The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.1369 Tuesday, 23 August 2005
[1] From: Alan Pierpoint <
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Date: Monday, 22 Aug 2005 13:45:05 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 16.1358 Shylock, Hamlet, et al.
[2] From: V. K. Inman <
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Date: Monday, 22 Aug 2005 19:17:47 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 16.1358 Shylock, Hamlet, et al.
[3] From: Joseph Egert <
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Date: Tuesday, 23 Aug 2005 19:59:26 +0000
Subj: Re: SHK 16.1358 Shylock, Hamlet, et al
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Alan Pierpoint <
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Date: Monday, 22 Aug 2005 13:45:05 -0400
Subject: 16.1358 Shylock, Hamlet, et al.
Comment: Re: SHK 16.1358 Shylock, Hamlet, et al.
Kenneth Chan writes: "Why then, you ask, have [Shakespeare's] messages
been missed over the centuries? The answer is surprisingly easy to
state. We miss [them] because we do not wish to hear them. They hurt."
Point taken. But I think there remains the danger that an interpreter
of, say, Hamlet, may fearlessly embrace such a "message" and miss the
larger point, or points. I have in mind Olivier, whose interpretation
perhaps reflected the disrepute into which
hand-wringing inaction in the face of crisis had fallen, post holocaust
and WWII. As I recall, his film begins with the "So oft it chances in
particular men" speech in voiceover and proceeds to state, baldly, that
the play is about a man who can't make up his mind. That view once had
currency and has textual support throughout the play. But it led, I
think, to a reductive interpretation of the role, and an unsatisfying
film. -Alan Pierpoint
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: V. K. Inman <
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Date: Monday, 22 Aug 2005 19:17:47 -0400
Subject: 16.1358 Shylock, Hamlet, et al.
Comment: Re: SHK 16.1358 Shylock, Hamlet, et al.
Kenneth Chan writes:
>This failure to confront our own mortality is one reason why we have
>missed the meaning of Hamlet for so long. We miss it because the message
>hurts and we do not wish to hear it.
V. K. Inman responds:
This sounds like a personal attack. Are you saying since you are able
to confront your own mortality and I am not, you understand Hamlet and I
do not?
Kenneth Chan writes:
>rashly leaping to the conclusion that Shakespeare intended his plays as
>mere fodder for multiple conflicting interpretations.
V. K. Inman responds:
This is an egregious overstatement. No one is 'rashly leaping' and no
one has even remotely implied that Shakespeare intended his plays as
'mere fodder'!
Such statements belong in the realm of Madison Avenue advertising and
Washington politics.
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Joseph Egert <
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Date: Tuesday, 23 Aug 2005 19:59:26 +0000
Subject: 16.1358 Shylock, Hamlet, et al
Comment: Re: SHK 16.1358 Shylock, Hamlet, et al
Fellow resolutes:
Myth and mystery surround the birth of young Hamlet.
In a a play teeming with allusions to bastard-born and incest-bred gods
and mortals, demi and im, surely Hamlet's own legitimacy becomes deeply
suspect to us and to himself.
WHO then is Hamlet's father?
Fasten your diving suits, crew--we're going down below.
Is Hamlet's natural father Polonius?
Polonius after all played "the mighty Julius" assassinated by his
natural(?) son Brutus. Hamlet goes on to smite Polonius as Old Hamlet
smote the Polacks. Are the Prince and Ophelia then brother and sister by
half, born to the same father, be he Polonius, Claudius, or Old Hamlet
himself? If so. has Ophelia succumbed to Hamlet's advances? Would she in
time have tendered Polonius a "fool" had not her culture-bound gown
dragged her down to a watery grave. Shown "the steep and thorny way to
heaven" by her departing brother Laertes, Ophelia cautions him to reck
his own "rede" in Paris, home of lusty chivalry. Has Hamlet, in this
hall of mirrors, recked his own rede in preaching to Gertrude? Has the
Prince impressed the "signet in my purse" upon docile Ophelia (another
Caelia?) to sire yet another counterfeit? (The Prince's forgery may echo
the DONATION OF CONSTANTINE with its healing of the Emperor's leprosy,
a forgery exposed by the Humanist Valle as a crude attempt by the
Catholic Church to usurp temporal authority--an allusion perhaps to
Tudor usurpation of religious authority.)
Is Claudius Hamlet's natural father?
