process of plotting, of how the situation evolves, of how the murder scheme would be carried out, are where the thrill of the play really lies. Shakespeare is not just satisfied with presenting a story, but also presenting in a dramatic way and adding thrills to the theater experience. Hamlet who hates Claudius to such an extent that he actually will sacrifice the content of killing him now for murdering him later in a more cruel way.
The magnitude of the hatred is what strikes the audience’s nerves. It also makes the rise of next phase of emotions and events more probable and plausible. By inserting soliloquy here, Shakespeare not only did all of the conventional use of soliloquy—speaking the unspoken words, binding into a part of the plot, but also injects the exact right amount of astonishments, reversal, thrill, and hatred. The magnitude that soliloquies have helped achieve captivates generation after generation to enjoy reading and watching Shakespearean plays. Shakespeare used the conventions of soliloquies, but also revolutionized the functions of soliloquies.
Works Cited
Aristotle. Poetics. New York: Penguin, 1996. Print.
Euripides. Medea and Other Plays. New York: Oxford, 2008. Print.
Hirsh, James. "Shakespeare And The History Of Soliloquies." Modern Language Quarterly 58.1 (1997): 1. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012. Print.
The Crazy Man from the Crazy Family that’s Beating Everyone:
Time, Control, and Success in Hamlet
by Kara Shields
What separates a winner from a loser? Simply put, in any competition, the amount of points scored separates the champions from the defeated. However, the elements that force the winners to win and the losers to lose are not necessarily just two different numbers on a scoreboard. In fact, what truly distinguishes the difference between first and second place is each team’s ability to play the game. While points scored is crucial to this distinction, time and control are the two elements of a game that dictate who scores and when. Whichever team is able to manipulate the time given to achieve the goals they need to win will be the victorious team. However, athletic competitions are not the only venues where time and control separate the winners from the losers. This same ideology is used in the political, business, romantic, and personal spheres of everyday life. Interestingly enough, Shakespeare’s Hamlet captures the essence of the importance of capitalizing on the time given to achieve a certain goal that will reflect success. Pitting Claudius against Hamlet while using Ophelia as the pawn, Shakespeare’s tragic story includes two teams trying their best to manipulate their control of Ophelia in a certain amount of time. Ultimately, Claudius and Hamlet prove that the ability to score does not necessarily separate the better from the worse team, but instead that the deciding factor in identifying the winner between the two is which used their time better to achieve the goal they had set at the competition’s beginning.
There are forty-eight minutes in a basketball game, sixty minutes in a football game, and ninety minutes in a soccer game, each of which are spent proving which team is better. Because there is a time cap on any competitive event, skill alone does not necessarily promise a win. In fact, in comparison to a team’s ability to use the time allotted, skill alone is irrelevant. Hamlet’s rivalry between Claudius and Hamlet emphasizes the difference between skill alone and skill in time as Hamlet, though outnumbered by Claudius and his allies, proves that the ability to use time to his advantage is a crucial element when distinguishing the winner from the loser. Ultimately, Hamlet finds success in his challenge due to his ability to keep his goal in sight, while simultaneously being mindful of the time he had to achieve it.
With Claudius seeking to uncover the reason behind Hamlet’s madness and Hamlet aiming to bring about the death of Claudius, both characters had very different goals in mind before engaging in the personal competition between each other. However, with two characters seeking to produce the downfall of the other despite their difference in end means, Claudius and Hamlet were engaging in competition nonetheless. Although the amount of allies and strategy indicated that numbers and skill were on Claudius’s side, Hamlet found more success than Claudius because he was able to keep his end goal in mind, while Claudius was distracted by the whispering voices and vindictive minds of Polonius, Gertrude, and Laertes. In losing sight of his goal and falling victim to the selfish interests of his “teammates,” Claudius lost his ability to achieve the goal at all. The motivating force behind Claudius’s strategy eventually evolved from interest into revenge, while Hamlet’s goal consistently remained to seek justice.
Hamlet, whose beginning goal was to kill Claudius, was able to meet his own demands by keeping the same strategy and capitalizing on the time he had to perform. In fact, in Scene Five of Act One, Hamlet puts his plan into motion, vowing that he must bring the death of his father’s murderer as he claims, “I'll wipe away all trivial fond records / All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past / That youth and observation copied there / And thy commandment all alone shall live / Within the book and volume of my brain / Unmixed with baser matter.” As Hamlet puts his youth and student life behind him, he vows to avenge his father’s killer, Claudius, at an early scene in the tragic story.
However, recognizing that his time was dwindling many scenes later, Hamlet realizes the success of his madman performance thus far and understands that the time has come to kill Claudius. Long after claiming his plan of revenge during Act One, Hamlet proves that he has kept his goal consistent as Scene Five of Act Four depicts Hamlet making the same claim, despite the amount of time that has passed. In finalizing his plain to kill Claudius, Hamlet says “My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.” Shortly after this realization, the death of Claudius, before the downfall of Hamlet, highlights Hamlet as the winner between the two as he used the time he was given to execute a certain strategy that would result in the death of Claudius.
Claudius, on the other hand, was not so perceptive in his use of time. Because Claudius’s strategy suffered at the hands of the scheming minds of Polonius, Gertrude, and Laertes, he was not able to achieve his goal in the same timeliness that Hamlet had practiced. Due to the distractions of his allies, Claudius’s end goal did not hold the same consistency as Hamlet’s. In fact, at the discretion of his “teammates,” Claudius’s goal faced an incredible amount of variation, as he eventually sets out to kill Hamlet instead of understand the source of his madness. In fact, Scene Two of Act Two shows Gertrude and Claudius summoning Hamlet’s school friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find out why Hamlet has gone mad. As Claudius speaks to the two men, he claims
“Something, have you heard / of Hamlet’s transformation, so call it / sith nor th’ exterior nor the inward man / resembles that it was. What is should be, / more than his father’s death, that thus hath put him / so much from th’ understanding of himself / I cannot dream of. / I entreat you both / that being of so young days brought up with him / and sith so neighbored to his youth and havior, / that you vouchesafe your rest here in our court / some little time, so by your companies / to draw him onto pleasures, and to gather / so much as from occasion you may glean / [whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus] / that, opened, lies within our remedy.” Early in the play, Claudius instills a plan that is meant to uncover the reason of Hamlet’s madness. Furthermore, he does not waste time putting it into action, as he quickly summons Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to begin exposing Hamlet’s secret.
However, by Act Seven of Scene Four, the conversation surrounding Hamlet’s death between Laertes and Claudius has a much different attitude, as Claudius claims that “Revenge should have no bounds,” in his attempt to encourage Lauertes to kill Hamlet. With the extreme evolution from a harmless goal to an incredibly destructive one, the time Claudius had left to achieve his goal was not in conjunction with the resources he needed to attain it. However, it is not to say that Claudius did not have the skill or resources to achieve his new goal at all. After all, Hamlet did end up dying at the hands of Claudius. What separates Hamlet’s success from Claudius’s failure was Hamlet’s ability to achieve his goal first. Ultimately, because Claudius was not able to use time and skill in union in comparison to Hamlet’s simultaneous understanding of the limited time and resources he had, Hamlet was victorious in the battle between he and his uncle. Hamlet’s ability to capitalize on the time he had to achieve his goal is the ultimate distinction between Hamlet as the winner and Claudius as the loser.
However, as noted earlier, the use of time is not the only important element in winning a game. In fact, while time alone dictates the speed of a competition, control during the allotted time indicates which team will gain the win. In the forty-eight minutes of a basketball game, one team may control the ball for forty of those minutes. However, if the other team capitalizes on the eight minutes they are given the control of the ball, there is no saying they cannot win, that is, if they use their time correctly. This same idea goes for the strategy behind winning the competition between Hamlet and Claudius. In reference to time, Hamlet’s control of the speed allowed him to defeat Claudius in attaining his goal. However, how he used the time he was given was even more crucial in his win than the time itself.
For most of their battle, Claudius was in control, as the majority of his strategy was the execution of offensive moves against Hamlet. Despite the majority of Hamlet’s time spent on the defense, he was able to use the few opportunities he was given to outplay Claudius at his own game. Using Ophelia as the pawn, or the “ball” in reference to athletic terminology, Claudius controlled where she went and what she would do. For example, at the competition’s beginning, Polonius seeks to know whether or not Hamlet’s love is sincere. Ultimately, this play, places Hamlet on defense by default, as he decides to act irrationally in hopes of fooling the opposing team. In recognizing their ability to use Ophelia to their advantage, Polonius and Claudius further their manipulation of the young girl by spying on a confrontation between she and Hamlet. In continuing with the tactic of spying, Polonius is sent to spy on yet another confrontation, though this time between Hamlet and Gertrude. Eventually, as the intensity of their battle continues, Claudius and his allies decide to put one last play in action against their enemy: kill Hamlet and end the game for good.
In accordance with Claudius’s constant control of Ophelia, Hamlet’s strategy remained defensive, as he did not see the same amount of control as the opposing team. However, the time Hamlet had control is irrelevant in respect to how he used this control the few times he had it. While the list of Claudius’s plays against Hamlet is quite dense, Hamlet’s playbook seems to contain only two key offensive plays that were crucial in his win. In order to decide whether or not justice was truly his for the taking, Hamlet decides that forcing Claudius to watch a reenactment of his crime against his brother will reveal whether or not Claudius truly killed him. After finding success in his strategy and closure on his father’s death, Hamlet commits his time to seeking justice by ending the reign of Claudius. With this simple strategy consisting of two key parts, Hamlet managed his time with much more grace than that of his enemy.
However, the defining moment of Hamlet’s control falls upon the death of Ophelia. As mentioned earlier, Ophelia was the pawn Claudius had been using to execute his moves against Hamlet. Ultimately, Claudius “loses the ball,” and accordingly, loses control once Ophelia’s presence disappears. Since Claudius’s plans revolved around the manipulation of Ophelia, all of his strategy lost relevance once she died. This scene proves to be a turning point in the game, as not long too long after Ophelia’s death does Hamlet become victorious. Therefore, while Claudius had control of the competition, control of the people, and control of the strategy for most of their battle, Hamlet emerges triumphantly because of his ability to use strategic, powerful control during the short periods he saw fit.
There is no denying that the elements of competition are a part of life. We compete with our siblings, friends, classmates, and coworkers on a day-to-day basis using the basic underlying values that can be seen watching any athletic event. While competition has the ability to bring out the best in people, it is the unfortunate truth that is tends to bring out the worst in others. Competition has the ability to grab the hearts of the crowd and inspire them to reach for more, while it can also put fear into the eyes of onlookers. What separates the stimulating elements of competition from the destructive is each team’s ability to keep their eye on the prize. After all, once a competitor loses sight of his goal, he forfeits his ability to achieve the goal at all. Unfortunately, Claudius fell victim to his desire to seek revenge, rather than to achieve the goal he set for himself. For this reason, his use of time and control worked against him. On the other hand, Hamlet’s focus and strategic use of the few resources he was given allowed him to cross the finish line first. Ultimately, Shakespeare’s tragic story leaves one valuable lesson behind, never underestimate the power of someone’s passion, as Hamlet surely showed that in the game of his life his inner fire dominated Claudius’s strategic skill.
Time, Control, and Success in Hamlet
by Kara Shields
What separates a winner from a loser? Simply put, in any competition, the amount of points scored separates the champions from the defeated. However, the elements that force the winners to win and the losers to lose are not necessarily just two different numbers on a scoreboard. In fact, what truly distinguishes the difference between first and second place is each team’s ability to play the game. While points scored is crucial to this distinction, time and control are the two elements of a game that dictate who scores and when. Whichever team is able to manipulate the time given to achieve the goals they need to win will be the victorious team. However, athletic competitions are not the only venues where time and control separate the winners from the losers. This same ideology is used in the political, business, romantic, and personal spheres of everyday life. Interestingly enough, Shakespeare’s Hamlet captures the essence of the importance of capitalizing on the time given to achieve a certain goal that will reflect success. Pitting Claudius against Hamlet while using Ophelia as the pawn, Shakespeare’s tragic story includes two teams trying their best to manipulate their control of Ophelia in a certain amount of time. Ultimately, Claudius and Hamlet prove that the ability to score does not necessarily separate the better from the worse team, but instead that the deciding factor in identifying the winner between the two is which used their time better to achieve the goal they had set at the competition’s beginning.
There are forty-eight minutes in a basketball game, sixty minutes in a football game, and ninety minutes in a soccer game, each of which are spent proving which team is better. Because there is a time cap on any competitive event, skill alone does not necessarily promise a win. In fact, in comparison to a team’s ability to use the time allotted, skill alone is irrelevant. Hamlet’s rivalry between Claudius and Hamlet emphasizes the difference between skill alone and skill in time as Hamlet, though outnumbered by Claudius and his allies, proves that the ability to use time to his advantage is a crucial element when distinguishing the winner from the loser. Ultimately, Hamlet finds success in his challenge due to his ability to keep his goal in sight, while simultaneously being mindful of the time he had to achieve it.
With Claudius seeking to uncover the reason behind Hamlet’s madness and Hamlet aiming to bring about the death of Claudius, both characters had very different goals in mind before engaging in the personal competition between each other. However, with two characters seeking to produce the downfall of the other despite their difference in end means, Claudius and Hamlet were engaging in competition nonetheless. Although the amount of allies and strategy indicated that numbers and skill were on Claudius’s side, Hamlet found more success than Claudius because he was able to keep his end goal in mind, while Claudius was distracted by the whispering voices and vindictive minds of Polonius, Gertrude, and Laertes. In losing sight of his goal and falling victim to the selfish interests of his “teammates,” Claudius lost his ability to achieve the goal at all. The motivating force behind Claudius’s strategy eventually evolved from interest into revenge, while Hamlet’s goal consistently remained to seek justice.
Hamlet, whose beginning goal was to kill Claudius, was able to meet his own demands by keeping the same strategy and capitalizing on the time he had to perform. In fact, in Scene Five of Act One, Hamlet puts his plan into motion, vowing that he must bring the death of his father’s murderer as he claims, “I'll wipe away all trivial fond records / All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past / That youth and observation copied there / And thy commandment all alone shall live / Within the book and volume of my brain / Unmixed with baser matter.” As Hamlet puts his youth and student life behind him, he vows to avenge his father’s killer, Claudius, at an early scene in the tragic story.
