Like a Soldier, to the Stage

Finished Hamlet!

A few random notes.

The last act took me aback a little. The tone of the play moved from quick and hectic to a more serene rhythm... not so much the plot itself, which remained very full of incident, but the way Hamlet reacted to the events and the way the play moved from close focus on him to a wider, almost national focus in the last part. I am having a difficult time describing it, but the edginess of the first part seemed to culminate when Laertes and Hamlet scrabbled in Polonius' grave. After that, Hamlet seemed to take back stage as a persona and move into front stage as a more historical character. The final scene where practically every key player is poisoned by cup and rapier seemed to be a bit of a homeopathic anodyne.

To me, his hesitation during the earlier parts was not the ineffectual hesitation you see in something like The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock.

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Hamlet's hesitation is informed by a kind of grace. When he finally can act effectually, he does.

Let four captains
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royally: and, for his passage,
The soldiers' music and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him.
Take up the bodies: such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

A couple of sites:

This one is a standard informational study-guide place with resources for teachers.
This one is interesting and a bit quirkier and more personal.

Here's a Shakespeare Theme Page.

Of Flies

These comments are in reference to Act III in Hamlet. On trial for his life, Socrates said:

So now, Athenian men, more than on my own behalf must I defend myself, as some may think, but on your behalf, so that you may not make a mistake concerning the gift of God by condemning me.

For if you kill me, you will not easily find another such person at all, even if to say in a ludicrous way, attached on the city by God, like on a large and well-bred horse, by its size and laziness both needing arousing by some gadfly; in this way the god seems to have fastened me on the city, some such one who arousing and persuading and reproaching each one of you I do not stop the whole day settling down all over.

(HT: interesting-looking website on Knowledge that I haven't much looked through yet but didn't want to forget about, so am linking to here) The word Gadfly nowadays seems to mean someone who likes to make snarky comments about the establishment, but I think Socrates' endeavour was serious, even though he expressed it in what he called a ridiculous way.

I am thinking that Hamlet acted as a bit of a gadfly, too. Or not a gadfly, irritating a healthy but lazy horse, but the other kind of fly, the kind that notices and buzzes around something that is giving off the smell of death. The operative word is ACTED, here. When Hamlet moves through a scene casting out painfully satiric, allusive comments with smart-aleck plays on words that remind me a bit of Groucho Marx, he is functioning a bit like a gadfly. In his case, he is moving through a society that is sleek and healthy on the outside, but rotten underneath. Those around him express dismay and confusion at his words, but they aren't really interested in finding out what he means. They humor him:

LORD POLONIUS

My lord, the queen would speak with you, and
presently.

HAMLET

Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?

LORD POLONIUS

By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.

HAMLET

Methinks it is like a weasel.

LORD POLONIUS

It is backed like a weasel.

HAMLET

Or like a whale?

LORD POLONIUS

Very like a whale.

HAMLET Then I will come to my mother by and by. They fool
me to the top of my bent. I will come by and by.

Just before that, there is a scene where his supposed friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are trying to get him to be serious and stop tossing off side comments which to them are aside from the point: Rosencrantz says reproachfully: My lord, you once did love me. Guildenstern says something similar, upon which Hamlet asks him to play a tune upon the pipe. When Guildenstern protests that he does not know how, Hamlet says:

Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of
me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know
my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my
mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
the top of my compass: and there is much music,
excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot
you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am
easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you
cannot play upon me.

It's hard for me to tell whether it is that they are persuaded of his madness and clumsily trying to help him, or if they are really co-opted to help Hamlet's uncle out of personal ambition, but they do not engage when he says things like this. It seems they would rather not know.

Socrates is conscious of his gadfly status and stands apart from Athens, willing to be condemned to death rather than compromise his role. Hamlet is different, by both temperament and role. He is not simply the detached bystander who stands aside and comments on society, but the one who is most deeply wounded by the rottenness of the state. Hamlet is often called tormented and indecisive, but his torment and lack of decisive action is partly due to his split role. He is both the crucial player in the drama that is in Denmark, AND a member of the audience watching the play and critiquing it. He is aware of this and his insight is part of his conflict, but there is really no way for him to get past it. There is a tragic understanding of the human condition in this. We recognize the rottenness and can't stand outside it, short of grace. And grace DOES seem short in Hamlet's state.

Hamlet ...

is on my mind.

I am on Act IV now and though I expect I must have read the play back in high school or college -- certainly I know the storyline -- I am surprised by how modern a play it seems. More specifically, how modern Hamlet as a character seems. He reminds me of a university student. Well, that is what he is! but it's more than just the fact that he is just back from the university. He comes off as a university student, like some I've met -- clever, a bit desperate, throwing off jokes while their minds are occupied elsewhere, unable to get past the pain of their dysfunctional backgrounds, damaging people around them half-inadvertently in the course of dealing with their issues. Entitled and gifted, but deprived of stability by the selfishness of their parents.

Here is a Wikipedia entry on Hamlet. Even though some question Wikipedia's objectivity in some areas, I have found it a nice starting point in my mostly non-political type interests. From there I found that someone even has a Hamlet blog. Cool. The internet makes it easy to do any immersion learning project you care to do. From the Wikipedia source alone, I could even find my way to a place that has Hamlet lesson plans for teachers.

While I'm talking about the Great Books..... I have a BA in English Literature and I studied Shakespeare in college. However, when I'm reading a Great Book I try to put that aside except *as it helps me be a better reader*. I try to read simply as Myself reading a Book and listening to what the author is saying rather than as a a Modern Person reading a Classic, and waiting till I read what the experts say to form my own opinion.

CS Lewis writes about it in the introduction to St Athanasius's On the Incarnation:

"There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he think of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about "isms" and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said.."

The whole introduction is well worth reading and can be found here. I almost think that his is the one introduction that should be read in front of every Great Book, or at least pondered ahead of time. This reliance on the "experts" isn't just an English Lit thing. It operates in childhood education, too, and in many other areas.

This is what I tell my children: read the book FIRST, Author speaking to Reader, THEN read the introduction and any scholarly commentary you choose to follow up with. (Sometimes, though not always, it deepens the enjoyment of the work to have a bit of historical context for the story-- for example, reading a book as part of a unit study.--- that's a different thing). Or perhaps, don't read the intro at all. Just read the classic again, more carefully, taking notes or writing out responses or questions. Maybe then go to the experts and the study guides.

Actually, I have taught this to them so successfully that I don't even HAVE to say this. Rather, they come and tell me, "I think it works better to read the book before I read the introduction -- the book's usually better written and the author knows what he is trying to say better than the commentator does." Then I just agree : ). When it comes down to the bottom, I don't think I have taught this to them except by NOT teaching them the reverse. I think people are born thinking that they are competent to understand books and stories and ideas. Then this notion of their own competence is explicitly taught out of them during their school years. Sometimes they don't ever get it back.

My children have found that their peers often don't like reading Good Books, and find them boring and difficult. "Jane Eyre? Boring. Hamlet? Boring and hard." This is sad. The last thing those works are is BORING. Someone must have had to fill out a lot of literature circle forms in order to think so. Those could be boring, I imagine, and put a taste of medicine in the fruit preserves that would be hard to shake off.