The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 20.0269 Wednesday, 27 May 2009
[1] From: Anna Kamaralli <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 04:30:41 +0000 (GMT)
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
[2] From: Arthur Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 08:09:27 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
[3] From: David Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 13:34:29 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
[4] From: Brian Willis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 16:40:58 -0700 (PDT)
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
[5] From: Anthony Burton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 26 May 2009 11:46:15 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Anna Kamaralli <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 04:30:41 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
"Horatio is like tofu."
Can we have that put on a T-shirt?
Regards,
Anna Kamaralli
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From: Arthur Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 08:09:27 +0100
Subject: 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
A counter question: why should anyone who has not been talking to the
Ghost believe that the Mousetrap has proved Claudius' guilt? The court
has just seen a play in which a nephew kills his uncle accompanied by
Hamlet's mocking of his uncle. What would you conclude? Horatio, who
knows about the Ghost's existence but not the Ghost's story, gives the
appropriate, cautious, press-conference sort of answer.
Arthur
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From: David Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 13:34:29 -0400
Subject: 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
I think Lynn Brenner is right that Horatio's "hedging" if it could be
put across, would only bewilder us -- and I would add, bewilder us in
the wrong way. This is not an example of good, or deepening, ambiguity,
but just a misunderstanding.
For one thing Horatio does not invite psychological investigation the
way Hamlet does. But the main argument, which goes back a long way,
turns first on the pointlessness -- cf. Jenkins -- of this "ambiguity".
We can hardly help believing the ghost, but just in case, Claudius tells
us he's guilty in his "painted word" speech before the play. Then we get
more confession in the prayer scene. The problem here is not that the
audience would doubt his guilt. The first question is why Hamlet would.
A ghost might be generically questionable so we can allow for the play
to delay revenge, just barely. But the difficulty of revenge is the real
problem. Horatio's "note" gives Hamlet a pun to take off on, indicating
his agitation -- and pointing to his susceptibility to madness. The
argument finally turns on a recognition of dramatic convention. The
"ambiguity" crowd is saying that plays work the way plays don't work.
Best wishes,
David Bishop
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From: Brian Willis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 16:40:58 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
Surely, Horatio's repetition of the words "very well" settles the
matter. Not only that, it seem to me a texturing of the script that
indicates to the actors playing Claudius and Horatio how to react to The
Murder of Gonzago. An argument for prevarication on Horatio's part seems
paratextual to me and countertextual to everything we can glean about
Horatio from the rest of the script.
Brian Willis
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From: Anthony Burton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 26 May 2009 11:46:15 -0400
Subject: 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio
Let me add my voice to those who agree with Cheryl's professor friend,
but with a somewhat different reason from others. To be sure, the
studied neutrality of Horatio's response is distinctly unenthusiastic,
and far from a statement of agreement that Claudius has just betrayed
his own guilt for murdering the old king. But there is another feature:
Hamlet has misdescribed the situation -- and is leading us all astray --
in saying the king rose "upon the talk of poisoning."
The text reads:
Ham. A poisons him i' th' garden for his estate. His name's/
Gonzago. The story is extant, and written in very/
choice Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer/
gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
Oph. The king rises.
What Horatio very well did note is that the king rose as soon as Hamlet
declared that he would show how the murderer would get the love of the
king's wife, in fulfillment of his purpose to obtain his victim's
estate. I discussed this topic at length, showing how Claudius's
marriage to Gertrude disinherited Hamlet and put the old king's estate
into Claudius' hands, in a series of articles published in The
Shakespeare Newsletter, and now available online at hamletworks.org at
the "Hamlet criticism" tab.
The point to note here is that Claudius did not rise during the dumbshow
enactment of poisoning, nor Hamlet's provocative statement to that
effect. Nor does he rise when Hamlet declares the motive for murder --
obtaining the king's estate. He knows that the murder itself and his
personal motive are safely unprovable against him. However, he rises to
interrupt the entertainment the moment Hamlet announces that the next
scene will show how he won the king's widow -- the essential last step
in obtaining the dead king's estate -- because that is something
Gertrude (his "jointress") and the court know all about; the hasty
wooing, the existence of a (presumably) negotiated jointure agreement,
the importance of the timing ("within a month") of the marriage, were
all public knowledge. Gertrude and the court might find the presentation
-- and the linkage of the murder with the marriage -- all too convincing
a revelation of Claudius's cynical duplicity for him to tolerate. There
is no reason to believe he lost his composure, only that he terminated
the festivities. Kozintsev's Russian film Hamlet brilliantly captures a
display of autocratic self-control (applauding as he leaves) which works
well in this context.
So Hamlet has construed as proof of guilt for murder, an action that
proved only Claudius's unwillingness to tolerate an enactment of how he
got the "love" of Gertrude. The playgoers have already seen for
themselves that Hamlet is mistaken, so there is no need for Horatio to
make the point. In fact, his noncommittal, nonjudgmental, and supportive
attentiveness is entirely in keeping with the character who was so
easily accepted as a confidante by Marcellus, Francisco and Barnardo;
then Hamlet; then Claudius and Gertrude; and then the pirates. I do not
take his Fifth act "'Twere to consider too curiously to consider so" as
a reproof to Hamlet, any more than his expressions of disbelief before
the first appearance of the ghost. All are simply statements of his own
thinking at the moment, marked by his characteristic unwillingness to
speculate but subject to correction as further evidence may require.
Tony
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