However, recognizing that his time was dwindling many scenes later, Hamlet realizes the success of his madman performance thus far and understands that the time has come to kill Claudius. Long after claiming his plan of revenge during Act One, Hamlet proves that he has kept his goal consistent as Scene Five of Act Four depicts Hamlet making the same claim, despite the amount of time that has passed. In finalizing his plain to kill Claudius, Hamlet says “My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.” Shortly after this realization, the death of Claudius, before the downfall of Hamlet, highlights Hamlet as the winner between the two as he used the time he was given to execute a certain strategy that would result in the death of Claudius.
Claudius, on the other hand, was not so perceptive in his use of time. Because Claudius’s strategy suffered at the hands of the scheming minds of Polonius, Gertrude, and Laertes, he was not able to achieve his goal in the same timeliness that Hamlet had practiced. Due to the distractions of his allies, Claudius’s end goal did not hold the same consistency as Hamlet’s. In fact, at the discretion of his “teammates,” Claudius’s goal faced an incredible amount of variation, as he eventually sets out to kill Hamlet instead of understand the source of his madness. In fact, Scene Two of Act Two shows Gertrude and Claudius summoning Hamlet’s school friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find out why Hamlet has gone mad. As Claudius speaks to the two men, he claims
“Something, have you heard / of Hamlet’s transformation, so call it / sith nor th’ exterior nor the inward man / resembles that it was. What is should be, / more than his father’s death, that thus hath put him / so much from th’ understanding of himself / I cannot dream of. / I entreat you both / that being of so young days brought up with him / and sith so neighbored to his youth and havior, / that you vouchesafe your rest here in our court / some little time, so by your companies / to draw him onto pleasures, and to gather / so much as from occasion you may glean / [whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus] / that, opened, lies within our remedy.” Early in the play, Claudius instills a plan that is meant to uncover the reason of Hamlet’s madness. Furthermore, he does not waste time putting it into action, as he quickly summons Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to begin exposing Hamlet’s secret.
However, by Act Seven of Scene Four, the conversation surrounding Hamlet’s death between Laertes and Claudius has a much different attitude, as Claudius claims that “Revenge should have no bounds,” in his attempt to encourage Lauertes to kill Hamlet. With the extreme evolution from a harmless goal to an incredibly destructive one, the time Claudius had left to achieve his goal was not in conjunction with the resources he needed to attain it. However, it is not to say that Claudius did not have the skill or resources to achieve his new goal at all. After all, Hamlet did end up dying at the hands of Claudius. What separates Hamlet’s success from Claudius’s failure was Hamlet’s ability to achieve his goal first. Ultimately, because Claudius was not able to use time and skill in union in comparison to Hamlet’s simultaneous understanding of the limited time and resources he had, Hamlet was victorious in the battle between he and his uncle. Hamlet’s ability to capitalize on the time he had to achieve his goal is the ultimate distinction between Hamlet as the winner and Claudius as the loser.
However, as noted earlier, the use of time is not the only important element in winning a game. In fact, while time alone dictates the speed of a competition, control during the allotted time indicates which team will gain the win. In the forty-eight minutes of a basketball game, one team may control the ball for forty of those minutes. However, if the other team capitalizes on the eight minutes they are given the control of the ball, there is no saying they cannot win, that is, if they use their time correctly. This same idea goes for the strategy behind winning the competition between Hamlet and Claudius. In reference to time, Hamlet’s control of the speed allowed him to defeat Claudius in attaining his goal. However, how he used the time he was given was even more crucial in his win than the time itself.
For most of their battle, Claudius was in control, as the majority of his strategy was the execution of offensive moves against Hamlet. Despite the majority of Hamlet’s time spent on the defense, he was able to use the few opportunities he was given to outplay Claudius at his own game. Using Ophelia as the pawn, or the “ball” in reference to athletic terminology, Claudius controlled where she went and what she would do. For example, at the competition’s beginning, Polonius seeks to know whether or not Hamlet’s love is sincere. Ultimately, this play, places Hamlet on defense by default, as he decides to act irrationally in hopes of fooling the opposing team. In recognizing their ability to use Ophelia to their advantage, Polonius and Claudius further their manipulation of the young girl by spying on a confrontation between she and Hamlet. In continuing with the tactic of spying, Polonius is sent to spy on yet another confrontation, though this time between Hamlet and Gertrude. Eventually, as the intensity of their battle continues, Claudius and his allies decide to put one last play in action against their enemy: kill Hamlet and end the game for good.
In accordance with Claudius’s constant control of Ophelia, Hamlet’s strategy remained defensive, as he did not see the same amount of control as the opposing team. However, the time Hamlet had control is irrelevant in respect to how he used this control the few times he had it. While the list of Claudius’s plays against Hamlet is quite dense, Hamlet’s playbook seems to contain only two key offensive plays that were crucial in his win. In order to decide whether or not justice was truly his for the taking, Hamlet decides that forcing Claudius to watch a reenactment of his crime against his brother will reveal whether or not Claudius truly killed him. After finding success in his strategy and closure on his father’s death, Hamlet commits his time to seeking justice by ending the reign of Claudius. With this simple strategy consisting of two key parts, Hamlet managed his time with much more grace than that of his enemy.
However, the defining moment of Hamlet’s control falls upon the death of Ophelia. As mentioned earlier, Ophelia was the pawn Claudius had been using to execute his moves against Hamlet. Ultimately, Claudius “loses the ball,” and accordingly, loses control once Ophelia’s presence disappears. Since Claudius’s plans revolved around the manipulation of Ophelia, all of his strategy lost relevance once she died. This scene proves to be a turning point in the game, as not long too long after Ophelia’s death does Hamlet become victorious. Therefore, while Claudius had control of the competition, control of the people, and control of the strategy for most of their battle, Hamlet emerges triumphantly because of his ability to use strategic, powerful control during the short periods he saw fit.
There is no denying that the elements of competition are a part of life. We compete with our siblings, friends, classmates, and coworkers on a day-to-day basis using the basic underlying values that can be seen watching any athletic event. While competition has the ability to bring out the best in people, it is the unfortunate truth that is tends to bring out the worst in others. Competition has the ability to grab the hearts of the crowd and inspire them to reach for more, while it can also put fear into the eyes of onlookers. What separates the stimulating elements of competition from the destructive is each team’s ability to keep their eye on the prize. After all, once a competitor loses sight of his goal, he forfeits his ability to achieve the goal at all. Unfortunately, Claudius fell victim to his desire to seek revenge, rather than to achieve the goal he set for himself. For this reason, his use of time and control worked against him. On the other hand, Hamlet’s focus and strategic use of the few resources he was given allowed him to cross the finish line first. Ultimately, Shakespeare’s tragic story leaves one valuable lesson behind, never underestimate the power of someone’s passion, as Hamlet surely showed that in the game of his life his inner fire dominated Claudius’s strategic skill.
Hamlet’s Oedipus Complex: The Real Motive Behind His Revenge
by Erando Halilaj
Upon reading Shakespeare’s Hamlet, it becomes clear that this play is a revenge tragedy of the Elizabethan era. The play is set in Denmark and it recounts the story of Hamlet’s revenge on King Claudius for murdering his father, taking the throne, and marrying his mother. The greeting of the ghost of his father brings Hamlet’s revenge plot into fruition. One would ask, is an encounter with what one believes to be a supernatural being enough to bring about instantaneous feelings of anger and revenge? Of course it isn’t! The real motive behind Hamlet’s revenge is due to his Oedipus complex. I am referring to the one and only Oedipus that married and had kids with his mother, Jocasta, and unknowingly killed his father. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica Online, an Oedipus complex is composed of feelings of attraction towards the mother, and aggression towards the father. These feelings are repressed due to punishment or resentment from the father, making them difficult to identify immediately. The psychologist Sigmund Freud was responsible for popularizing this theory. The Hamlet adaptation that conveyed this best was the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2009 version starring David Tennant as Hamlet. It is through Hamlet’s attraction towards his mother and aggression towards the father figure that the revenge plot was carried out in the play.
The scene that most highlights Hamlet’s Oedipus Complex is what is referred to as the “closet scene” in which he confronts his mother Gertrude in her bedroom about her bad decisions. Hamlet comes in with his bowtie untied and his dress shirt unbuttoned. Gertrude is seen in satin sleep attire. They confront each other in an intimate setting (Gertrude’s bedroom) and most of their argument takes place on her bed. The whole time watching it, one can’t help but notice the way they touch and look at each other in a very provocative way. In fact, there were some moments where it looked as if one would move in for a passionate kiss. Looking at this scene in this perspective makes things a bit uncomfortable for the viewer. Along with the spectacle of the scene, the lines are also important. Hamlet discusses her sexuality multiple times. He tells Gertrude, “You cannot call it love, for at your age the heyday in your blood is tame, it’s humble” (3. 4. 78-79). In the David Tenant adaptation, he puts both of his hands on her face after saying these words and yells at her inches away from her face. Also, he shows jealousy and disgust when he tells his mother, “Nay, but to live in the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed, stewed in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty” (3. 4. 103-106). During these lines, Hamlet is stripping Gertrude’s bed of the covers piece by piece, almost uncovering her inner feelings that she has denied for so long. This is visually symbolic of the layers of denial that Hamlet is peeling away from Gertrude during the confrontation. If you were to watch the scene with a clean memory of not knowing anything about the characters and view the scene without sound, it visually looks like a couple is fighting about something the wife did wrong. The scene does not have the look or feel of how a son would scold his mother. This led to what appeared to be the appearance of King Hamlet’s ghost once more.
The second part of the Oedipus complex would be the aggression and repression associated with his father. The ghost of Hamlet’s father conveniently appeared in the middle of this scene almost as if to show how Hamlet’s feelings towards his mother are still being repressed by his father’s presence. One can argue it was a figment of Hamlet’s imagination due to the fact that Gertrude was not able to see or hear King Hamlet’s ghost. It was a defense mechanism in his mind that was created in order to remind him that he shouldn’t be having feelings of attraction towards his mother. By this point, it is clear that Hamlet appears to attribute the characteristics specific to an Oedipus complex. Therefore, it is important to look at Oedipus and Jocasta’s relationship. This relationship seems to have similarities with Hamlet and Gertrude’s relationship.
Hamlet’s relationship with Gertrude wasn’t that much different than Oedipus’ relationship with Jocasta. They both have great love for one another, both of the females are described as sexual, and there is a theme of denial present in both relationships. In the 1967 Italian film by Pasolini, Oedipus Rex, it seemed as if Jocasta had a feeling in the back of her mind that Oedipus could be the child of prophecy, but she was so far in denial that she would have sex with him in order to prove to herself that he can’t really be her son. In the film, Tiresias retold the prophecy of Oedipus while Jocasta overheard it and basically laughed it off. She then proceeded to run around with her servants until Oedipus came to bring her back into their bedchamber. It was during this moment that they glanced at each other in between their kissing, almost as if to assure themselves that the prophecy had no truth behind it. Jocasta secretly seemed as if she was ashamed, yet she continued to make love to her son/husband and further spiral into denial. This theme of denial is subtly present in both the closet scene and the sex scene between Oedipus and Jocasta. I feel that if Hamlet and Gertrude did not know that they were mother and son, the scene in the film would have resembled the Oedipus and Jocasta scene. During most of the scene, there was touching involved. Neither Hamlet nor Gertrude could get their words across without touching or making eye contact with one another throughout. To conclude this scene, Hamlet seems to be in a fit of jealousy towards Claudius and his mother. He states “Not this by no means that I bid you do: Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed, pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse, and let him, for a pair of reechy kisses or paddling in your neck with his damned fingers make you to ravel all this matter out” (3. 4. 203-208). These lines by Hamlet are the epitome of jealousy for his mother’s attention. He seems more disturbed that she is having sexual relations with Claudius than the fact that Claudius murdered his father. This goes beyond a protective demeanor towards his mother. Throughout this entire scene, he keeps dropping hints about her sexuality and that she shouldn’t be doing anything, period. This scene ultimately leads us into the final scenes of Hamlet.
The final piece of the puzzle to Hamlet’s Oedipus complex was his inability to avenge his father’s death by killing Claudius when the chance presented itself. If Hamlet were so bent on killing Claudius, what better chance would he have had then when he confessed his crime and prayed on it? He even stated, “Now I might do it, now he is a-praying, and now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven, and so he is revenged” (3. 3. 77-80). He eventually made an excuse in his mind that it would not be an ideal time or place to kill him at that moment. Hamlet’s inability to kill Claudius until after his mother died was a significant piece in the Oedipus complex theory. He didn’t have the courage to commit the deed when Claudius ultimately confessed to it in prayer. However, when Gertrude indirectly died from the hands of Claudius’ poison, Hamlet lost control and killed Claudius once and for all. At that point, it was more so for the death of his mother than for the killing of his father. Once the object of his repressed feelings was dead and gone, there was nothing holding him back from killing Claudius. He killed Claudius swiftly and without hesitation by stabbing him and forcing him to drink the potion to his death. Upon the conclusion of the play, it is clear that Hamlet’s true revenge was linked to his affection for his mother. This is precisely what makes Hamlet such a deep play: there is more to it than meets the eye. Reading it on a basic level might only show a revenge tragedy of a man that was so desperate to avenge his father, that it cost the lives of most people around him as well as himself. However, reading the play in further detail as well as looking at adaptations of the play is crucial in highlighting parts of the book one would have overlooked. This just goes to show that Hamlet will forever be one of Shakespeare’s most complex and controversial characters.
Works Cited
Hamlet: The Royal Shakespeare Company Production Starring David Tennant. Perf. David Tennant and Patrick Stewart. The Royal Shakespeare Company, 2009.
"Oedipus Complex (psychology)." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia
Britannica. Web.
