I’m so excited to watch Benedick Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller in the 2011 recording of Frankenstein at the National Theater. Not only are these actors terrific, but, (as you might expect), I noticed some Shakespearean tropes in Mary Shelly’s novel.
“Graves, at my command, Hath waked their sleepers”
One big trope in Frankenstein is the danger of man crossing over into God’s domain- that from the beginning of time there has been a knowledge that God deliberately kept from humankind. In Frankenstein, this takes the form of scientific knowledge, but in Shakespeare, it is magic. In Macbeth, the title character is tempted by witches to know his destiny and is punished severely for it. Remember that when Shakespeare wrote the play, King James presided over hundreds of witch hunts and wrote a book on how to identify witches.
In The Tempest, Shakespeare gives us a more ambiguous look at magic where the magician Prospero has the power to create storms, conjure up spirits, and like Frankenstein, raise the dead:
I have bedimm'd The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder2065 Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up The pine and cedar: graves at my command Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth By my so potent art. The Tempest, Act V, Scene i.
Even though Prospero is the protagonist and he faces no consequences for his magic, for some reason he chooses to abandon it. It’s almost as if Shakespeare was anticipating Frankenstein by having a proto mad scientist character give up his art before it is too late:
But this rough magic I here abjure, and, when I have required Some heavenly music, which even now I do, To work mine end upon their senses that This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,2075 Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And deeper than did ever plummet sound I'll drown my book.
Prospero, Act V, Scene i.
“This thing of Darkness”
“You taught me language, and my profit in’t is I know how to curse!”
“Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants and have glutted myself with their shrieks and misery.
Shelly, Chapter 16
If you’ve never read the book Frankenstein, you might be surprised to learn that unlike Boris Karloff’s grunting silent monster, in the novel the Monster is actually intelligent and well-spoken. He engages in intellectual debates with his creator and demands to know why Frankenstein chose to abandon him.
My abhorrence of this fiend cannot be conceived. When I thought of him I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed. When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation.
Shelly, Chapter 9
So I’m really excited to see this play adaptation of the Shelly novel, and I hope you will check it out and see these Shakespearean tropes for yourself.
Since today is a day where many Americans ponder the benefits and perils of capitalism, I thought it would make ‘cents’ to talk about one of Shakespeare’s most obscure plays about money, democracy, and the corrupting effect of money.
Thanks to WordPress’ new interface, it’s easier for me to read what other bloggers have to say about the topics I write about. One trend I’ve noticed is the question that’s been boiling underneath the surface of a lot of people in our culture: “Should Shakespeare be ‘cancelled’?” It’s an interesting question and definitely merits discussion.
It is also a question that has some basis reality: Shakespeare was taken off the list of required reading of of schools in New Zealand. In 2007, The American Council Of Trustees and Allumni published a report called “The Vanishing Shakespeare,” about the number of colleges who no longer require English majors to take Shakespeare courses. If you read my post on Romeo and Juliet, you will recall that one of the main reasons why we have Shakespeare as a requirement in American high schools is that he is required reading in many colleges. So this could be part of a trend that extends to primary as well as secondary schools as well.
Many academics, (myself included), are wondering about Shakespeare’s status in education, and whether or not he will continue to be a staple of all English language curricula. So what I want to do with this essay is to ask the question, “Should Shakespeare be cancelled,” as well as”Should he not be cancelled? and “What even is cancelling and how does apply to somebody who is already long long dead now?”
First off, cards on the table: I am a white man, (with a beard), who has been studying Shakespeare for 20 years. I have a very clear bias; I would never advocate for Shakespeare being taken out of any schools. That said, I see merits to parts of the argument, and I do not believe that these teachers who are reexamining Shakespeare’s place in education are inherently wrong. Nor do I believe if that there is no merit to changing the way educators teach Shakespeare in our schools, (more on that later). My point is to write a thoughtful reflection about the nature of Shakespeare as a writer, his status within our culture, his status within the educational establishment, and how changing that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Part One: the arguments for cancelling Shakespeare
When I read the article “Why I am rethinking Teaching Shakespeare In My English Classroom,” by teacher Christina Torres, I noticed a lot of her arguments centered around diversity quotas and simply not having the class time to devote to Shakespeare. This is entirely understandable. Shakespeare has been dead for 400 years, which means language has changed a lot since his heyday.
