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Chasing Shakespeare, Finding Hamlet
by Christopher Currie
Ah,…How to understand Shakespeare?
Much has been written about the supposed "psychology" of Shakespeare’s characters as an explanation for who they are. This is not much help in understanding Shakespeare or what he really did. Shakespeare wrote plays. He didn't create real people, so it's a mistake to try to analyze or understand them from some psychological or post-modern analytical perspective. What Shakespeare did was create “stories” that reveal us, show us who we really are:
The characters don't exist for us to understand them -- they exist to help us understand ourselves.
I've been asked to write about Hamlet from a theatrical perspective. The approach I’ve taken comes from an invaluable guide to understanding not only Shakespeare but any play -- Backwards and Forwards by David Ball. Plays, like our lives, are structured by cause and effect, and the best way to understand Shakespeare is to ask “what happens that makes something else happen?” This is the nature of dramatic action, and with this resource firmly in hand, I chased Shakespeare, and managed, in some sense, to find "Hamlet."
So who is Hamlet, or any other character? Who they are is really no more than 1) what they want, 2) the action they take in attempting to get what they want, 3) what happens next, and 4) how they react . . . cause and effect, action and reaction -- it's the best way, really, to understand this beautiful play, and by way of that, to understand ourselves, what we are in the universe.
There is speculation that in 1611 Shakespeare helped revise the bible into what is now known as the King James Version. In its front, there's an inscription: ‘appointed to be spoken aloud,’ as if the human breath is needed to carry the Spirit of God.
I can't speak to this claim or this type of spirituality, but I do know that Shakespeare is Life as Living Poetry playing out in a structured universe. That's all you really need to know -- cognitively. If you want to know the characters personally, you must give them voice, lend them your breath (& I hope you will). The moment-by-moment experience structured by who they are is the living Poetry of Shakespeare. Of course Shakespeare resonates with us -- it IS us.
So let us begin.
THE TRAGEDIE OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARKE
What is the play about? The best way to answer this question is to keep the answer short, 1 or 2 sentences, and tell it in a way that draws a person in, makes them want to know more. If you can do that, then you’ve understood a play. So here’s my understanding of Hamlet:
Hamlet is a play about a son who pretends to lose his mind while attempting to avenge the perfect murder of his father … and he loses his own life in the process.
This isn't poetic, but it does capture the basic main plot line, and it underscores the tragic nature of Hamlet. The murder of Hamlet's father is perfect: it's takes a supernatural event to uncover the murder, i.e., the ghost of his father has to tell Hamlet what happened. These are the two main events that drive the plot: the murder is perfect, and Hamlet chooses to take up the task of avenging his father with not one shred—not one bit—of evidence that Claudius killed King Hamlet.
And this is just how the play reads, how it looks to the audience: If you didn't know the story, the earliest point you might believe that the ghost really was telling the truth is Claudius' line 59, 3.1 (i.e., Act III-Scene.1):
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
And what exactly is Claudius feeling guilty about anyway? It’s not clear. It could be guilt for marrying Hamlet's mother so quickly, which is what Hamlet is initially upset about, and justifying the quick marriage is in part what Claudius' initial speech is all about in 3.2.
Up until 3.2, Hamlet is not sure about the veracity of the ghost (“The spirit that I have seen May be the devil…”), so he sets a 'mouse trap' (“the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king”) where he smokes Claudius out by directing a play about a king who is murdered by his own brother. Until 3.2, the audience doesn't really know if Claudius murdered the king, and they (and Hamlet) only know this with certainty during Claudius's confession of the murder in 3.3.
And if they are not absolutely sure about Claudius until 3.3, what about the other characters in the play? They never know. All the way through the play Hamlet looks just like the guy he's pretending to be: someone who's coming unglued. Take out Claudius's confession in 3.3, and I don't think the audience would believe Hamlet or the ghost. To them, Hamlet would be seen as he is seen through the eyes of all the characters (except Horatio): they'd think Hamlet is crazy, and to his mother (3.4), he's ranting and raving about a murder, and yes, there is a murder, but not of King Hamlet--it's of Polonius, and yes, there is a murderer, but not Claudius--it's Hamlet! Killing Polonius was a BIG mistake: Claudius sends Hamlet away to England where, unknown to Hamlet, he is to be killed.
It is fascinating that while Hamlet is ‘acting’ crazy to the characters in the play, to us, we see a man’s intelligence and rationality engaged at the highest order – his very life depends on this. He must be assured of Claudius’s guilt before he can act.
And act he does. On the desolate wind swept plains of Demark, before Fortinbras’s mighty army poised fearlessly, calmly, for battle, Hamlet, standing alone, finds and embraces courage, his final soliloquy before the end (Act IV- Scene 4):
Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge…
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare . . .
This sight, this vision, gives Hamlet the strength to rise to the occasion, to escape from Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Claudius’s plot to kill him, and to make his way back to England for the final show down between him and Claudius.
Hamlet is ready.
The question “Why is Hamlet a tragedy?” is often asked. In my experience of Hamlet, he isn’t. He is a hero. In the end, Hamlet has arrived back in Denmark--the King forewarned of his return in Hamlet’s own hand (4.6), and we see him greet his great friend Horatio with the story of his escape.
When Horatio expresses worry that Claudius will learn from England that Hamlet arranged to have Rosencrantz & Guildenstern killed, Claudius will know with certainty what Hamlet intends. Hamlet, however, intends to kill Claudius before that happens (the final act, 5.2):
HORATIO It must be shortly known to him from England
What is the issue of the business there.
HAMLET It will be short: the interim is mine;
And a man's life's no more than to say 'One.'
But when Osric surprises Hamlet with news of Laertes’s challenge to a dual and Claudius’ bet, Hamlet’s suspicions are immediately aroused:
HORATIO You will lose this wager, my lord.
HAMLET I do not think so: since he[Laertes] went into France,
I have been in continual practise: I shall win at the
odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here
about my heart. . .
Horatio, alarmed by what Hamlet’s instincts are telling him, urges Hamlet to say he is not well, to avoid/put off the contest . . . and here we see a remarkable courage and resolution in a man traditionally viewed as unable to act, unable to decide. In the face of death, we learn from Hamlet what it means to live:
HAMLET Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all . . .
Death will come: if it be not now, yet it will come. We can't run from death, only life: the readiness is all.
In sum, most young, ambitious actors love to play Hamlet - because, I suspect, they find in him so much of themselves. And while this is certainly true, what they also find in Hamlet in an essential humanness, certain truths that we all know and experience, truths that are at the heart of us, where beyond fear and uncertainty, we know, deep down, that "the readiness is all." As Harold Bloom so aptly put it: Hamlet is "The Invention of the Human," and it is the full measure of the genius of Shakespeare.
From 2000 to 2003 Christopher Currie was the stage manager, associate producer, and grant writer for the "Frog & Peach Theatre Company," an off-Off-Broadway Shakespeare theater company.
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