Oedipus Rex. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini. By Pier Paolo Pasolini. Perf. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Arco Film, 1967.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2012. Print.
by Erando Halilaj
Upon reading Shakespeare’s Hamlet, it becomes clear that this play is a revenge tragedy of the Elizabethan era. The play is set in Denmark and it recounts the story of Hamlet’s revenge on King Claudius for murdering his father, taking the throne, and marrying his mother. The greeting of the ghost of his father brings Hamlet’s revenge plot into fruition. One would ask, is an encounter with what one believes to be a supernatural being enough to bring about instantaneous feelings of anger and revenge? Of course it isn’t! The real motive behind Hamlet’s revenge is due to his Oedipus complex. I am referring to the one and only Oedipus that married and had kids with his mother, Jocasta, and unknowingly killed his father. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica Online, an Oedipus complex is composed of feelings of attraction towards the mother, and aggression towards the father. These feelings are repressed due to punishment or resentment from the father, making them difficult to identify immediately. The psychologist Sigmund Freud was responsible for popularizing this theory. The Hamlet adaptation that conveyed this best was the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2009 version starring David Tennant as Hamlet. It is through Hamlet’s attraction towards his mother and aggression towards the father figure that the revenge plot was carried out in the play.
The scene that most highlights Hamlet’s Oedipus Complex is what is referred to as the “closet scene” in which he confronts his mother Gertrude in her bedroom about her bad decisions. Hamlet comes in with his bowtie untied and his dress shirt unbuttoned. Gertrude is seen in satin sleep attire. They confront each other in an intimate setting (Gertrude’s bedroom) and most of their argument takes place on her bed. The whole time watching it, one can’t help but notice the way they touch and look at each other in a very provocative way. In fact, there were some moments where it looked as if one would move in for a passionate kiss. Looking at this scene in this perspective makes things a bit uncomfortable for the viewer. Along with the spectacle of the scene, the lines are also important. Hamlet discusses her sexuality multiple times. He tells Gertrude, “You cannot call it love, for at your age the heyday in your blood is tame, it’s humble” (3. 4. 78-79). In the David Tenant adaptation, he puts both of his hands on her face after saying these words and yells at her inches away from her face. Also, he shows jealousy and disgust when he tells his mother, “Nay, but to live in the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed, stewed in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty” (3. 4. 103-106). During these lines, Hamlet is stripping Gertrude’s bed of the covers piece by piece, almost uncovering her inner feelings that she has denied for so long. This is visually symbolic of the layers of denial that Hamlet is peeling away from Gertrude during the confrontation. If you were to watch the scene with a clean memory of not knowing anything about the characters and view the scene without sound, it visually looks like a couple is fighting about something the wife did wrong. The scene does not have the look or feel of how a son would scold his mother. This led to what appeared to be the appearance of King Hamlet’s ghost once more.
The second part of the Oedipus complex would be the aggression and repression associated with his father. The ghost of Hamlet’s father conveniently appeared in the middle of this scene almost as if to show how Hamlet’s feelings towards his mother are still being repressed by his father’s presence. One can argue it was a figment of Hamlet’s imagination due to the fact that Gertrude was not able to see or hear King Hamlet’s ghost. It was a defense mechanism in his mind that was created in order to remind him that he shouldn’t be having feelings of attraction towards his mother. By this point, it is clear that Hamlet appears to attribute the characteristics specific to an Oedipus complex. Therefore, it is important to look at Oedipus and Jocasta’s relationship. This relationship seems to have similarities with Hamlet and Gertrude’s relationship.
Hamlet’s relationship with Gertrude wasn’t that much different than Oedipus’ relationship with Jocasta. They both have great love for one another, both of the females are described as sexual, and there is a theme of denial present in both relationships. In the 1967 Italian film by Pasolini, Oedipus Rex, it seemed as if Jocasta had a feeling in the back of her mind that Oedipus could be the child of prophecy, but she was so far in denial that she would have sex with him in order to prove to herself that he can’t really be her son. In the film, Tiresias retold the prophecy of Oedipus while Jocasta overheard it and basically laughed it off. She then proceeded to run around with her servants until Oedipus came to bring her back into their bedchamber. It was during this moment that they glanced at each other in between their kissing, almost as if to assure themselves that the prophecy had no truth behind it. Jocasta secretly seemed as if she was ashamed, yet she continued to make love to her son/husband and further spiral into denial. This theme of denial is subtly present in both the closet scene and the sex scene between Oedipus and Jocasta. I feel that if Hamlet and Gertrude did not know that they were mother and son, the scene in the film would have resembled the Oedipus and Jocasta scene. During most of the scene, there was touching involved. Neither Hamlet nor Gertrude could get their words across without touching or making eye contact with one another throughout. To conclude this scene, Hamlet seems to be in a fit of jealousy towards Claudius and his mother. He states “Not this by no means that I bid you do: Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed, pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse, and let him, for a pair of reechy kisses or paddling in your neck with his damned fingers make you to ravel all this matter out” (3. 4. 203-208). These lines by Hamlet are the epitome of jealousy for his mother’s attention. He seems more disturbed that she is having sexual relations with Claudius than the fact that Claudius murdered his father. This goes beyond a protective demeanor towards his mother. Throughout this entire scene, he keeps dropping hints about her sexuality and that she shouldn’t be doing anything, period. This scene ultimately leads us into the final scenes of Hamlet.
The final piece of the puzzle to Hamlet’s Oedipus complex was his inability to avenge his father’s death by killing Claudius when the chance presented itself. If Hamlet were so bent on killing Claudius, what better chance would he have had then when he confessed his crime and prayed on it? He even stated, “Now I might do it, now he is a-praying, and now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven, and so he is revenged” (3. 3. 77-80). He eventually made an excuse in his mind that it would not be an ideal time or place to kill him at that moment. Hamlet’s inability to kill Claudius until after his mother died was a significant piece in the Oedipus complex theory. He didn’t have the courage to commit the deed when Claudius ultimately confessed to it in prayer. However, when Gertrude indirectly died from the hands of Claudius’ poison, Hamlet lost control and killed Claudius once and for all. At that point, it was more so for the death of his mother than for the killing of his father. Once the object of his repressed feelings was dead and gone, there was nothing holding him back from killing Claudius. He killed Claudius swiftly and without hesitation by stabbing him and forcing him to drink the potion to his death. Upon the conclusion of the play, it is clear that Hamlet’s true revenge was linked to his affection for his mother. This is precisely what makes Hamlet such a deep play: there is more to it than meets the eye. Reading it on a basic level might only show a revenge tragedy of a man that was so desperate to avenge his father, that it cost the lives of most people around him as well as himself. However, reading the play in further detail as well as looking at adaptations of the play is crucial in highlighting parts of the book one would have overlooked. This just goes to show that Hamlet will forever be one of Shakespeare’s most complex and controversial characters.
Works Cited
Hamlet: The Royal Shakespeare Company Production Starring David Tennant. Perf. David Tennant and Patrick Stewart. The Royal Shakespeare Company, 2009.
"Oedipus Complex (psychology)." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia
Britannica. Web.
Oedipus Rex. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini. By Pier Paolo Pasolini. Perf. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Arco Film, 1967.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2012. Print.
Laughing at a Graveyard, or Holding Your Breath: Can Death be Comical?
by Jennah Shahid
Have you ever wanted to direct a play? A movie? I have always been a movie and television show fiend, but I never wanted to be on the other side, producing the work—until I saw the movie Hamlet 2. The movie, directed by Andrew Fleming, is the perfect example of a sophisticated work that is translated into satire; and, in a sense, the work’s worth is degraded—yet, simultaneously, the translation makes you appreciate the work. In the movie, a failed actor who teaches high school drama has his students perform a sequel to Hamlet. How is that plausible if all the characters die in the play? Oh right, by the convenient time machine that takes Hamlet back in time to save his family one by one from dying—very peculiar but very witty (Fleming 2008).
How could a cheesy, politically incorrect, and indecorous movie inspire me to ever want to direct something of my own? After seeing Andrew Fleming turn such a “far-fetched” vision into reality, I realized that, as cliché as it may be, anything is achievable—as long as you have an outlandish idea and an enthusiastic attitude to push that idea to its highest potential. Hamlet is a tragic piece, but Fleming carried out its production in a way that was so unconventional because he translated the piece into humor and satire.
Moved and inspirited by Fleming’s ludicrous rendition, I would like to go about my directing of Hamlet in a similar way that honors the Burlesque art—but, of course, rejecting the Latino racial slurs. In my play, the most crucial element to be focused on is the question is there comedy in death? Death is apparent throughout Hamlet but heavily emphasized in the scene concerning Ophelia’s burial and the skull of Yorick. Contextualized also by memento mori symbols like the iconic skull, the film visually captures the recognition of fate and death. Moreover, one can recognize death in terms of religious matter concerning salvation and afterlife. Stripping away each of these elements—death scenes in Hamlet, memento mori symbols, and religion—I believe that, somehow, comedy can be cradled in each of these. In my rendition of Hamlet, I will show that it is possible for humor to exist in mortal mysteries without degrading or blaspheming what death fundamentally is.
Primarily, one of the most challenging scenes to recognize humor in in Hamlet is the gravedigger scene that precedes Ophelia’s burial. Since the scene emphasizes the horridness and emptiness of death, it would be difficult to recreate in a humorous way in my rendition. Introducing humor at a serious and grave moment can help to bring about the “superior qualities of the core characters belonging to a different order of being” because humor can strengthen the audience’s understanding of the characters’ elevation in the world (Hunt 142). The gravedigger, a peculiar character, has this impact on Hamlet. He is a clownish character who assimilates the main plot by establishing it on a new level—that of intuition and parody. The gravedigger has a very unique role in the scene where Hamlet is asking him who the grave is being built for because he responds in an unconventional way that challenges Hamlet. The gravedigger is singing while he is digging a pit in which to place Ophelia’s dead body:
“In youth, when I did love, did love,
Methought it was very sweet,
To contract, O, the time, for-ah, my behove,
O, methought, there was nothing-a meet....
But age, with his stealing steps,
Hath claw'd me in his clutch,
And hath shipped me into the land,
As if I had never been such” (278)
This portrayal is extremely abnormal because it makes the audience question, why is the gravedigger singing jubilant songs while he is performing such a morbid task? This astounds Hamlet simply because happiness and death should not be linked together in his world of tragedy (Hunt 143-144). In shock, Hamlet makes the statement, “Has this fellow no feeling of his business? He sings at grave-making” because Hamlet is uncomfortable with how comfortable the gravedigger appears to be with death (Shakespeare 278).
The gravedigger’s character is salacious and vulgar, yet he seems to possess this intuitive wisdom—by virtue, perhaps, of God—through his connection to nature and death. It is ironic that he has a low-class occupation, and he is looked down upon for it, but he has such profound wisdom hidden behind equivocation and vulgarity. His offensiveness is apparent in the quote, “your whoreson dead body” (Shakespeare 288), which communicates disrespect and inappropriateness. He has a profound way of communicating and a deeper notion of decorum than Hamlet does (in the sense of conceptualized thought, not the manner in which he carries out what he thinks). The gravedigger’s wisdom and precision with language is communicated when he says, “It must be se offendendo; it cannot be else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act; and an act hath three branches—it is to act, to do, and to perform; argal, she drown’d herself wittingly (Shakespeare 274). This not only demonstrates how insistent he is in exactness of language when confronting death, but also how astute he is by rationalizing if Ophelia’s death was sacrilegious or not. Contrarily, Hamlet’s concern for properness in addressing the mortal subject makes his perspective about life and death limited because he does not transcend materiality. We can see how tragically flawed Hamlet is because he is not able to see how his knowledge (materiality) hinders his understanding of life and death. This matter also ties into popular ecclesiastic beliefs about salvation in regards to secular life and death. To be at peace with death, one must submit their attachment to materiality in order to establish a union with God and receive his divine presence to bring salvation (Hunt 143-149). The gravedigger allows his dispassion and detachment from the world and from materiality to shine through, in his indecorous attitude. Who knew how philosophical and saintly the gravedigger was?
I think the best way to approach this scene from a director’s point of view is to hide heavy words under vulgarity, causality, and irony. In my contemporary rendition, I would like the gravedigger to be a fifteen-year-old drug addict hipster named Whip, who has a profound understanding of the world because he is so far removed from it—we all know how perplexing those hipsters can be. Why depict the gravedigger as an adolescent drug addict? It is crucial to exemplify the idea of self-transcendence in Whip’s character. Perhaps, drug usage allows him to be limitless and mystical. I think it would be interesting to have Whip be a young adolescent boy just to throw in the element of irony—a wise old man trapped in an adolescent’s body. He would be a character who, from the surface, seems like a high-school dropout going nowhere in life, but brings more to the table than audience will initially assume. Whip is so out there and far removed from the normal mindset—yet his intuition and esoteric knowledge confirms that he has a firm grasp on the idea of life. Although he has a low-class profession at only the age of fifteen, Whip seems to be at peace with himself, perhaps because his constant and excessive contemplation has brought him to a unique and rare level of understanding. He has developed his full human potential at the age of fifteen, while most people need their whole life to achieve that development. The drug-addicted gravedigger can appear to be humorous because of his physical appearance. I would render this visual spectacle by presenting Whip as being stick-skinny, grungy, dirty and filled with absurd tattoos from head to toe. On the surface, the audience can judge him as being a stereotypical druggie hipster. As the scene unravels, the audience will learn that he possesses wisdom, such as the wisdom that Tiresias displayed for Oedipus—a wisdom that separates him from the material world and gives him the ability to see beyond it. In this scene, death can be perceived as comical because of how the gravedigger goes about the matter—by speaking of life and death in a not so eloquent and proper way. Instead, he will be shown as a character who is comfortable with death and, hence, able to speak about it in a casual, discourteous, and humorous way. He seems unconcerned with being careful when handling mortal frailty (Hunt 145). His perspicacity is countered by how he is depicted as comic relief.