Shakespeare poses several unique challenges in education. He wrote in an obscure form of poetry that is no longer fashionable. You have to read footnotes. Although 95% of the words he used are still used today, they are used in a very unique syntax. Furthermore, I come to teaching Shakespeare from the perspective of somebody who studied theater, acting, Elizabethan history, and everything that that is required to teach Shakespeare, but many teachers do not. My point is I can understand why a teacher feels that he or she does not have the time, energy, or the learning required to give Shakespeare the space that he so clearly demands.
The question of Shakespeare’s status in our classrooms also raises subtle questions about diversity. Many curricula these days emphasize diverse writers and try to highlight the cultural contributions of women, people of color, and LGBTQ people, and as far as we know, Shakespeare fit into none of these groups.
This educational initiative is a part of the anti racist initiative and I as an educator I am fully on board with this. I love to be in a classroom where Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Lorraine Hansberry, Mary Shelley, and Truman Capote share the same shelf is William Shakespeare, but ever since the 18th century Shakespeare and cultural nationalism have been inexorably linked.
Almost since the beginning of Shakespearean scholarship, American and British critics have sought to venerate Shakespeare as the peak of British culture, and thus the peak of human culture as well. It’s not a coincidence that we celebrate National Poetry Month the same month as Shakespeare’s birth and death. Also, even though we don’t know for sure when Shakespeare was born, we celebrate it on April 23rd, St. George’s Day, thus forever linking England’s greatest poet, with its patron saint. George Bernard Shaw, (an Irishman), coined the term ‘bardolotry,’ to describe the treatment of Shakespeare by the English as if he were a god and the evidence is quite damning:
The infant Shakespeare attended by Nature and the Passions (Romney, c. 1791-1792)
Just look at this painting where Shakespeare is portrayed as in the same pose and with the same reverence as the baby Jesus. This reverence carried over to poetry, music, festivals, and of course, to the classroom. As I wrote in My Romeo and Juliet post, since the beginning of American public education, Shakespeare was an indispensable fixture in American schools, and thus, prompting American writers like Mark Twain to grumpily refer to Shakespeare and other classics as “Something everyone wants to have read, but nobody wants to read.”
Countless textbooks refer to Shakespeare as the greatest writer in the English language, and possibly the greatest writer ever. Ralph Waldo Emerson once preached that Shakespeare was: “Inconceivably wise.” The god-like aura around Shakespeare has made him nearly impervious to criticism and English speakers on both sides of the Atlantic have claimed Shakespeare as their gospel. Being an English speaker means having the God-Shakespeare on your side, and if you have God on your side historically speaking, you can justify anything.
“A Discovery Of the Bermudas,” 1610. Thought by many scholars to be Shakespeare’s inspiration for “The Tempest”
The British were keen to elevate Shakespeare to this godlike status partially because it showed that their culture was superior to others. Let’s not forget that Shakespeare’s last play The Tempest is about a man with book learning who goes off and colonizes an island whose inhabitants seem savage and uneducated. If our goal as educators with adding anti racist education is to show that all voices are valid, to highlight the contributions of every ethnic group, and to refute the notion that white culture is in any way superior to any other, then to a certain degree, we must knock Shakespeare off his literary pedestal.
Caliban, Prospero’s slave from “The Tempest”
We also should not a take a blind eye to the anti-POC and mysoginist language in some of Shakespeare’s plays. For instance one line I deeply despise in Romeo and Juliet is the line where Romeo refers to Juliet by saying she “Hangs upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in Ethiop’s ear” (A black woman wearing an earring).
