The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.1357 Monday, 22 August 2005
[1] From: Hugh Grady <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 19 Aug 2005 11:06:11 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 16.1345 What Happens in "Hamlet"
[2] From: Jim Blackie <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 19 Aug 2005 12:20:58 -0400 (EDT)
Subj: RE: SHK 16.1345 What Happens in Hamlet
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Hugh Grady <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 19 Aug 2005 11:06:11 -0500
Subject: 16.1345 What Happens in "Hamlet"
Comment: Re: SHK 16.1345 What Happens in "Hamlet"
Listmembers still buying Dover Wilson's goods on Hamlet after all the
years owe it to themselves to read our colleague Terence Hawke's bravura
analysis of the myriad of subtexts behind Wilson's obsessive attempts to
throw a net of one-pointed logic around the undecidabilities of this
great play. See his "That Shakespeherian Rag."
--Hugh
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Jim Blackie <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 19 Aug 2005 12:20:58 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: 16.1345 What Happens in Hamlet
Comment: RE: SHK 16.1345 What Happens in Hamlet
Sorry for my failure to explain Wilson's premises, but I thought only I
had been unfamiliar with his work, a position, I now see, was rather
foolish. Wilson holds, mainly, that upon establishing for himself that
the ghost was, in fact, real, Hamlet goes about doing exactly what the
ghost asks. 1- avenge his murder 2- protect his mother and leave her
judgment to heaven.
To do one while ensuring the other is difficult, for if he were to
expose Claudius, the Queen would be implicated. His problem begins with
both Horatio and Marcellus seeing the ghost and needing to have them
kept quiet. Horatio can be counted upon, but Marcellus needs to be
"frightened" by having the ghost from the cellarage demand the 3 oaths
of silence. Marcellus would be most likely to adhere to the oath if he
swore by a figure from hell. Therefore, while Hamlet knew it was the
ghost of his father, he cavorts and calls for "old mole" and "truepenny"
to aid him. This was based on Wilson's study of Elizabethan belief in
the spiritual world and the supernatural and urges his reader (me) to
consider it in that context.
Further, Hamlet is shown as exhibiting various states of mind to
different characters to hide his intentions and reasons behind his
melancholia. To his mother and uncle/father he shows depression due to
the loss of his father and o'er hasty marriage of those primaries. To
Polonius & Ophelia he seems distracted for love of Ophelia. To
Marcellus, he seems perhaps the mere puppet of a demon of hell (I'm
overstating this somewhat in a very brief synopsis). To
Claudius-later-on, and to R&G, he displays anger/madness at being
usurped from his rightful throne.
What Hamlet wants is to let Claudius know that the secret is out, that
he, Hamlet, will avenge the murder at such time that Gertrude will be
spared judgment and (apropos of the post player-king's murder and
Claudius' attempt at solitary prayer) Claudius will be propelled to hell
after his death - to kill him prior to his receiving absolution.
He follows each position with great care and detail and I'm not doing
justice in my poor attempt at relating in a short message the entirety
of his volume. But the impact I felt most is his approach at taking only
what is written into the play's text and not adding subjective
inferences - of reading the play but keeping it within context of
Elizabethan time frames. What did the audience understand
things/statements to mean? How would they comprehend X or Y? He reminds
us that the play was meant to be "heard" and not read, thereby resulting
in very different positions in the audience than that of the reader. The
most obvious reminder he gives was also lost on me until pointed out...
that the character in Act 1 scene 1 doesn't know what will happen in Act
IV. Of course, how simple, but I have argues my points of various plays,
most recently a discussion of Twelfth Night, building my case of
character analysis using such faulty reasoning that asked why Orsino did
(something) when late in the play he says (something) - as if Orsino
already knew the outcome of the play going in --- (Again, this is better
explained by Mr. Wilson).
I just wanted to point out there are several obvious considerations that
must be maintained when reading such a play, that are either obvious or
common sense, but that escaped me in my "wisdom" as I pontificated and
built my arguments on a foundation of what turned out to be sand.
This basic philosophies I discovered initially in his slim volume "The
Fortunes of Falstaff" and was captivated at once. His work on Hamlet,
however, detailed all the play and made me see it in ways I'd never
thought of before. If you haven't read one or the other of these books I
can only urge you to spend some time with Mr. Wilson. Written in the
early 1930's, I think they are both classics of analysis and
scholarship. I've bought anything I can find that he has written and
look forward to reading more.
I especially like reading the messages here and, impressed by the
knowledge base, would be interested to hear anyone's opinion on Wilson.
Is it just me?
Jim Blackie
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