Additionally, the skull of Yorick scene is the notable and iconic moment in Hamlet where Hamlet’s character transforms into one that is more transcendent—but his transcendence merges with the memento mori concept. The gravedigger views the skull of Yorick not simply as a skull but as something that moves him by contrasting the skull with the memory of a living person (Hunt 2013). Hamlet at first sees the skull of Yorick as someone he once loved as a child but then merges the skull and the remembered man in his imagination in a disturbed way when he says, “And now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!” (Shakespeare 187–188). Hamlet’s happy memories from the past seem to repulse him once he looks deeply into the skull, which disassociates the happy memories of Yorick in Hamlet’s troubled mind. Instead, Hamlet uses the skull as a token, representing the memento mori concept, and he buries those memories of a person under a grave symbol of what the skull suggests. The memento mori sentiment is often captured in visual art or in some significant symbols, like skulls, that remind the viewer of death (Frye 2013). Furthermore, the contemplation of a skull became a popular theme in European art, in which memento mori signifies, “as you are now, so once I was; and as I am now, so will you be.” It is a reminder to let go of vanity and materiality and to always be reminded that one day, we will pass on, and it has deep roots in religion (Capshew 2013). None of the material things will matter after death because God will recognize those who make their time on earth useful by devoting themselves to a sanctified life. On earth, one must avoid secular pleasures and live a righteous life that will lead to salvation. How one makes use of his time on earth will prepare him for the afterlife (Frye 2013). In the scene where Hamlet is holding and studying the skull, he is contemplating the mysteries of life and death. The skull reveals that, through the realities of death, Hamlet arrives at something conclusive: what does he gain that others have in the past—perhaps, sanity and a new serenity? Can those pacifistic effects of contemplation open the door for humor?
Ultimately, I would like to take a whimsical approach in addressing the recognition of death as Hamlet encounters it, using the skull token in the skull of Yorick scene. Instead of Hamlet being so preoccupied with mortality and fate, he should confront the memento mori concept by taking it in the opposite direction. Instead of recognizing that he will die one day, why not embrace the fact that he will live? Hamlet will take this contemplation in a direction that honors the concept of memento vivere, or remembering that you must live, and upholds the belief that all are entitled to a life that indulges the splendors of lavish living and being in control of our own fate (Capshew 2013). In the boat scene, when Hamlet is voyaging, I will direct this to have Hamlet encounter a witch named Medea. He is wallowing in his anger and disgust for Claudius, and sadness that he must avenge his father’s death when he returns back home. Hamlet speaks to Medea about his troubles. In response, Medea gives him a syringe filled with a concoction of mystical potion that allows him to be immortal. Medea tells Hamlet that he must use the potion so he can have infinite life and be ruthless against Claudius, and also to defend himself against Laertes, in case Laertes kills Hamlet before he carries out his vengeance. Hamlet accepts the syringe, but is at first hesitant to plunge it in his heart. Finally Hamlet sticks himself and is overcome with an ecstatic feeling of limitless life. Instead of fearing death and its intangible control of Hamlet, the audience can embrace the irony and poetic justice in this scene, which is a humorous outlet. In this scenario, memento vivere is being used as a device for comic relief.
The moments of the play Hamlet that present Ophelia’s death and the contemplation of the skull of Yorick inexplicably point to God because they are rooted in religion. In addressing these moments in my play, I would not want to disrespect death nor God but, instead, honor both. In the humorous interpretation of death rendered in my version of Hamlet, I would like to present the issue of death as something the audience becomes comfortable with—whether this is by evoking laughter, a chuckle, a soft sigh, or a huff of relief—while not eliciting the type of laughter directed at those being condemned to their death. Death is a delicate matter because there are degrees and stages of dealing with fatality. This cycle of fatality begins with the recognition of the utter shame and nakedness in death. The next stages of this cycle demonstrate the fluctuating battle between fear; futility; relief; anticipation; hope; humility; joviality; and, perhaps, even beauty (Father Anthony 2013). Connecting to the symbols of memento mori, the audience should be aware of death to be comfortable with the subject matter of the play. To do so, one should trample worldly fears by overwhelming these anticipations and concerns about death with a belief in God (Awad 2013). One will experience a new feeling once death is accepted. Perhaps this acceptance will open the door to other possibilities, such as being liberated, feeling relief, or opening oneself up to hilarity.
Works Cited:
Awad, Christopher. Personal interview. 5 Dec. 2013.
Capshew, James. Memento Mori. Indiana University, 1 Dec. 2006. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. <http://www.indiana.edu/~memento/memento.html>.
Father Anthony. Personal interview. 3 Dec. 2013.
Flemming, Andrew, dir. Hamlet 2. Perf. Steve Coogan. 2008. Focus Feature. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
Frye, Roland M. "Ladies, Gentlemen, and Skulls: Hamlet and the Iconographic Traditions." Shakespeare Quarterly 30.1 (1979): 15-28. JSTOR. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2869658>.
Hunt, Maurice. "Hamlet, the Gravedigger, and Indecorous Decorum." College Literature 11.2 (1984): 141-50. JSTOR. Web. 15 Dec. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25111589>.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet (The New Folger Library Shakespeare). Simon & Schuster; New Folger Edition, 2003.
by Jennah Shahid
Have you ever wanted to direct a play? A movie? I have always been a movie and television show fiend, but I never wanted to be on the other side, producing the work—until I saw the movie Hamlet 2. The movie, directed by Andrew Fleming, is the perfect example of a sophisticated work that is translated into satire; and, in a sense, the work’s worth is degraded—yet, simultaneously, the translation makes you appreciate the work. In the movie, a failed actor who teaches high school drama has his students perform a sequel to Hamlet. How is that plausible if all the characters die in the play? Oh right, by the convenient time machine that takes Hamlet back in time to save his family one by one from dying—very peculiar but very witty (Fleming 2008).
How could a cheesy, politically incorrect, and indecorous movie inspire me to ever want to direct something of my own? After seeing Andrew Fleming turn such a “far-fetched” vision into reality, I realized that, as cliché as it may be, anything is achievable—as long as you have an outlandish idea and an enthusiastic attitude to push that idea to its highest potential. Hamlet is a tragic piece, but Fleming carried out its production in a way that was so unconventional because he translated the piece into humor and satire.
Moved and inspirited by Fleming’s ludicrous rendition, I would like to go about my directing of Hamlet in a similar way that honors the Burlesque art—but, of course, rejecting the Latino racial slurs. In my play, the most crucial element to be focused on is the question is there comedy in death? Death is apparent throughout Hamlet but heavily emphasized in the scene concerning Ophelia’s burial and the skull of Yorick. Contextualized also by memento mori symbols like the iconic skull, the film visually captures the recognition of fate and death. Moreover, one can recognize death in terms of religious matter concerning salvation and afterlife. Stripping away each of these elements—death scenes in Hamlet, memento mori symbols, and religion—I believe that, somehow, comedy can be cradled in each of these. In my rendition of Hamlet, I will show that it is possible for humor to exist in mortal mysteries without degrading or blaspheming what death fundamentally is.
Primarily, one of the most challenging scenes to recognize humor in in Hamlet is the gravedigger scene that precedes Ophelia’s burial. Since the scene emphasizes the horridness and emptiness of death, it would be difficult to recreate in a humorous way in my rendition. Introducing humor at a serious and grave moment can help to bring about the “superior qualities of the core characters belonging to a different order of being” because humor can strengthen the audience’s understanding of the characters’ elevation in the world (Hunt 142). The gravedigger, a peculiar character, has this impact on Hamlet. He is a clownish character who assimilates the main plot by establishing it on a new level—that of intuition and parody. The gravedigger has a very unique role in the scene where Hamlet is asking him who the grave is being built for because he responds in an unconventional way that challenges Hamlet. The gravedigger is singing while he is digging a pit in which to place Ophelia’s dead body:
“In youth, when I did love, did love,
Methought it was very sweet,
To contract, O, the time, for-ah, my behove,
O, methought, there was nothing-a meet....
But age, with his stealing steps,
Hath claw'd me in his clutch,
And hath shipped me into the land,
As if I had never been such” (278)
This portrayal is extremely abnormal because it makes the audience question, why is the gravedigger singing jubilant songs while he is performing such a morbid task? This astounds Hamlet simply because happiness and death should not be linked together in his world of tragedy (Hunt 143-144). In shock, Hamlet makes the statement, “Has this fellow no feeling of his business? He sings at grave-making” because Hamlet is uncomfortable with how comfortable the gravedigger appears to be with death (Shakespeare 278).
The gravedigger’s character is salacious and vulgar, yet he seems to possess this intuitive wisdom—by virtue, perhaps, of God—through his connection to nature and death. It is ironic that he has a low-class occupation, and he is looked down upon for it, but he has such profound wisdom hidden behind equivocation and vulgarity. His offensiveness is apparent in the quote, “your whoreson dead body” (Shakespeare 288), which communicates disrespect and inappropriateness. He has a profound way of communicating and a deeper notion of decorum than Hamlet does (in the sense of conceptualized thought, not the manner in which he carries out what he thinks). The gravedigger’s wisdom and precision with language is communicated when he says, “It must be se offendendo; it cannot be else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act; and an act hath three branches—it is to act, to do, and to perform; argal, she drown’d herself wittingly (Shakespeare 274). This not only demonstrates how insistent he is in exactness of language when confronting death, but also how astute he is by rationalizing if Ophelia’s death was sacrilegious or not. Contrarily, Hamlet’s concern for properness in addressing the mortal subject makes his perspective about life and death limited because he does not transcend materiality. We can see how tragically flawed Hamlet is because he is not able to see how his knowledge (materiality) hinders his understanding of life and death. This matter also ties into popular ecclesiastic beliefs about salvation in regards to secular life and death. To be at peace with death, one must submit their attachment to materiality in order to establish a union with God and receive his divine presence to bring salvation (Hunt 143-149). The gravedigger allows his dispassion and detachment from the world and from materiality to shine through, in his indecorous attitude. Who knew how philosophical and saintly the gravedigger was?
I think the best way to approach this scene from a director’s point of view is to hide heavy words under vulgarity, causality, and irony. In my contemporary rendition, I would like the gravedigger to be a fifteen-year-old drug addict hipster named Whip, who has a profound understanding of the world because he is so far removed from it—we all know how perplexing those hipsters can be. Why depict the gravedigger as an adolescent drug addict? It is crucial to exemplify the idea of self-transcendence in Whip’s character. Perhaps, drug usage allows him to be limitless and mystical. I think it would be interesting to have Whip be a young adolescent boy just to throw in the element of irony—a wise old man trapped in an adolescent’s body. He would be a character who, from the surface, seems like a high-school dropout going nowhere in life, but brings more to the table than audience will initially assume. Whip is so out there and far removed from the normal mindset—yet his intuition and esoteric knowledge confirms that he has a firm grasp on the idea of life. Although he has a low-class profession at only the age of fifteen, Whip seems to be at peace with himself, perhaps because his constant and excessive contemplation has brought him to a unique and rare level of understanding. He has developed his full human potential at the age of fifteen, while most people need their whole life to achieve that development. The drug-addicted gravedigger can appear to be humorous because of his physical appearance. I would render this visual spectacle by presenting Whip as being stick-skinny, grungy, dirty and filled with absurd tattoos from head to toe. On the surface, the audience can judge him as being a stereotypical druggie hipster. As the scene unravels, the audience will learn that he possesses wisdom, such as the wisdom that Tiresias displayed for Oedipus—a wisdom that separates him from the material world and gives him the ability to see beyond it. In this scene, death can be perceived as comical because of how the gravedigger goes about the matter—by speaking of life and death in a not so eloquent and proper way. Instead, he will be shown as a character who is comfortable with death and, hence, able to speak about it in a casual, discourteous, and humorous way. He seems unconcerned with being careful when handling mortal frailty (Hunt 145). His perspicacity is countered by how he is depicted as comic relief.
Additionally, the skull of Yorick scene is the notable and iconic moment in Hamlet where Hamlet’s character transforms into one that is more transcendent—but his transcendence merges with the memento mori concept. The gravedigger views the skull of Yorick not simply as a skull but as something that moves him by contrasting the skull with the memory of a living person (Hunt 2013). Hamlet at first sees the skull of Yorick as someone he once loved as a child but then merges the skull and the remembered man in his imagination in a disturbed way when he says, “And now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!” (Shakespeare 187–188). Hamlet’s happy memories from the past seem to repulse him once he looks deeply into the skull, which disassociates the happy memories of Yorick in Hamlet’s troubled mind. Instead, Hamlet uses the skull as a token, representing the memento mori concept, and he buries those memories of a person under a grave symbol of what the skull suggests. The memento mori sentiment is often captured in visual art or in some significant symbols, like skulls, that remind the viewer of death (Frye 2013). Furthermore, the contemplation of a skull became a popular theme in European art, in which memento mori signifies, “as you are now, so once I was; and as I am now, so will you be.” It is a reminder to let go of vanity and materiality and to always be reminded that one day, we will pass on, and it has deep roots in religion (Capshew 2013). None of the material things will matter after death because God will recognize those who make their time on earth useful by devoting themselves to a sanctified life. On earth, one must avoid secular pleasures and live a righteous life that will lead to salvation. How one makes use of his time on earth will prepare him for the afterlife (Frye 2013). In the scene where Hamlet is holding and studying the skull, he is contemplating the mysteries of life and death. The skull reveals that, through the realities of death, Hamlet arrives at something conclusive: what does he gain that others have in the past—perhaps, sanity and a new serenity? Can those pacifistic effects of contemplation open the door for humor?
Ultimately, I would like to take a whimsical approach in addressing the recognition of death as Hamlet encounters it, using the skull token in the skull of Yorick scene. Instead of Hamlet being so preoccupied with mortality and fate, he should confront the memento mori concept by taking it in the opposite direction. Instead of recognizing that he will die one day, why not embrace the fact that he will live? Hamlet will take this contemplation in a direction that honors the concept of memento vivere, or remembering that you must live, and upholds the belief that all are entitled to a life that indulges the splendors of lavish living and being in control of our own fate (Capshew 2013). In the boat scene, when Hamlet is voyaging, I will direct this to have Hamlet encounter a witch named Medea. He is wallowing in his anger and disgust for Claudius, and sadness that he must avenge his father’s death when he returns back home. Hamlet speaks to Medea about his troubles. In response, Medea gives him a syringe filled with a concoction of mystical potion that allows him to be immortal. Medea tells Hamlet that he must use the potion so he can have infinite life and be ruthless against Claudius, and also to defend himself against Laertes, in case Laertes kills Hamlet before he carries out his vengeance. Hamlet accepts the syringe, but is at first hesitant to plunge it in his heart. Finally Hamlet sticks himself and is overcome with an ecstatic feeling of limitless life. Instead of fearing death and its intangible control of Hamlet, the audience can embrace the irony and poetic justice in this scene, which is a humorous outlet. In this scenario, memento vivere is being used as a device for comic relief.