1583/5 – ANNIBALE CARRACCI, PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN HOLDING A CLOCK
This statement contrast beauty, specifically the beauty of white skin, with the “ugliness” of a black woman’s ear. Shakespeare uses this metaphor several times in several plays, establishing white as beauty and black as the aberration.
I bring this up not to say that Shakespeare should be cancelled and hated because of this racially insensitive language, because he’s not the only one who does it. All you have to do is Google “Who’s the fairest one of all?” to realize that for centuries, fair skin, beautiful skin, and white skin meant the same thing. As Dr. Grady says in the video above, having an honest discussion of Shakespeare’s language and his culture’s attitude towards race is an opportunity to teach critical race theory in the classroom, and to teach students to recognize and deplore dehumanizing language, which though poetic to white Elizabethans, is hurtful and dehumanizing to people of color. In short, banning or condemning Shakespeare is counter productive, but examining his language, culture, and politics with a critical eye is a very useful and important exercise.
Part 2 why Shakespeare doesn’t deserve to be cancelled
I’ve established that Shakespeare has connections with some very dark moments in a European history and he should not be celebrated merely because of he was white or because he was British. I believe that Shakespeare’s contributions to the English language as well as drama and the arts still makes him worthy of study by students. As this video from the New York Times shows, students need at least a basic understanding of Shakespeare to understand western culture:
There’s No Escaping Shakespeare: New York Times, 2016.
I believe that, as long as we educators don’t indulge our bardolotrous tendancies, and keep Shakespeare in the context of the period in which he lived, we can still teach him in a way that will benefit our students.
One small way to put Shakespeare in context is very simple: STOP USING THE TERM “RENAISSANCE.” Most scholars now refer to Shakespeare’s time period as the Early Modern Period, not The Renaissance, which was an honorific term that people used during Shakespeare’s time period. The term RENAISSANCE, meaning the rebirth of classical learning and by extention the rebirth of sophisticated European culture, can give the impression that it was only a period of study and artistic achievement, leaving out colonization and racial and political tension. I find Early Modern Period a very useful descriptor because like it or not, Shakespeare’s culture influenced ours, therefore an understanding of him is very much understanding of where we came from. Learning from Shakespeare is like learning from history- we cannot shy away from the mistakes of the past, nor should we flat out reject its benefits.
it should be noted that a lot of the good scholarship in the last to the last 50 or 60 years has been tasked with putting Shakespeare back into his historical context and trying to reclaim his staus as a man of his time. Dr. Stephen Greenblatt of Harvard University helped coin the term ‘new historicism’ which emphasizes learning about the culture of a writer’s time period. To New Historicists (such as myself), Shakespeare is no longer considered a great man of history, but a man shaped by the culture of his time, which is to say a man who had good parts and bad parts much like history itself. This is the approach that I think should be taught in American schools highlighting how Elizabethan culture shaped Shakespeare, and how he shaped our culture in turn.
Comparing Shakespeare to history, especially American history, is very useful in American schools. Like the founding fathers Shakespeare reached towards an ideal. He wrote plays about ideal kingship, even though kingship is a cruel and autocratic system of government. He wrote romances about young lovers who follow the wonderful idea of love at first sight, even though in reality that concept is somewhat rare, and very often fraught with peril. And like Shakespeare, people often ignore the flaws and human failings of the founding fathers too. Look at this mural painting of The Apotheosis of Washington, which still looks down on mortals from the US capital building in Washington DC.
The Apotheosis of Washington Constantino Brumidi, 1865 .
Much like the founding fathers’ document that declares that all men are created equal, we can appreciate Shakespeare’s plays but also be aware of their flaws. Both documents were written by a flawed human being with a very narrow understanding of the wider culture and world in which he lived, but one who did his best to try and write works that would benefit all of mankind. As educators we can teach students to be inspired by this work, and seek to have a greater understanding of “The Great Globe Itself,” with the benefit of hindsight, so they may become enlightened citizens of the world, true Renaissance Men, Women, themselves.