Claudius more than once calls Hamlet "son," the object of a "dearest
father['s]" love. Arthurian lore (favored propoganda of the Tudor
Henries) suffuses this play. The worldly Centaur-like Norman cavalier
Lamord/Lamond may recall Malory's LE MORTE D'ARTHUR as well as the
Bastard Conqueror William . The three generations of Arthur's line (from
Uther to Arthur to Mordred) are here condensed into two, but expanded
laterally into multiple parent/child dyads. In Thomas Hughes' earlier
play, THE MISFORTUNES OF ARTHUR (1588), Uther, magically assuming the
Duke of Cornwall Gorlois' shape, impregnates the latter's wife with the
noble bastard Arthur before murdering the Duke. Cornwall's ghost, like
that of Old Hamlet, cries out for revenge. Arthur then incestuously
sires the avenger Mordred (like Hamlet, both son and nephew to the king)
through his sister Anna Morgause. For this sin Arthur is cuckolded by
his wife Guinevere and son Mordred, leading to the death of both father
and son in personal combat. The myths, both classical and medieval, are
filled with fathers, often usurpers themselves, contriving against their
sons fated to overthrow them. Does "unworthiest siege" (Act4Sc7) recall
the "Perilous Siege" of the Table Round? Does Hamlet's sea voyage to
England (intended to kill him) echo the prophesied avenger Mordred's
planned disposal at sea, still an infant? Is "Claudius" reminiscent of
"King Claudas" in the Arthur legends? Does Gertrude, like Isolde, fail
the magic cup's test of fidelity before succumbing to its poison? At
play's end Gorlois' ghost is left standing and gloating over the end of
Uther's line. Is young Hamlet, like Mordred, (each "subject to his
birth") the avenging Sun god Helios, born at Solstice(?) of Hyperion and
his sister Thaia, to overcome the wintry Claudian night?
Is Hamlet's birth a Nativity?
Marcellus illuminates the "Saviour's birth" in glowing colors. Does
Hamlet come, like Jesus, to set the time right at the cost of his own
mortal life. Like his Saviour, Hamlet begins his brief ministry at age
thirty. Like Jesus at Gethsemane, Hamlet suffers intense relentless
psychomachia. Has the devil indeed "assumed a pleasing shape" as Old
Hamlet, armored in the "unholy suit" of war and imploring the "unholy
suit" of blood revenge (His apparel hath indeed proclaimed the man).
Medieval monk and Reforming humanist alike decried this death-linked
honor code. Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth's tutor, impugned these
chivalric values as nothing but "open manslaughter and bold bawdry."
Like Satan at Gethsemane, the Ghost tempts Hamlet with absolute royal
dominion-- only heed his commandment to slaughter Claudius. Or does
Shakespeare, by including the Saviour's birth among so many bastard
allusions, parody the Virgin Birth itself. Jesus, whose own purported
ancestry included incest and adultery, then becomes the archetypal Good
Bastard, spotlighted by the alienated bastard-born of England to counter
their country's oppressive propoganda.
Reflecting its psychomachia,the play consistently opposes gods and
demigods like Hercules to the passion-driven man-beasts, be they
centaur, satyr, or mermaid. The Hercules analogy is especially apt.
Zeus, in the shape of mortal Alcmena's husband Amphitryon, sires through
her the Greek hero. Sound familiar? Still an infant, Hercules slays the
serpents sent against him by Hera (the Centaurs' sponsor). His life is
spent in heroic adventures, often overcoming wild man-beasts, like the
drunken Centaurs, and restoring order, though he too is subject to
murderous fits of madness. In the end, his mortal half succumbs to
poison originating from his own arrow, the revenge of a slain Centaur
inadvertently aided by young Lichas (Laertes?). Zeus raises up his now
fully immortal son to Olympus, to be joined later perhaps by Jesus and
Hamlet amid flights of angels.
Finally, the key to Hamlet's birth may lie in its timing. The
Gravedigger stresses young Hamlet was born "that day that our last King
Hamlet o'ercame Fortinbras." The Ghost wears "the very armour he had on/
When he the ambitious Norway combated." The primal crime of this drama?
Yes. A foul unnatural murder "as in the best it is"? Yes. But is there more?
Shakespeare scatters his clues throughout the play. Hamlet speaks of his
"prophetic" "immortal" soul. The Ghost labels the official version of
his death a "forged process." Hamlet calls his own forgery a "changeling
never known."
Changeling?
Has the "fairy" taken? Has the "planet" struck? Has the "witch" charmed?
On that fateful day of Hamlet's birth the immortal soul of slaughtered
King Fortinbras migrated across the sea, infusing itself into the
newborn Prince, now an avenger destined to bring down the Danish royal
house and restore the Fortinbras line to power. Plato believed the new
host would not remember the soul's earlier lives. Is this vengeful soul
that "vicious mole of Nature" fated to overcome Hamlet's Wittenberg
conscience? The Old Ghost is himself a forged process, called out in
disguise by this prophetic reincarnated soul within. "Lamord" may recall
the "Lemures", the unexorcised Roman spirits of the dead. For Old
Fortinbras, like Gorlois at play's end, the time has at last been set right.
Regards,
Joe Egert
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