The moments of the play Hamlet that present Ophelia’s death and the contemplation of the skull of Yorick inexplicably point to God because they are rooted in religion. In addressing these moments in my play, I would not want to disrespect death nor God but, instead, honor both. In the humorous interpretation of death rendered in my version of Hamlet, I would like to present the issue of death as something the audience becomes comfortable with—whether this is by evoking laughter, a chuckle, a soft sigh, or a huff of relief—while not eliciting the type of laughter directed at those being condemned to their death. Death is a delicate matter because there are degrees and stages of dealing with fatality. This cycle of fatality begins with the recognition of the utter shame and nakedness in death. The next stages of this cycle demonstrate the fluctuating battle between fear; futility; relief; anticipation; hope; humility; joviality; and, perhaps, even beauty (Father Anthony 2013). Connecting to the symbols of memento mori, the audience should be aware of death to be comfortable with the subject matter of the play. To do so, one should trample worldly fears by overwhelming these anticipations and concerns about death with a belief in God (Awad 2013). One will experience a new feeling once death is accepted. Perhaps this acceptance will open the door to other possibilities, such as being liberated, feeling relief, or opening oneself up to hilarity.
Works Cited:
Awad, Christopher. Personal interview. 5 Dec. 2013.
Capshew, James. Memento Mori. Indiana University, 1 Dec. 2006. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. <http://www.indiana.edu/~memento/memento.html>.
Father Anthony. Personal interview. 3 Dec. 2013.
Flemming, Andrew, dir. Hamlet 2. Perf. Steve Coogan. 2008. Focus Feature. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
Frye, Roland M. "Ladies, Gentlemen, and Skulls: Hamlet and the Iconographic Traditions." Shakespeare Quarterly 30.1 (1979): 15-28. JSTOR. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2869658>.
Hunt, Maurice. "Hamlet, the Gravedigger, and Indecorous Decorum." College Literature 11.2 (1984): 141-50. JSTOR. Web. 15 Dec. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25111589>.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet (The New Folger Library Shakespeare). Simon & Schuster; New Folger Edition, 2003.
Changing Your Perspective: How Camera Angles Affect a Scene
by Gino Siniscalchi
When reading any one of Shakespeare’s plays, there are countless ways to imagine what is occurring in a particular scene. Imagination plays a large role in theater and cinema, for how a director or actor imagines dialogue being presented or how a set is arranged can drastically change the tone of a scene. Henry Ford said, "If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.” The strongest tool a director has is the perspective of each character in his or her film. At its most basic level, Hamlet can be considered a run-of-the-mill revenge tragedy. Hamlet is a crazed, mourning son, surrounded by foolish and helpless women with no ulterior motives, and everyone dies. However, the greatest thing about plays is that they can be adapted in numerous ways, and the message or tone of a play can change depending on what the director is trying to say. Whether it is Laurence Olivier’s 1948 classical depiction or Franco Zeffirelli’s alternative 1990 adaptation featuring Mel Gibson, the characters’ motivations and emotions and the story’s tones are changed by factors as small as set pieces and light choices or as essential as camera shots and scene changes from the original play. Depiction and viewpoint are extremely important in a tragic play such as Hamlet, and factors such as camera shots can dramatically alter the message a director sends to his audience.
There are many theories surrounding the famous “Get thee to a nunnery” scene in Hamlet. At its most basic level, the scene is a conversation between an emotionally disturbed Hamlet and a naïve Ophelia who has no idea what is wrong with her former love or that King Claudius is listening for proof of Hamlet’s insanity. However, there are many ways of interpreting this scene. It could be that Hamlet suspects that Claudius is listening to their conversation, so he is merely putting on a show for Claudius, using Ophelia as a set piece. This interpretation works very well with Hamlet’s recurring theme, the play within a play, which involves Hamlet constantly testing Claudius with dramatic acts. Another theory is that both Hamlet and Ophelia are trying to protect each other; Ophelia is not actually naïve and wants to warn Hamlet of her father’s and the king’s plots, and Hamlet in return is going along with the ruse in order to keep her safe. This would transform the scene into a more romantic narrative. At the opposite end of the spectrum, it is possible to say that Hamlet is insane, and Ophelia is manipulating him to prove to the king that she is no longer with him. Ophelia may not be a pawn at all but actually a key player in the game between Hamlet and Claudius. There is no right way to interpret this scene; that job is left up to the imagination of the reader or the director who is creating his own cinematic rendition of the classic play. Analyses like this could be done for any scene of the play, but the scene between Hamlet and Ophelia serves as the best example, for this scene seems to vary most drastically when examining the various film adaptations of Hamlet.
The best adaptation to examine first is Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet because, while Olivier is more classical in comparison to other directors, his own version still varies greatly from the basic staged adaptations of the play. “Olivier observed that his 1948 film production of Hamlet is Hamlet’s point of view, and that if Hamlet is not in a scene, then it is Hamlet’s imagination. He makes a ‘study’ of Hamlet” (Zlatkin, 1). Olivier chose to focus more on the mental state of Hamlet and examine what occurs when mourning individuals begin to lose their mental faculties. The film places greater emphasis on Hamlet’s deteriorating ability to communicate with others and a greater insistence on the Oedipus complex between Hamlet and Gertrude; also, it completely eliminates the political themes of the play by cutting the characters Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Fortinbras (Zlatkin, 1). Knowing that this adaptation is more focused on examining Hamlet’s mental state is essential when observing the discussion between Hamlet and Ophelia in the first scene of act three. First of all, there is no indication that Hamlet knows Claudius is watching him; no camera shot, facial cue, or body movement implies that Olivier’s Hamlet suspects Ophelia is under surveillance. There is one part toward the end of the scene when Hamlet points at a curtain, implying that he suspects someone is listening, but Olivier does not confirm Hamlet’s suspicions by showing Claudius on screen. Additionally, immediately afterwards, a close-up shot of Hamlet’s face captures a crazed sense of paranoia. In many ways, Olivier is giving Hamlet no support in his suspicions. If there is no one listening to his conversation with Ophelia, then there is no logical reason for him to lash out at her; there is nothing motivating him to pretend to be crazy, so his aggressive reaction toward Ophelia must be a natural one. Olivier is conveying that Hamlet is losing his mind, which is why he appears so bipolar in this scene. He will go from speaking calmly to Ophelia to lashing out at her erratically. There are no cross cuts or long shots, except for one that captures Hamlet running up the stairs furiously, but otherwise the shots remain extremely stable, rarely switching, as if Olivier wants the audience to see Hamlet’s personality rapidly shift in a matter of seconds. Ophelia looks as if she has no idea what is going on; she even begins to cry, as if she is realizing that Hamlet might be mad [Figure I]. Olivier also implies Hamlet is delusional in other ways besides his paranoid and bipolar behavior. “Olivier’s use of black and white film, the deep shift, and the traveling camera also emphasize the psychic aspects of the castle by permitting a clear focus on spatially distant characters, as if played in an imagination and not in a film” (Zlatkin, 3). Rooms are almost empty, with objects given a small amount of focus and attention. For example, in the scene with Ophelia, all that can be seen in the room is a lone stone table and a line of curtains; it is extremely reminiscent of how a room might look in an undeveloped dream [Figure II].
Franco Zeffirelli takes a dramatically different approach in his 1990 adaptation starring Mel Gibson. There is an entirely different feel to Zeffirelli’s film compared to Olivier’s. While Olivier’s adaptation is extremely psychological, focusing on Hamlet’s insanity and mental behavior, Zeffirelli takes a more passionate approach, demonstrated by his casting choice of Gibson as Hamlet, who plays the role with much more intensity and fire. Film scholar Deborah Cartmell suggested that Zeffirelli chooses to remain, “Sensual rather than cerebral” (Jackson, 216). Zeffirelli’s depiction of the scene between Hamlet and Ophelia is significantly different from Olivier’s. Before Hamlet begins talking with Ophelia, both he and the audience witness two men scheming with Ophelia, played by Helena Bonham Carter, before running off set [Figure III]. This shot makes the audience consider that Hamlet may not be overly paranoid. The audience, in addition to Hamlet, saw the men, so it cannot be the case that he is merely delusional. Someone is definitely trying to investigate Hamlet, and much of his anger toward Ophelia could be attributed to the fact that he thinks she may be maliciously setting a trap for him. This would explain why at the start of the scene Hamlet is distant; when Gertrude offers him his necklace back he claims it is not his. However, it seems unlikely that Ophelia has cruel intentions, since Carter’s portrayal of Ophelia comes off as very innocent: “Almost childlike and dreamy, giddy around her brother Laertes and other characters, such as King Claudius and Queen Gertrude” (Pearson Customs, 1). Most likely, Claudius is manipulating her, for her scene with Hamlet does not come across as childish but slightly more tense, and she seems extremely on edge. There are points when Carter’s body movements imply that she is purposely trying to illicit a reaction from Hamlet, almost waiting for him to snap. For example, at one point in particular, after she answers Hamlet’s question about where her father is, she looks almost defeated, as if she knows he can see through her lies, and seems about to cry [Figure IV]. Whatever Ophelia’s intentions are in this scene, Hamlet begins to use her for his own devices. He quickly shifts from speaking calmly to yelling and launches into a tirade. However, unlike Olivier’s Hamlet, this tirade is not targeted at Ophelia. In an interesting shot of two shadows on a stairwell, Hamlet smiles devilishly at Ophelia before eventually moving to the stairwell and directing his tirade upwards away from Ophelia [Figure V, VI, VII, VIII]. This angry rhetoric is not the rambling of a madman but a vengeful son sending a message that he will not be fooled.
Perspective is an amazing thing, for it allows individuals to imagine people, places, and actions in so many different ways, constantly creating a unique experience. Film is reliant on perspectives; whether it’s the director’s perspective, the actor’s perspective, or the camera’s perspective, a scene can change considerably depending on how it is portrayed. Some classical masters of theater, who follow the words of Aristotle explicitly, would argue that camera shots would fall under the category of spectacle, which is not true art. However, this is not the case, for the shots in Olivier’s and Zeffirelli’s adaptations create a deeper layer to the simple themes presented in the printed version of Hamlet. Furthermore, anyone who has seen the film Blade Runner knows that a well-placed shot can say more than the words of any actor [Figure IV, X]. It allows for greater character analysis; audiences can get up close to the characters, through the camera shots, and really examine what is going on in their minds based on their gestures. One might argue this would lend the credit then to the actor’s ability and not the camera shot, but without these cameras the audience would receive no direction on what to examine. The camera allows the director to point out important features of the actor, set, and scene to the audience, eliminating the possibility of subtleties being lost in the confusion on stage.
by Gino Siniscalchi
When reading any one of Shakespeare’s plays, there are countless ways to imagine what is occurring in a particular scene. Imagination plays a large role in theater and cinema, for how a director or actor imagines dialogue being presented or how a set is arranged can drastically change the tone of a scene. Henry Ford said, "If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.” The strongest tool a director has is the perspective of each character in his or her film. At its most basic level, Hamlet can be considered a run-of-the-mill revenge tragedy. Hamlet is a crazed, mourning son, surrounded by foolish and helpless women with no ulterior motives, and everyone dies. However, the greatest thing about plays is that they can be adapted in numerous ways, and the message or tone of a play can change depending on what the director is trying to say. Whether it is Laurence Olivier’s 1948 classical depiction or Franco Zeffirelli’s alternative 1990 adaptation featuring Mel Gibson, the characters’ motivations and emotions and the story’s tones are changed by factors as small as set pieces and light choices or as essential as camera shots and scene changes from the original play. Depiction and viewpoint are extremely important in a tragic play such as Hamlet, and factors such as camera shots can dramatically alter the message a director sends to his audience.
There are many theories surrounding the famous “Get thee to a nunnery” scene in Hamlet. At its most basic level, the scene is a conversation between an emotionally disturbed Hamlet and a naïve Ophelia who has no idea what is wrong with her former love or that King Claudius is listening for proof of Hamlet’s insanity. However, there are many ways of interpreting this scene. It could be that Hamlet suspects that Claudius is listening to their conversation, so he is merely putting on a show for Claudius, using Ophelia as a set piece. This interpretation works very well with Hamlet’s recurring theme, the play within a play, which involves Hamlet constantly testing Claudius with dramatic acts. Another theory is that both Hamlet and Ophelia are trying to protect each other; Ophelia is not actually naïve and wants to warn Hamlet of her father’s and the king’s plots, and Hamlet in return is going along with the ruse in order to keep her safe. This would transform the scene into a more romantic narrative. At the opposite end of the spectrum, it is possible to say that Hamlet is insane, and Ophelia is manipulating him to prove to the king that she is no longer with him. Ophelia may not be a pawn at all but actually a key player in the game between Hamlet and Claudius. There is no right way to interpret this scene; that job is left up to the imagination of the reader or the director who is creating his own cinematic rendition of the classic play. Analyses like this could be done for any scene of the play, but the scene between Hamlet and Ophelia serves as the best example, for this scene seems to vary most drastically when examining the various film adaptations of Hamlet.