So if I truly believe, (and I do), that Shakespeare is still relevant and has something to say to people regardless of their culture or cultural and racial backgrounds regardless of what time period they were born in and regardless of gender, how then can we teach him in classrooms in responsible and nuanced way?
What to do?
[ ]Give a cultural context to the play you study. A culture that is the direct ancestor of our own, but one that was frought with Colonialism, Casual racism, (especially in language), Sexism, Patriarchy, and Homosexual oppression. Not to toot my own horn, but this is what I tried to do with my Romeo and Juliet Website: https://sites.google.com/d/1iLSGjbllxU-ZwyrUya_xHtjojSCg9pd6/p/12GhgKdJr63wmTcm6TTvkZ-ROmUnALKQi/edit
-Give students the chance to rewrite or reword the more problematic elements, such as Romeo’s creepy stalking of Juliet,
-Highlight Shakespeare calling attention to patriarchial issues: Capulet in Act III, v, Friar Lawrence comparing love to gunpowder. Juliet raging against arranged marriage, etc.
Celebrate Shakespeare’s positive contributions to race relations: Othello was the first black hero on the London stage and the role helped generations of black actors get their start in theatre. There’s your modern bardolotry, Shakespeare not as “Inconceivably wise,” Inconceivably woke! You can also look at the proud tradition of color blind casting in Shakespeare’s performance history, such as Orson Wells’ “Voodoo Macbeth.”
Do some research on modern productions that translate the themes into a modern concept.
Book cover for “The Lovers,” the real-life story of Ali and Zakia, teenagers from Afghanastan, who fell in love in spite of their parent’s religious hatreds.
To sum up- cancelling Shakespeare doesn’t mean vilifying him. It means re-examining his role in our culture, and teaching students to appreciate the benefits, and try to correct the damages that his culture has brought to our own. We can’t change the past, but we can learn from it. As for Shakespeare himself, no amount of legitimate criticism will keep people like me from enjoying his plays. If anything, I appreciate even more the breadth and depth of his writing the more I learn about the culture in which he lived. I like to think that, if Shakespeare knew people would be talking about him in school, he’d echo the way Othello said he wanted to be remembered, to “Speak of me as I am, Nothing extenuate.” And that we heed the words of Ben Johnson in the dedication to the First Folio, when we think of treating Shakespeare as an icon.
Dedication by Ben Johnson in Shakespeare’s First Folio, 1623.
Like I said in the review for “Romeo and Juliet: Sealed With A Kiss,” adapting Shakespeare’s play for children seemed to me like an impossible undertaking, until I saw this film. This interpretation had all the romance and danger of Romeo and Juliet, with all the wry humor of Shrek. Before I present my thesis, I want to post a refutation of a review from a man I actually hold in very high esteem:
“You Wanted Me To Review Gnomio and Juliet, So I Did.” Kyle Kalgreen YouTube Video Essay.
I’ve watched all of Mr. Kalgreen’s reviews of Shakespeare on film, from Hamlet, to Ran, to Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus, and all but one of his reviews I genuinely loved. This is why I was so dissappointed when I saw this review. As his channel suggests, “Brows Held High” is mostly interested in high concept editions of Shakespeare and in a rare act of snobbery, Mr. Kalgren seems to turn his nose up at this movie, calling it essentially populist trash. He seems to say that the film misses the mark as a legitimate Shakespearean adaptation, and he’s not wrong. What he fails to notice though, is that is not the point of this movie. It’s purpose is not to be a faithful adaptation of Shakespeare, it’s a simplfied way of introducing children to Shakespeare.
This computer animated film is set in two adjoining houses in England, with two families of garden gnomes duking it out for supremacy. Though this seems like a ridiculous concept, it gives the film a great amount of charm, watching these two gnomes trot across the garden with their plaster feet, riding around on lawnmowers, and of course the fact that they are gnomes makes even Tybalt look cute.
