The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0667 Thursday, 20 November 2008
[1] From: John Wall <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 19 Nov 2008 08:54:22 -0500
Subt: Re: SHK 19.0657 Heroes
[2] From: David Basch <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date Wednesday, 19 Nov 2008 12:05:27 -0500
Subt: Re: SHK 19.0640 Heroes
[3] From: Bob Lapides<This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:28:39 EST
Subt: Re: SHK 19.0657 Heroes
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Wall <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 19 Nov 2008 08:54:22 -0500
Subject: 19.0657 Heroes
Comment: Re: SHK 19.0657 Heroes
My question about Horatio has always been why he doesn't, upon greeting Hamlet
on his return from his truncated trip to England, inform Hamlet that his old
friend Ophelia has drowned while Hamlet was away. JNW
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From: David Basch <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 19 Nov 2008 12:05:27 -0500
Subject: 19.0640 Heroes
Comment: Re: SHK 19.0640 Heroes
I think David Evett and others have missed the significance of the role of
Horatio in the play Hamlet. This seems evident when David Evett outlines
Horatio's role in the play in terms of a laundry list of his actions without
seeing into its significance. David Evett writes:
The play presents Horatio as in many ways a kind of social cipher
- no stated antecedents beyond his time at Wittenberg, no apparent
affiliations except for his friendship with Hamlet, no
responsibilities except to hang around Elsinore. He carries out no
risky or difficult tasks - doesn't offer to kill Claudius or
accompany Hamlet to England, or grab a rapier from the rack when
the killing starts. Being quietly amused by a few minutes of
Osric's foppery hardly qualifies as hazardous duty. The active
antagonists - Claudius, Polonius, Laertes - never mention him when
they are hatching their attacks on the prince. At the end, we can
speculate that he will have to give up his board and room in the
castle, but it is not as though he were formally Hamlet's servitor
and thus about to be thrust into the unwelcome status of vagrant
on the death of his master. Indeed, Hamlet has assigned him a job
that the prince seems to think he has resources to handle: to be
Homer, not Achilles, not the hero, but the bard: "absent thee from
felicity awhile" etc.
In fact Horatio plays his role magnificently as is evident by the admiring
Hamlet who praises him for all his virtues. Consider the virtues of Horatio
as told by Hamlet:
HAMLET Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
As e'er my conversation coped withal.
HORATIO O, my dear lord,--
HAMLET Nay, do not think I flatter;
For what advancement may I hope from thee
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits,
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.--
It turns out that Horatio is without the fatal flaws that Hamlet suffers from
and which brings Hamlet to destruction. Unlike Horatio, Hamlet is indeed
"passion's slave." But Horatio has that ideal personality that makes him "not a
pipe for fortune's finger" and he avoids the faults of sycophancy that others in
the play exhibit. I will take Hamlet's judgment of this man before that of the
critics of Horatio on our list.
To be sure, Hamlet has great virtues. He is so admirable that audiences miss
seeing his critical faults. He suffers from "over righteousness" and an
obsession to be "wise over much"-flaws warned against in the Book of
Ecclesiastes that we are told lead a man to self-destruction, as it does Hamlet.
Notice how Hamlet in his over righteousness fails to recognize that Ophelia is
not his enemy but a vulnerable young lady used as a tool by others. Notice how
Hamlet fails to act in a timely way against his powerful enemy, King Claudius,
because he self righteously wishes to wait for a time that he can take the
perfect vengeance against him that he feels entitled to.
Notice also how Hamlet is wise over much in thinking he can fathom the pattern
in which God acts. Hamlet sees this in his interpretation of the events in which
he happens to discover Claudius's plot against him and in the happenstance of
the pirates that bring him back to Denmark. This leads him to trust that God
will make all things to work out and thereby to a fatalism makes him fail to
take the precautions to save his life that Horatio advises.
Horatio on the other hand does not presume to fathom God's ways and is not blind
to reality. He has no craving for materialistic things of the kind that make
sychophantic servants of those like Rosenkranz and Guildenstern. Horatio sees
clearly what is happening and does not have the blind spots that make Hamlet
vulnerable.
Had Hamlet been more like the Horatio he admires, we would not have this play
that is about the conflicts brought on by Hamlet's faults. Horatio is a
character critical to the play and to its understanding. He, "a man picked from
ten thousand," provides the prototype of manhood that Hamlet lacks. Without him,
audiences would not be exposed to this contrast. So it is puzzling why so many
observers fail to realize the role Horatio plays.
But is Horatio a hero? He is if you accept the adage that asks, Who is a hero?
and answers that a Hero is one who conquers his passions. In that sense, Horatio
is indeed a hero.
The play, Hamlet, is Shakespeare's story of a good man whose fatal flaws "take[]
From [his] achievements, though perform'd at height, The pith and marrow of
[his] attribute." These flaws tragically bring him to destruction. Horatio is
critical in telling this story.
David Basch
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From: Bob Lapides<This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:28:39 EST
Subject: 19.0657 Heroes
Comment: Re: SHK 19.0657 Heroes
My view on this question differs enough from what has been posted that I've
resisted adding my two cents, out of anxiety about seeming naive. But there are
a number of characters in Shakespeare's plays whose past heroism is
unquestionably significant. If this heroism is not part of the present action,
it nevertheless gives definition to the tragedies that involve Othello, Antony,
Julius Caesar, and the others. Maybe this is too obvious to state, but I do
think this perspective leads to other, more fruitful questions about
Shakespeare's interest in heroes.
Bob Lapides
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