The best adaptation to examine first is Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet because, while Olivier is more classical in comparison to other directors, his own version still varies greatly from the basic staged adaptations of the play. “Olivier observed that his 1948 film production of Hamlet is Hamlet’s point of view, and that if Hamlet is not in a scene, then it is Hamlet’s imagination. He makes a ‘study’ of Hamlet” (Zlatkin, 1). Olivier chose to focus more on the mental state of Hamlet and examine what occurs when mourning individuals begin to lose their mental faculties. The film places greater emphasis on Hamlet’s deteriorating ability to communicate with others and a greater insistence on the Oedipus complex between Hamlet and Gertrude; also, it completely eliminates the political themes of the play by cutting the characters Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Fortinbras (Zlatkin, 1). Knowing that this adaptation is more focused on examining Hamlet’s mental state is essential when observing the discussion between Hamlet and Ophelia in the first scene of act three. First of all, there is no indication that Hamlet knows Claudius is watching him; no camera shot, facial cue, or body movement implies that Olivier’s Hamlet suspects Ophelia is under surveillance. There is one part toward the end of the scene when Hamlet points at a curtain, implying that he suspects someone is listening, but Olivier does not confirm Hamlet’s suspicions by showing Claudius on screen. Additionally, immediately afterwards, a close-up shot of Hamlet’s face captures a crazed sense of paranoia. In many ways, Olivier is giving Hamlet no support in his suspicions. If there is no one listening to his conversation with Ophelia, then there is no logical reason for him to lash out at her; there is nothing motivating him to pretend to be crazy, so his aggressive reaction toward Ophelia must be a natural one. Olivier is conveying that Hamlet is losing his mind, which is why he appears so bipolar in this scene. He will go from speaking calmly to Ophelia to lashing out at her erratically. There are no cross cuts or long shots, except for one that captures Hamlet running up the stairs furiously, but otherwise the shots remain extremely stable, rarely switching, as if Olivier wants the audience to see Hamlet’s personality rapidly shift in a matter of seconds. Ophelia looks as if she has no idea what is going on; she even begins to cry, as if she is realizing that Hamlet might be mad [Figure I]. Olivier also implies Hamlet is delusional in other ways besides his paranoid and bipolar behavior. “Olivier’s use of black and white film, the deep shift, and the traveling camera also emphasize the psychic aspects of the castle by permitting a clear focus on spatially distant characters, as if played in an imagination and not in a film” (Zlatkin, 3). Rooms are almost empty, with objects given a small amount of focus and attention. For example, in the scene with Ophelia, all that can be seen in the room is a lone stone table and a line of curtains; it is extremely reminiscent of how a room might look in an undeveloped dream [Figure II].
Franco Zeffirelli takes a dramatically different approach in his 1990 adaptation starring Mel Gibson. There is an entirely different feel to Zeffirelli’s film compared to Olivier’s. While Olivier’s adaptation is extremely psychological, focusing on Hamlet’s insanity and mental behavior, Zeffirelli takes a more passionate approach, demonstrated by his casting choice of Gibson as Hamlet, who plays the role with much more intensity and fire. Film scholar Deborah Cartmell suggested that Zeffirelli chooses to remain, “Sensual rather than cerebral” (Jackson, 216). Zeffirelli’s depiction of the scene between Hamlet and Ophelia is significantly different from Olivier’s. Before Hamlet begins talking with Ophelia, both he and the audience witness two men scheming with Ophelia, played by Helena Bonham Carter, before running off set [Figure III]. This shot makes the audience consider that Hamlet may not be overly paranoid. The audience, in addition to Hamlet, saw the men, so it cannot be the case that he is merely delusional. Someone is definitely trying to investigate Hamlet, and much of his anger toward Ophelia could be attributed to the fact that he thinks she may be maliciously setting a trap for him. This would explain why at the start of the scene Hamlet is distant; when Gertrude offers him his necklace back he claims it is not his. However, it seems unlikely that Ophelia has cruel intentions, since Carter’s portrayal of Ophelia comes off as very innocent: “Almost childlike and dreamy, giddy around her brother Laertes and other characters, such as King Claudius and Queen Gertrude” (Pearson Customs, 1). Most likely, Claudius is manipulating her, for her scene with Hamlet does not come across as childish but slightly more tense, and she seems extremely on edge. There are points when Carter’s body movements imply that she is purposely trying to illicit a reaction from Hamlet, almost waiting for him to snap. For example, at one point in particular, after she answers Hamlet’s question about where her father is, she looks almost defeated, as if she knows he can see through her lies, and seems about to cry [Figure IV]. Whatever Ophelia’s intentions are in this scene, Hamlet begins to use her for his own devices. He quickly shifts from speaking calmly to yelling and launches into a tirade. However, unlike Olivier’s Hamlet, this tirade is not targeted at Ophelia. In an interesting shot of two shadows on a stairwell, Hamlet smiles devilishly at Ophelia before eventually moving to the stairwell and directing his tirade upwards away from Ophelia [Figure V, VI, VII, VIII]. This angry rhetoric is not the rambling of a madman but a vengeful son sending a message that he will not be fooled.
Perspective is an amazing thing, for it allows individuals to imagine people, places, and actions in so many different ways, constantly creating a unique experience. Film is reliant on perspectives; whether it’s the director’s perspective, the actor’s perspective, or the camera’s perspective, a scene can change considerably depending on how it is portrayed. Some classical masters of theater, who follow the words of Aristotle explicitly, would argue that camera shots would fall under the category of spectacle, which is not true art. However, this is not the case, for the shots in Olivier’s and Zeffirelli’s adaptations create a deeper layer to the simple themes presented in the printed version of Hamlet. Furthermore, anyone who has seen the film Blade Runner knows that a well-placed shot can say more than the words of any actor [Figure IV, X]. It allows for greater character analysis; audiences can get up close to the characters, through the camera shots, and really examine what is going on in their minds based on their gestures. One might argue this would lend the credit then to the actor’s ability and not the camera shot, but without these cameras the audience would receive no direction on what to examine. The camera allows the director to point out important features of the actor, set, and scene to the audience, eliminating the possibility of subtleties being lost in the confusion on stage.
Hamlet Profaned
by Kevin Zebroski
Hamlet attacked the revenge trend with wit. The motivations encountered by a vengeful hero would cripple all but the most stoic of murder machines. Heroes are not made by violence, nor are villains given to the world by circumstance. Any attempt to graft a plot from such impossible figures of masculinity, piety, and wickedness results in a lesser production when held aside Shakespeare’s more precise insight. Hamlet is a play that concerns itself with the intricacy of human motivation more than anything else. A lesser revenge story would attempt to replace this exploration of psyche with spectacular blood-bathing, but Hamlet adheres to the reality of man. Every emotion, hesitation, doubting thought, and rationale is a result of an individual’s attempt to secure their place in the play’s universe. Shakespeare’s profound understanding of humanity separates his works from prototypical Greek theater. He uses theater to chronicle the human experience in finer detail, trading the grand two-dimensional tapestries of Athens for Rembrandt’s subtly illuminated portraits.
The quality of any interpretation of Hamlet might be judged by how delicately it treats this storytelling challenge of human sophistication. Since its conception Hamlet has been given over to reinterpretations of this unique Shakespearian insight, and every version attempts to yield something unique from the age old script. The Stratford Royal Shakespeare Company’s televised production of Hamlet, starring David Tennant and featuring Patrick Stewart, fully benefits from the strengths and limitations of its televised nature. It also provides a satisfying interpretation of the oft problematic complexity in Shakespeare’s original script.
The small screen may lack the majesty and subtlety of the traditional theatrical space, but it excels in malleability. The telecommunications director guides not only the blocking and speech of actors, but the eye of the audience through careful manipulation of an objective lens, the camera. The Royal Shakespeare Company gives weight to the interim between major decisions by adroitly positioning the camera in a way that layers an already intricate script. Static soliloquy is replaced by shifting camera angles struggling to follow an indecisive emotional whirl. The ever present eye of treachery is constantly applied and reapplied via a digital camera that ratchets and zooms into the privacy of Denmark’s bedrooms and hallways. Television thrives in providing explicit communication, and this adaptation of Hamlet gives concrete shape to the tones of skewed perspective and paranoia that are historically abstracted from the script.
Still, television is partially derivative of the classic theater, and as such it must be designed around the principles of a good show. Costume design is an important component of theatrical production that should be tailored to assist in the play’s focus, and clothing becomes even more important as the close-up vantage of a camera allows for fine inspection of a garment. The wardrobe in this Hamlet reflects the surrealist modern setting. The dress also provides a characterization tool for a modern audience that would be distracted and numbed over by the flowery excesses of Renaissance gear. Fluffy pantaloons and brocaded waistcoats turn into white noise when combined with the already flowery Shakespearian dialogue. The modern audience will fail to pick up the sartorial eccentricities in a field of screaming vibrancy and alien silhouettes. An ornate play like Hamlet benefits from eliminating nonessential distractions, as the audience has enough work to do when justifying Prince Hamlet’s sanity, or analyzing Claudius’ treachery.
Hamlet wears a dinner jacket to court, t-shirts almost everywhere else, and sporting winter gear for his trip to Yorick’s gravesite. Hamlet’s wardrobe reflects the versatility of modern sportswear, as it adapts to inclement weather more readily than social occasion. The decision to dress Hamlet in the contemporary convention help him to earn the audience’s trust, as Renaissance cultural dress is an alien object to a twenty-first century demographic, but Hamlet’s wardrobe is not solely a familiarization device. The aesthetics of modern dress also allow flexibility in creative design. Somber items—like the winter coat—highlight facial expression. Hamlet’s winter skull cap lowers his hairline, shrouding everything but Tennant’s bulging eyes in a way that overtly highlights his squeamishness and fragility. Yorick is a heavy burden in the hands of a skinny English man-child. Other outfits help to emphasize the visage of youth even more. The silly musculoskeletal graphic t-shirt Tennant wears in the company of the players troupe scene accentuates Prince Hamlet’s impatience, his energy, and his youth.
Tennant’s frame and face lend to this particular realization of a young Hamlet. His physicality is emotive. In his self-deprecating speech of “pigeon-livered” description he dances through the set, waving his arms inward and inviting the audience to feel as he does on “swounds that I should take it.” But it’s dynamic, not all motion without pause, for he is able to stand and hang his head on “dull and muddy rascal,” and seems defeated. Then he approaches the camera, stares into the lens point blank and asks “am I a coward?” This moment of fourth wall penetration is important for this Hamlet’s success in the televised form. Soliloquies are turned into a one sided conversation with the audience instead of prolonged verbal speech bubbles, and in doing so they are freed from the stereotypes of baroque theatrical styling. The viewer is less inclined to roll their eyes at perceived melodrama. They are invited to sympathize with someone desperate to communicate to anyone who might listen. In a way this version of Hamlet capitalizes on the voyeuristic themes of user-created content submission to websites like Youtube. It is a desperate call out to no one in particular. Prince Hamlet is someone with a lot to say about himself who cannot be bothered to assume a costume of showmanship. It is an appropriate type of Prince Hamlet for the early twenty-first century, a Hamlet who takes selfies.
Just about everything else in the RSC production is contemporarily conscious as well, from the costume design to its availability on the internet for streaming. This decision to profane the original play into more easily consumable digital information is core to its value as an interpretation. The RSC not only revitalizes the play in this way, removing the barriers of entry that a theatrical rendition would enforce, but it replicates the mission of its author. Shakespeare wrote for the theater because it was universal as a venue for entertainment. The story of Hamlet was not devised for exclusivity, it was designed to be heard and seen by anyone that might want to, and today’s standards for easily accessible media have made the internet into the simplest common denominator for entertainment. This rendition of a theatrical classic is not merely a showcase for proficiency and verbiage, it is art that seeks to entertain and engage.
This tension between Hamlets Junior and Senior is exacerbated by the confusing and ingenious decision to cast Patrick Stewart in the roles of King Hamlet and Claudius. This decision is good for two reasons. Firstly, Patrick Stewart should be on screen as frequently as possible because he’s terribly entertaining. His posture is regal, and his vocal range lends gravity to his every action. People would pay to watch Stewart read ingredients lists off of shampoo bottles. But there is another aspect to this decision to double-cast that would remain valid even without the involvement of a classically trained icon of British theater. One actor occupies the roles of the deceased King Hamlet and Claudius. The director creates a universe in which paternity and adversity combined is given a single face.
It is against this single face that Prince Hamlet squares off against for the majority of the play. The two men curse each other from the shadows. Prince Hamlet draws a switchblade above Claudius head, one bowed in prayer. The young prince claims “and now I’ll do it!” and the audience believes him as the camera cuts from his fast moving hands to a hyper-ventilating Hamlet. He stops, caught between desire and inaction while the incumbent’s mouth blurts gospel. When Hamlet retreats we are made privy to Claudius’ intentions. “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.” The old man has shielded himself from his would be murderer by abusing Hamlet’s sense of confused honor; a sense that was implanted by that same face wearing a helmet. The King Hamlet offers an impossible task for his son, to commit cold-blooded murder honorably and unflinchingly. Patrick Stewart effectively plays antagonist from all sides, trapping his son into a confrontation with his likeness.
The ghostly King Hamlet wears a fantastic combination of space suit and helmet. He is eternally clad in a war shell. The relationship between Junior and Senior is abusive and inconsistent. Prince Hamlet moves from childlike adoration to profound guilt. The King reaches out to strike and shake, but when his hands near transgression they open up and receive. The fearful presence of the armored monarch is the result of a lunatic mind whose own hallucinations cannot be realized without self-harming enmity. And we know Hamlet imagines his father because the televised format allows for informative jump cuts. One take from Hamlet’s perspective shows an unspeaking old man, looming over the shoulder of his shaken mother, another take—seconds apart—shows the same space occupied by nothing but empty space.
Still, even with the assistance of cinematographic intervention the traditional theatrical indicators of Hamlet’s madness are all here. The wide eyes, his obsessive musings and self-deprecation are plainly stated as they are in Shakespeare’s script. Hamlet still dominates and berates his mother in her own bed, muddling the already murky waters of Hamlet’s involvement with his father’s legacy. He kisses her mouth and leaves, shouting “Goodnight mother!” in a clownish cackle burst as he drags out the body of conspirator Polonius. He is clearly not well, and his mother is given over to hilarity and begins sobbing. She flinches when her husband reaches out to her as a comfort, fearing his hands for their similarity to her son’s transgressions—and perhaps for their identical semblance to her late husband’s.
This insanity is perhaps the most compelling of all motivators as it works independent of reason, giving motivation to otherwise undesirable or unconceivable ends that disgust their own beholder. We see Hamlet fall apart and strike out in the way he always does. Hamlet resigns to mutter to himself from the shadows, and whenever he is confronted with questioning or assault he lunges out verbally, loudly mocking his accusers. When asked where Polonius is he slurs “In Heaven!” Hamlet mocks the political intrigue, suggesting that everyone present on stage knows just as much as the spectator camera. He sings “whee!” as he is wheeled off stage. We see the same sickness mirrored in those who have touched Hamlet. Ophelia dances, warbles, strips and screams.