Most importantly, unlike other ‘inanimate object comes to life’ movies, garden gnomes are able to be smashed. Unlike the nearly indestructable Woody or Lightning McQUeen- these characters can be smashed. It’s established in the first 10 minutes that both Gnomio and Juliet have parents that were smashed. This means that the audience is constantly worried for the safety of the characters, especially when they fight. This is a clever, kid-friendly shorthand that allows the audience to worry about the character’s mortality, without the gory realities of human death.
The characters are also handled with care and charm. Gnomeo is a cocky, self-assured gnome who first looks for adventure before finding love. Juliet is even more of a spitfire than her human counterpart, and is able to perform midnight catburgling into a nearby greenhouse. It’s their desire for fun and adventure that makes these two compatible, and makes their love easy for even a child to understand.
The film’s cleverness doesn’t stop there: the filmmakers inserted all kinds of Shakespearean jokes to make the play easier to understand and to entertain the audience. For example, the Capulet and Montegue households on “Verona Avenue” have the addresses 2B and another 2B crossed off, (punning on Hamlet’s most famous line). In addition, when we first meet Juliet, she argues with her father (voiced by Michael Caine) to let her off a small white platform that he forbids her from leaving. Because she’s a gnome, her father literally puts her on a pedestal, which beautifully illustrates the relationship between Juliet and Lord Capulet. In the play, this is hinted at, but not really explored, but in this version, it is front and center, and helps increase the drama.
Perhaps the most clever thing about Gnomeo and Juliet, is that the film makes you very aware that this is an homage, rather than a re-interpretation of the story. At the opening of the film, a tiny gnome with a ridiculously long hat says: “The story you’re about to see has been told before… A LOT.” This immediately reminds the audience that, although this film will give you the general idea of Shakespeare’s play, the real play is full of more violence and sex than a children’s movie will allow. At one point, Gnomeo even converses with an animated statue of Shakespeare himself, as a way of further conceding the homage, recognizing the difference between an adult-themed play, and a children’s movie, and hopefully, encouraging kids to see both versions.
I’m working on several educational projects at the moment and I’m proud to share this one with you. It’s what I call a virtual tour of Shakespeare’s London. The teacher I’m working with said she wanted to teach the kids about the culture of Elizabethan London as he was writing Romeo and Juliet. Naturally with the pandemic a field trip was out of the question, (for multiple reasons), but I wanted to create a visually interesting tour of the places Shakespeare knew and worked and try to imagine his perspective and how that might have informed the characters and themes of Romeo and Juliet.
So I created this: a website written as if Shakespeare himself is taking you on a tour of his London in the year 1593, the year where, as far as we know, he had just completed writing Romeo and Juliet. 1593 was also the middle of another outbreak of Bubonic Plague. It has virtual tours of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, Hampton Court Palace, Shakespeare’s Grammar School, and a quiz where you can pretend you’re in the Elizabethan doctor’s office.
For the class I’m helping, the students will fill out a worksheet as they navigate the website so they learn from the material at their own pace. If you’re interested, leave a comment and I’ll post the worksheet so you can use it in your classroom.
My hope is that this website can be a resource for anyone trying to connect with Romeo and Juliet and trying to learn from the culture of Elizabethan London. Shakespeare was a product of his time and his experiences must have had an influence on what he wrote. Even if they didn’t, they certainly influenced the people who saw the play and he knew that it would. So I hope it can help you understand a little bit more about the world of this famous play, and the context of the world that created it.
For Shakespeare’s Birthday, I thought I would discuss his most famous speech what is arguably his greatest play. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark was written in 1600, the pinnacle/ middle of Shakespeare’s career, after Julius Caesar but before Macbeth.
David Tennent as Hamlet. Royal Shakespeare Company, 2010.
To Be Or Not To Be has intrigued and mystified people for centuries. It is full of ambiguous imagery, haunting images, and solemn contemplative ideas. I’m going to try and break the speech down first like an intellectual argument, but I will also give you some of my interpretation of Hamlet’s thoughts and feelings. Shakespeare’s genius is creating a speech that gives plenty for the reader to interpret,, but it’s up to the reader to decide what’s happening in the speech.
Just a refresher of the plot:
1. The king has died and been seen as a ghost
2. He tells his son Hamlet that he was murdered by his brother Claudius, who killed him to become king and marry Hamlets mother, Gertrude.
Hamlet is trying to determine if the ghost is telling the truth and if so, how can Hamlet revenge the death of his father?
The speech occurs right in the middle of the play. Hamlet has been acting strange and the king is worried. He hides behind a tapestry right before Hamlet enters. He then delivers this famous and highly cryptic speech:
Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the Question: Whether 'tis Nobler in the minde to suffer The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune, Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them: to dye, to sleepe No more; and by a sleepe, to say we end The Heart-ake, and the thousand Naturall shockes That Flesh is heyre too? 'Tis a consummation Deuoutly to be wish'd. To dye to sleepe, To sleepe, perchance to Dreame; I, there's the rub, For in that sleepe of death, what dreames may come, When we haue shufflel'd off this mortall coile, Must giue vs pawse. There's the respect That makes Calamity of so long life: For who would beare the Whips and Scornes of time, The Oppressors wrong, the poore mans Contumely, The pangs of dispriz'd Loue, the Lawes delay, The insolence of Office, and the Spurnes That patient merit of the vnworthy takes, When he himselfe might his Quietus make With a bare Bodkin? Who would these Fardles beare To grunt and sweat vnder a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The vndiscouered Countrey, from whose Borne No Traueller returnes, Puzels the will, And makes vs rather beare those illes we haue, Then flye to others that we know not of. Thus Conscience does make Cowards of vs all, And thus the Natiue hew of Resolution Is sicklied o're, with the pale cast of Thought, And enterprizes of great pith and moment, With this regard their Currants turne away, And loose the name of Action. Soft you now,
Now before I talk about the context of the speech, I want to deconstruct it as an intellectual argument. Hamlet is grappling with something huge, and he is weighing the consequences of his potential actions. Remember, Hamlet is a prince, but he is also a college student, so he turns his choice into an intellectual argument.
If you look at the speech as an argument, it hinges on two points- to be or not to be.
One is passive and one is active
Both actions are potentially lethal, as evidenced by the two metaphors Hamlet describes later.
Contrary to popular belief, I believe that this speech is not just about suicide. It’s about the choice between suicide and murder, (in this case killing Claudius).
Three Speeches- Macbeth, and Hamlet
Lets discuss the two central images at the start of this speech. One is active- fighting (“taking arms”), and one is passive (“to suffer…”). Both choices have a similar outcome- death. No one can fight the sea, and arrows are just as lethal.
Let’s look at the speech again, and turn it into a series of beats using the conjunctions “and, but, and or,” The speech has 6 beats. What he’s thinking about or feeling is open to interpretation, but the argument definitely changes at these points. First the thesis:
This beat sets up the two options (murder and suicide). Why do I think this? Because it’s similar to two other speeches: https://youtu.be/nq3hcs1yFKw
It’s worth noting that about the same time, Shakespeare wrote three great soliloquis; Hamlet’s “To Be Or Not To Be,” Macbeth’s “If It Were Done,” and Brutus’ “It must be by his death.” All three speeches have some notable commonalities:
All three speeches are in passive voice; the would be murderer wishes he didn’t have to kill someone, but wants the victim dead nonetheless.
Refuse to mention the name of the man who will die.
Refuse to say ‘murder’
Personify death in abstract terms.
When I noticed the commonalities between the speeches, I came to realize that all of them are about murder, not just suicide. I think Hamlet alone contemplates suicide as well as murder, possibly because unlike Brutus and Macbeth, Hamlet is not at all sure he’s doing the right thing.
Beat 1 The Nerve: Hamlet is working himself up for something; either murder or suicide. It’s ambiguous which one he starts with, and largely depends upon the actor’s interpretation.