It is clever to brace a play about motivations and reason on the shoulders of a man whose mind is devoid of conventional reason. It is ingenious to fully realize the possibilities of this clever concept. Shakespeare has created a fully realized world, one that plays to his strengths with wordplay and conflict escalation. The Stratford Royal Shakespeare Company does right by this accomplishment by giving new life to its imagery. Hamlet is enhanced by cinematography because it is literature, timeless and oft given new meaning by reinterpretation.
by Kevin Zebroski
Hamlet attacked the revenge trend with wit. The motivations encountered by a vengeful hero would cripple all but the most stoic of murder machines. Heroes are not made by violence, nor are villains given to the world by circumstance. Any attempt to graft a plot from such impossible figures of masculinity, piety, and wickedness results in a lesser production when held aside Shakespeare’s more precise insight. Hamlet is a play that concerns itself with the intricacy of human motivation more than anything else. A lesser revenge story would attempt to replace this exploration of psyche with spectacular blood-bathing, but Hamlet adheres to the reality of man. Every emotion, hesitation, doubting thought, and rationale is a result of an individual’s attempt to secure their place in the play’s universe. Shakespeare’s profound understanding of humanity separates his works from prototypical Greek theater. He uses theater to chronicle the human experience in finer detail, trading the grand two-dimensional tapestries of Athens for Rembrandt’s subtly illuminated portraits.
The quality of any interpretation of Hamlet might be judged by how delicately it treats this storytelling challenge of human sophistication. Since its conception Hamlet has been given over to reinterpretations of this unique Shakespearian insight, and every version attempts to yield something unique from the age old script. The Stratford Royal Shakespeare Company’s televised production of Hamlet, starring David Tennant and featuring Patrick Stewart, fully benefits from the strengths and limitations of its televised nature. It also provides a satisfying interpretation of the oft problematic complexity in Shakespeare’s original script.
The small screen may lack the majesty and subtlety of the traditional theatrical space, but it excels in malleability. The telecommunications director guides not only the blocking and speech of actors, but the eye of the audience through careful manipulation of an objective lens, the camera. The Royal Shakespeare Company gives weight to the interim between major decisions by adroitly positioning the camera in a way that layers an already intricate script. Static soliloquy is replaced by shifting camera angles struggling to follow an indecisive emotional whirl. The ever present eye of treachery is constantly applied and reapplied via a digital camera that ratchets and zooms into the privacy of Denmark’s bedrooms and hallways. Television thrives in providing explicit communication, and this adaptation of Hamlet gives concrete shape to the tones of skewed perspective and paranoia that are historically abstracted from the script.
Still, television is partially derivative of the classic theater, and as such it must be designed around the principles of a good show. Costume design is an important component of theatrical production that should be tailored to assist in the play’s focus, and clothing becomes even more important as the close-up vantage of a camera allows for fine inspection of a garment. The wardrobe in this Hamlet reflects the surrealist modern setting. The dress also provides a characterization tool for a modern audience that would be distracted and numbed over by the flowery excesses of Renaissance gear. Fluffy pantaloons and brocaded waistcoats turn into white noise when combined with the already flowery Shakespearian dialogue. The modern audience will fail to pick up the sartorial eccentricities in a field of screaming vibrancy and alien silhouettes. An ornate play like Hamlet benefits from eliminating nonessential distractions, as the audience has enough work to do when justifying Prince Hamlet’s sanity, or analyzing Claudius’ treachery.
Hamlet wears a dinner jacket to court, t-shirts almost everywhere else, and sporting winter gear for his trip to Yorick’s gravesite. Hamlet’s wardrobe reflects the versatility of modern sportswear, as it adapts to inclement weather more readily than social occasion. The decision to dress Hamlet in the contemporary convention help him to earn the audience’s trust, as Renaissance cultural dress is an alien object to a twenty-first century demographic, but Hamlet’s wardrobe is not solely a familiarization device. The aesthetics of modern dress also allow flexibility in creative design. Somber items—like the winter coat—highlight facial expression. Hamlet’s winter skull cap lowers his hairline, shrouding everything but Tennant’s bulging eyes in a way that overtly highlights his squeamishness and fragility. Yorick is a heavy burden in the hands of a skinny English man-child. Other outfits help to emphasize the visage of youth even more. The silly musculoskeletal graphic t-shirt Tennant wears in the company of the players troupe scene accentuates Prince Hamlet’s impatience, his energy, and his youth.
Tennant’s frame and face lend to this particular realization of a young Hamlet. His physicality is emotive. In his self-deprecating speech of “pigeon-livered” description he dances through the set, waving his arms inward and inviting the audience to feel as he does on “swounds that I should take it.” But it’s dynamic, not all motion without pause, for he is able to stand and hang his head on “dull and muddy rascal,” and seems defeated. Then he approaches the camera, stares into the lens point blank and asks “am I a coward?” This moment of fourth wall penetration is important for this Hamlet’s success in the televised form. Soliloquies are turned into a one sided conversation with the audience instead of prolonged verbal speech bubbles, and in doing so they are freed from the stereotypes of baroque theatrical styling. The viewer is less inclined to roll their eyes at perceived melodrama. They are invited to sympathize with someone desperate to communicate to anyone who might listen. In a way this version of Hamlet capitalizes on the voyeuristic themes of user-created content submission to websites like Youtube. It is a desperate call out to no one in particular. Prince Hamlet is someone with a lot to say about himself who cannot be bothered to assume a costume of showmanship. It is an appropriate type of Prince Hamlet for the early twenty-first century, a Hamlet who takes selfies.
Just about everything else in the RSC production is contemporarily conscious as well, from the costume design to its availability on the internet for streaming. This decision to profane the original play into more easily consumable digital information is core to its value as an interpretation. The RSC not only revitalizes the play in this way, removing the barriers of entry that a theatrical rendition would enforce, but it replicates the mission of its author. Shakespeare wrote for the theater because it was universal as a venue for entertainment. The story of Hamlet was not devised for exclusivity, it was designed to be heard and seen by anyone that might want to, and today’s standards for easily accessible media have made the internet into the simplest common denominator for entertainment. This rendition of a theatrical classic is not merely a showcase for proficiency and verbiage, it is art that seeks to entertain and engage.
This tension between Hamlets Junior and Senior is exacerbated by the confusing and ingenious decision to cast Patrick Stewart in the roles of King Hamlet and Claudius. This decision is good for two reasons. Firstly, Patrick Stewart should be on screen as frequently as possible because he’s terribly entertaining. His posture is regal, and his vocal range lends gravity to his every action. People would pay to watch Stewart read ingredients lists off of shampoo bottles. But there is another aspect to this decision to double-cast that would remain valid even without the involvement of a classically trained icon of British theater. One actor occupies the roles of the deceased King Hamlet and Claudius. The director creates a universe in which paternity and adversity combined is given a single face.
It is against this single face that Prince Hamlet squares off against for the majority of the play. The two men curse each other from the shadows. Prince Hamlet draws a switchblade above Claudius head, one bowed in prayer. The young prince claims “and now I’ll do it!” and the audience believes him as the camera cuts from his fast moving hands to a hyper-ventilating Hamlet. He stops, caught between desire and inaction while the incumbent’s mouth blurts gospel. When Hamlet retreats we are made privy to Claudius’ intentions. “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.” The old man has shielded himself from his would be murderer by abusing Hamlet’s sense of confused honor; a sense that was implanted by that same face wearing a helmet. The King Hamlet offers an impossible task for his son, to commit cold-blooded murder honorably and unflinchingly. Patrick Stewart effectively plays antagonist from all sides, trapping his son into a confrontation with his likeness.
The ghostly King Hamlet wears a fantastic combination of space suit and helmet. He is eternally clad in a war shell. The relationship between Junior and Senior is abusive and inconsistent. Prince Hamlet moves from childlike adoration to profound guilt. The King reaches out to strike and shake, but when his hands near transgression they open up and receive. The fearful presence of the armored monarch is the result of a lunatic mind whose own hallucinations cannot be realized without self-harming enmity. And we know Hamlet imagines his father because the televised format allows for informative jump cuts. One take from Hamlet’s perspective shows an unspeaking old man, looming over the shoulder of his shaken mother, another take—seconds apart—shows the same space occupied by nothing but empty space.
Still, even with the assistance of cinematographic intervention the traditional theatrical indicators of Hamlet’s madness are all here. The wide eyes, his obsessive musings and self-deprecation are plainly stated as they are in Shakespeare’s script. Hamlet still dominates and berates his mother in her own bed, muddling the already murky waters of Hamlet’s involvement with his father’s legacy. He kisses her mouth and leaves, shouting “Goodnight mother!” in a clownish cackle burst as he drags out the body of conspirator Polonius. He is clearly not well, and his mother is given over to hilarity and begins sobbing. She flinches when her husband reaches out to her as a comfort, fearing his hands for their similarity to her son’s transgressions—and perhaps for their identical semblance to her late husband’s.
This insanity is perhaps the most compelling of all motivators as it works independent of reason, giving motivation to otherwise undesirable or unconceivable ends that disgust their own beholder. We see Hamlet fall apart and strike out in the way he always does. Hamlet resigns to mutter to himself from the shadows, and whenever he is confronted with questioning or assault he lunges out verbally, loudly mocking his accusers. When asked where Polonius is he slurs “In Heaven!” Hamlet mocks the political intrigue, suggesting that everyone present on stage knows just as much as the spectator camera. He sings “whee!” as he is wheeled off stage. We see the same sickness mirrored in those who have touched Hamlet. Ophelia dances, warbles, strips and screams.
It is clever to brace a play about motivations and reason on the shoulders of a man whose mind is devoid of conventional reason. It is ingenious to fully realize the possibilities of this clever concept. Shakespeare has created a fully realized world, one that plays to his strengths with wordplay and conflict escalation. The Stratford Royal Shakespeare Company does right by this accomplishment by giving new life to its imagery. Hamlet is enhanced by cinematography because it is literature, timeless and oft given new meaning by reinterpretation.
Hamlet Profaned
by Kevin Zebroski
Hamlet attacked the revenge trend with wit. The motivations encountered by a vengeful hero would cripple all but the most stoic of murder machines. Heroes are not made by violence, nor are villains given to the world by circumstance. Any attempt to graft a plot from such impossible figures of masculinity, piety, and wickedness results in a lesser production when held aside Shakespeare’s more precise insight. Hamlet is a play that concerns itself with the intricacy of human motivation more than anything else. A lesser revenge story would attempt to replace this exploration of psyche with spectacular blood-bathing, but Hamlet adheres to the reality of man. Every emotion, hesitation, doubting thought, and rationale is a result of an individual’s attempt to secure their place in the play’s universe. Shakespeare’s profound understanding of humanity separates his works from prototypical Greek theater. He uses theater to chronicle the human experience in finer detail, trading the grand two-dimensional tapestries of Athens for Rembrandt’s subtly illuminated portraits.
The quality of any interpretation of Hamlet might be judged by how delicately it treats this storytelling challenge of human sophistication. Since its conception Hamlet has been given over to reinterpretations of this unique Shakespearian insight, and every version attempts to yield something unique from the age old script. The Stratford Royal Shakespeare Company’s televised production of Hamlet, starring David Tennant and featuring Patrick Stewart, fully benefits from the strengths and limitations of its televised nature. It also provides a satisfying interpretation of the oft problematic complexity in Shakespeare’s original script.
The small screen may lack the majesty and subtlety of the traditional theatrical space, but it excels in malleability. The telecommunications director guides not only the blocking and speech of actors, but the eye of the audience through careful manipulation of an objective lens, the camera. The Royal Shakespeare Company gives weight to the interim between major decisions by adroitly positioning the camera in a way that layers an already intricate script. Static soliloquy is replaced by shifting camera angles struggling to follow an indecisive emotional whirl. The ever present eye of treachery is constantly applied and reapplied via a digital camera that ratchets and zooms into the privacy of Denmark’s bedrooms and hallways. Television thrives in providing explicit communication, and this adaptation of Hamlet gives concrete shape to the tones of skewed perspective and paranoia that are historically abstracted from the script.
Still, television is partially derivative of the classic theater, and as such it must be designed around the principles of a good show. Costume design is an important component of theatrical production that should be tailored to assist in the play’s focus, and clothing becomes even more important as the close-up vantage of a camera allows for fine inspection of a garment. The wardrobe in this Hamlet reflects the surrealist modern setting. The dress also provides a characterization tool for a modern audience that would be distracted and numbed over by the flowery excesses of Renaissance gear. Fluffy pantaloons and brocaded waistcoats turn into white noise when combined with the already flowery Shakespearian dialogue. The modern audience will fail to pick up the sartorial eccentricities in a field of screaming vibrancy and alien silhouettes. An ornate play like Hamlet benefits from eliminating nonessential distractions, as the audience has enough work to do when justifying Prince Hamlet’s sanity, or analyzing Claudius’ treachery.
Hamlet wears a dinner jacket to court, t-shirts almost everywhere else, and sporting winter gear for his trip to Yorick’s gravesite. Hamlet’s wardrobe reflects the versatility of modern sportswear, as it adapts to inclement weather more readily than social occasion. The decision to dress Hamlet in the contemporary convention help him to earn the audience’s trust, as Renaissance cultural dress is an alien object to a twenty-first century demographic, but Hamlet’s wardrobe is not solely a familiarization device. The aesthetics of modern dress also allow flexibility in creative design. Somber items—like the winter coat—highlight facial expression. Hamlet’s winter skull cap lowers his hairline, shrouding everything but Tennant’s bulging eyes in a way that overtly highlights his squeamishness and fragility. Yorick is a heavy burden in the hands of a skinny English man-child. Other outfits help to emphasize the visage of youth even more. The silly musculoskeletal graphic t-shirt Tennant wears in the company of the players troupe scene accentuates Prince Hamlet’s impatience, his energy, and his youth.
Tennant’s frame and face lend to this particular realization of a young Hamlet. His physicality is emotive. In his self-deprecating speech of “pigeon-livered” description he dances through the set, waving his arms inward and inviting the audience to feel as he does on “swounds that I should take it.” But it’s dynamic, not all motion without pause, for he is able to stand and hang his head on “dull and muddy rascal,” and seems defeated. Then he approaches the camera, stares into the lens point blank and asks “am I a coward?” This moment of fourth wall penetration is important for this Hamlet’s success in the televised form. Soliloquies are turned into a one sided conversation with the audience instead of prolonged verbal speech bubbles, and in doing so they are freed from the stereotypes of baroque theatrical styling. The viewer is less inclined to roll their eyes at perceived melodrama. They are invited to sympathize with someone desperate to communicate to anyone who might listen. In a way this version of Hamlet capitalizes on the voyeuristic themes of user-created content submission to websites like Youtube. It is a desperate call out to no one in particular. Prince Hamlet is someone with a lot to say about himself who cannot be bothered to assume a costume of showmanship. It is an appropriate type of Prince Hamlet for the early twenty-first century, a Hamlet who takes selfies.
Just about everything else in the RSC production is contemporarily conscious as well, from the costume design to its availability on the internet for streaming. This decision to profane the original play into more easily consumable digital information is core to its value as an interpretation. The RSC not only revitalizes the play in this way, removing the barriers of entry that a theatrical rendition would enforce, but it replicates the mission of its author. Shakespeare wrote for the theater because it was universal as a venue for entertainment. The story of Hamlet was not devised for exclusivity, it was designed to be heard and seen by anyone that might want to, and today’s standards for easily accessible media have made the internet into the simplest common denominator for entertainment. This rendition of a theatrical classic is not merely a showcase for proficiency and verbiage, it is art that seeks to entertain and engage.
This tension between Hamlets Junior and Senior is exacerbated by the confusing and ingenious decision to cast Patrick Stewart in the roles of King Hamlet and Claudius. This decision is good for two reasons. Firstly, Patrick Stewart should be on screen as frequently as possible because he’s terribly entertaining. His posture is regal, and his vocal range lends gravity to his every action. People would pay to watch Stewart read ingredients lists off of shampoo bottles. But there is another aspect to this decision to double-cast that would remain valid even without the involvement of a classically trained icon of British theater. One actor occupies the roles of the deceased King Hamlet and Claudius. The director creates a universe in which paternity and adversity combined is given a single face.
It is against this single face that Prince Hamlet squares off against for the majority of the play. The two men curse each other from the shadows. Prince Hamlet draws a switchblade above Claudius head, one bowed in prayer. The young prince claims “and now I’ll do it!” and the audience believes him as the camera cuts from his fast moving hands to a hyper-ventilating Hamlet. He stops, caught between desire and inaction while the incumbent’s mouth blurts gospel. When Hamlet retreats we are made privy to Claudius’ intentions. “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.” The old man has shielded himself from his would be murderer by abusing Hamlet’s sense of confused honor; a sense that was implanted by that same face wearing a helmet. The King Hamlet offers an impossible task for his son, to commit cold-blooded murder honorably and unflinchingly. Patrick Stewart effectively plays antagonist from all sides, trapping his son into a confrontation with his likeness.
The ghostly King Hamlet wears a fantastic combination of space suit and helmet. He is eternally clad in a war shell. The relationship between Junior and Senior is abusive and inconsistent. Prince Hamlet moves from childlike adoration to profound guilt. The King reaches out to strike and shake, but when his hands near transgression they open up and receive. The fearful presence of the armored monarch is the result of a lunatic mind whose own hallucinations cannot be realized without self-harming enmity. And we know Hamlet imagines his father because the televised format allows for informative jump cuts. One take from Hamlet’s perspective shows an unspeaking old man, looming over the shoulder of his shaken mother, another take—seconds apart—shows the same space occupied by nothing but empty space.
Still, even with the assistance of cinematographic intervention the traditional theatrical indicators of Hamlet’s madness are all here. The wide eyes, his obsessive musings and self-deprecation are plainly stated as they are in Shakespeare’s script. Hamlet still dominates and berates his mother in her own bed, muddling the already murky waters of Hamlet’s involvement with his father’s legacy. He kisses her mouth and leaves, shouting “Goodnight mother!” in a clownish cackle burst as he drags out the body of conspirator Polonius. He is clearly not well, and his mother is given over to hilarity and begins sobbing. She flinches when her husband reaches out to her as a comfort, fearing his hands for their similarity to her son’s transgressions—and perhaps for their identical semblance to her late husband’s.
This insanity is perhaps the most compelling of all motivators as it works independent of reason, giving motivation to otherwise undesirable or unconceivable ends that disgust their own beholder. We see Hamlet fall apart and strike out in the way he always does. Hamlet resigns to mutter to himself from the shadows, and whenever he is confronted with questioning or assault he lunges out verbally, loudly mocking his accusers. When asked where Polonius is he slurs “In Heaven!” Hamlet mocks the political intrigue, suggesting that everyone present on stage knows just as much as the spectator camera. He sings “whee!” as he is wheeled off stage. We see the same sickness mirrored in those who have touched Hamlet. Ophelia dances, warbles, strips and screams.
It is clever to brace a play about motivations and reason on the shoulders of a man whose mind is devoid of conventional reason. It is ingenious to fully realize the possibilities of this clever concept. Shakespeare has created a fully realized world, one that plays to his strengths with wordplay and conflict escalation. The Stratford Royal Shakespeare Company does right by this accomplishment by giving new life to its imagery. Hamlet is enhanced by cinematography because it is literature, timeless and oft given new meaning by reinterpretation.
by Kevin Zebroski
Hamlet attacked the revenge trend with wit. The motivations encountered by a vengeful hero would cripple all but the most stoic of murder machines. Heroes are not made by violence, nor are villains given to the world by circumstance. Any attempt to graft a plot from such impossible figures of masculinity, piety, and wickedness results in a lesser production when held aside Shakespeare’s more precise insight. Hamlet is a play that concerns itself with the intricacy of human motivation more than anything else. A lesser revenge story would attempt to replace this exploration of psyche with spectacular blood-bathing, but Hamlet adheres to the reality of man. Every emotion, hesitation, doubting thought, and rationale is a result of an individual’s attempt to secure their place in the play’s universe. Shakespeare’s profound understanding of humanity separates his works from prototypical Greek theater. He uses theater to chronicle the human experience in finer detail, trading the grand two-dimensional tapestries of Athens for Rembrandt’s subtly illuminated portraits.
The quality of any interpretation of Hamlet might be judged by how delicately it treats this storytelling challenge of human sophistication. Since its conception Hamlet has been given over to reinterpretations of this unique Shakespearian insight, and every version attempts to yield something unique from the age old script. The Stratford Royal Shakespeare Company’s televised production of Hamlet, starring David Tennant and featuring Patrick Stewart, fully benefits from the strengths and limitations of its televised nature. It also provides a satisfying interpretation of the oft problematic complexity in Shakespeare’s original script.
The small screen may lack the majesty and subtlety of the traditional theatrical space, but it excels in malleability. The telecommunications director guides not only the blocking and speech of actors, but the eye of the audience through careful manipulation of an objective lens, the camera. The Royal Shakespeare Company gives weight to the interim between major decisions by adroitly positioning the camera in a way that layers an already intricate script. Static soliloquy is replaced by shifting camera angles struggling to follow an indecisive emotional whirl. The ever present eye of treachery is constantly applied and reapplied via a digital camera that ratchets and zooms into the privacy of Denmark’s bedrooms and hallways. Television thrives in providing explicit communication, and this adaptation of Hamlet gives concrete shape to the tones of skewed perspective and paranoia that are historically abstracted from the script.
Still, television is partially derivative of the classic theater, and as such it must be designed around the principles of a good show. Costume design is an important component of theatrical production that should be tailored to assist in the play’s focus, and clothing becomes even more important as the close-up vantage of a camera allows for fine inspection of a garment. The wardrobe in this Hamlet reflects the surrealist modern setting. The dress also provides a characterization tool for a modern audience that would be distracted and numbed over by the flowery excesses of Renaissance gear. Fluffy pantaloons and brocaded waistcoats turn into white noise when combined with the already flowery Shakespearian dialogue. The modern audience will fail to pick up the sartorial eccentricities in a field of screaming vibrancy and alien silhouettes. An ornate play like Hamlet benefits from eliminating nonessential distractions, as the audience has enough work to do when justifying Prince Hamlet’s sanity, or analyzing Claudius’ treachery.
Hamlet wears a dinner jacket to court, t-shirts almost everywhere else, and sporting winter gear for his trip to Yorick’s gravesite. Hamlet’s wardrobe reflects the versatility of modern sportswear, as it adapts to inclement weather more readily than social occasion. The decision to dress Hamlet in the contemporary convention help him to earn the audience’s trust, as Renaissance cultural dress is an alien object to a twenty-first century demographic, but Hamlet’s wardrobe is not solely a familiarization device. The aesthetics of modern dress also allow flexibility in creative design. Somber items—like the winter coat—highlight facial expression. Hamlet’s winter skull cap lowers his hairline, shrouding everything but Tennant’s bulging eyes in a way that overtly highlights his squeamishness and fragility. Yorick is a heavy burden in the hands of a skinny English man-child. Other outfits help to emphasize the visage of youth even more. The silly musculoskeletal graphic t-shirt Tennant wears in the company of the players troupe scene accentuates Prince Hamlet’s impatience, his energy, and his youth.
Tennant’s frame and face lend to this particular realization of a young Hamlet. His physicality is emotive. In his self-deprecating speech of “pigeon-livered” description he dances through the set, waving his arms inward and inviting the audience to feel as he does on “swounds that I should take it.” But it’s dynamic, not all motion without pause, for he is able to stand and hang his head on “dull and muddy rascal,” and seems defeated. Then he approaches the camera, stares into the lens point blank and asks “am I a coward?” This moment of fourth wall penetration is important for this Hamlet’s success in the televised form. Soliloquies are turned into a one sided conversation with the audience instead of prolonged verbal speech bubbles, and in doing so they are freed from the stereotypes of baroque theatrical styling. The viewer is less inclined to roll their eyes at perceived melodrama. They are invited to sympathize with someone desperate to communicate to anyone who might listen. In a way this version of Hamlet capitalizes on the voyeuristic themes of user-created content submission to websites like Youtube. It is a desperate call out to no one in particular. Prince Hamlet is someone with a lot to say about himself who cannot be bothered to assume a costume of showmanship. It is an appropriate type of Prince Hamlet for the early twenty-first century, a Hamlet who takes selfies.
Just about everything else in the RSC production is contemporarily conscious as well, from the costume design to its availability on the internet for streaming. This decision to profane the original play into more easily consumable digital information is core to its value as an interpretation. The RSC not only revitalizes the play in this way, removing the barriers of entry that a theatrical rendition would enforce, but it replicates the mission of its author. Shakespeare wrote for the theater because it was universal as a venue for entertainment. The story of Hamlet was not devised for exclusivity, it was designed to be heard and seen by anyone that might want to, and today’s standards for easily accessible media have made the internet into the simplest common denominator for entertainment. This rendition of a theatrical classic is not merely a showcase for proficiency and verbiage, it is art that seeks to entertain and engage.
This tension between Hamlets Junior and Senior is exacerbated by the confusing and ingenious decision to cast Patrick Stewart in the roles of King Hamlet and Claudius. This decision is good for two reasons. Firstly, Patrick Stewart should be on screen as frequently as possible because he’s terribly entertaining. His posture is regal, and his vocal range lends gravity to his every action. People would pay to watch Stewart read ingredients lists off of shampoo bottles. But there is another aspect to this decision to double-cast that would remain valid even without the involvement of a classically trained icon of British theater. One actor occupies the roles of the deceased King Hamlet and Claudius. The director creates a universe in which paternity and adversity combined is given a single face.
It is against this single face that Prince Hamlet squares off against for the majority of the play. The two men curse each other from the shadows. Prince Hamlet draws a switchblade above Claudius head, one bowed in prayer. The young prince claims “and now I’ll do it!” and the audience believes him as the camera cuts from his fast moving hands to a hyper-ventilating Hamlet. He stops, caught between desire and inaction while the incumbent’s mouth blurts gospel. When Hamlet retreats we are made privy to Claudius’ intentions. “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.” The old man has shielded himself from his would be murderer by abusing Hamlet’s sense of confused honor; a sense that was implanted by that same face wearing a helmet. The King Hamlet offers an impossible task for his son, to commit cold-blooded murder honorably and unflinchingly. Patrick Stewart effectively plays antagonist from all sides, trapping his son into a confrontation with his likeness.
The ghostly King Hamlet wears a fantastic combination of space suit and helmet. He is eternally clad in a war shell. The relationship between Junior and Senior is abusive and inconsistent. Prince Hamlet moves from childlike adoration to profound guilt. The King reaches out to strike and shake, but when his hands near transgression they open up and receive. The fearful presence of the armored monarch is the result of a lunatic mind whose own hallucinations cannot be realized without self-harming enmity. And we know Hamlet imagines his father because the televised format allows for informative jump cuts. One take from Hamlet’s perspective shows an unspeaking old man, looming over the shoulder of his shaken mother, another take—seconds apart—shows the same space occupied by nothing but empty space.
Still, even with the assistance of cinematographic intervention the traditional theatrical indicators of Hamlet’s madness are all here. The wide eyes, his obsessive musings and self-deprecation are plainly stated as they are in Shakespeare’s script. Hamlet still dominates and berates his mother in her own bed, muddling the already murky waters of Hamlet’s involvement with his father’s legacy. He kisses her mouth and leaves, shouting “Goodnight mother!” in a clownish cackle burst as he drags out the body of conspirator Polonius. He is clearly not well, and his mother is given over to hilarity and begins sobbing. She flinches when her husband reaches out to her as a comfort, fearing his hands for their similarity to her son’s transgressions—and perhaps for their identical semblance to her late husband’s.
This insanity is perhaps the most compelling of all motivators as it works independent of reason, giving motivation to otherwise undesirable or unconceivable ends that disgust their own beholder. We see Hamlet fall apart and strike out in the way he always does. Hamlet resigns to mutter to himself from the shadows, and whenever he is confronted with questioning or assault he lunges out verbally, loudly mocking his accusers. When asked where Polonius is he slurs “In Heaven!” Hamlet mocks the political intrigue, suggesting that everyone present on stage knows just as much as the spectator camera. He sings “whee!” as he is wheeled off stage. We see the same sickness mirrored in those who have touched Hamlet. Ophelia dances, warbles, strips and screams.
It is clever to brace a play about motivations and reason on the shoulders of a man whose mind is devoid of conventional reason. It is ingenious to fully realize the possibilities of this clever concept. Shakespeare has created a fully realized world, one that plays to his strengths with wordplay and conflict escalation. The Stratford Royal Shakespeare Company does right by this accomplishment by giving new life to its imagery. Hamlet is enhanced by cinematography because it is literature, timeless and oft given new meaning by reinterpretation.