Beat 2The Consequences Whether Hamlet kills the king or himself, either way he could die and when he does, his soul will have to answer for his actions. This is similar to Macbeth, who worries that his foul murder will be exposed and judged by “Heaven’s cherubim, horses upon the sightless couriers of the air.”
“PITY,” by William Blake, alongside the text of Macbeth’s soliloquy from Act I, Scene 7.
“There’s the rub”- there’s the catch.
“Coil” refers to a snake skin. The line characterizes death as shedding an earthly body, something that seems all too easy to do. It’s an uncomfortable image because it makes death look all too easy. It also calls to mind the story of Gilgamesh, who had a flower that would grant him immortality, but a snake stole it, which is why snakes cam shed their skin, seemingly growing young again forever.
This beat is where Hamlet seems smothered in his frustrations with life.. Rather than making a decision, he’s sidetracked with a laundry list of universal problems. His energy seems up, but it’s unclear why.
When I performed this portion of the speech, I realized that everything Hamlet refers to, Claudius has done: he has oppressed and wronged the kingdom, he has delayed the law, and he has hindered Hamlet’s love for Ophelia by letting Polonius deny Hamlet’s access to her. Perhaps the laundry list is designed to psych him up- listing all the reasons Claudius deserves to die, (without tipping him off).
Beat 4: The Downward Spiral
Once again Hamlet is thwarted by the concept of Death and divine judgment. He seems to imply that everyone is scared into compliance with the threat of death.
The Conclusion:
Hamlet’s conclusion is that he has no conclusion. He can’t kill himself because his conscience tells him that God is against it, and he cannot kill Claudius because of fear of death or damnation.
When he says “The native hue of resolution,” he means red, (as in blood), is curtailed, cut off by the very thought of Deaths pale scythe.
Interpretations:
Mel Gibson plays Hamlet as a sort of man in mourning. He is as close to the action movie hero as Hamlet gets with his large, imposing physique and brutal looking medieval sword:
Speaking of action heroes, the whole movie Last Action Hero has a reoccurring motif of nodding to Hamlet. The avenging hero archetype is the prototype for every action movie, every superhero, (and most kung fu), and it began with Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This is why it’s hilarious that Schwarzeneger portrays him in Last Action Hero- the movie is a loving parody of every single action star since the original- Hamlet.
Why Else might Hamlet be so cryptic?
Not all versions are about suicide or murder
Lawrence Olivier believed that Hamlet has an Oedipus complex, and therefore has an unconscious desire to murder his father and sleep with this mother, which is why he considered himself unworthy to avenge his father’s death. In Olivier’s To Be, you can almost see his Hamlet aroused by his own Oedipal fantasies and then recoiling with disgust right before he says the line: “Perchance to dream.”
Kenneth Branaugh’s Hamlet centers around court intrigue. In contrast with Oliver’s Gothic Elsinore, his is bright and baroque, but it’s full of two way mirrors. Half the film is either large shots with lots of people watching public performances or POV shots of people being watched.
Branaugh’s interpretation of “To Be,” focuses on the possibility that Hamlet knows that Claudius is watching him through the two way mirror- he frightens him, puzzles, him, but in the end, never gives Claudius a clue as to his true intentions.
Murder or suicide?
the speech is not only famous for its universality but its evocative imagery, clear (albeit cryptic) construction, and heightened circumstances.
Shakespeare is able to give us a complete character without giving everything away, which allows anyone to reinterpret the character their own way. That is why Shakespeare’s characters endure.
PBS is going to show (and hopefully stream), the National Theater’s production of Romeo and Juliet Friday, to help celebrate William Shakespeare’s birthday.
The production stars Jessie Buckley as Juliet, and Josh O’Connor as Romeo, who recently won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of the young Prince Charles
After playing another doomed lover whose family won’t allow him to be with the woman he wants, I look forward to seeing him bring his passion and skill to Shakespeare.
Jessie Buckley as Juliet, and Josh O’Connor as Romeo. National Theater, 2021
The Shakespearean Student 