I know we all have a “guilty goddess,” just as our Bard did. We have a play or sonnet that we particularly like but which most people just don’t get. We have our secret work of his that fills us with pleasure unalloyed and that brings us to the brink of understanding. We love that which most don’t love.
My secret pleasure, the work that I read as if with a flashlight in a tent when everyone else has gone to sleep, is Antony and Cleopatra. I have a copy of this play in a beautifully (albeit decrepit) bound volume that fills me with great pleasure just by the sensuous pleasure of touching it.
The play is unperformable. I have never heard of, let alone seen, a production of this monstrosity, yet it has lines that absolutely thrill me beyond the here and now.
One of these days, I will share with you my thoughts on this neglected masterpiece (which, I know, some of you would rather not be a part of our Bard’s cannon). I have never seen it performed, and I doubt that I ever shall. But it is my favorite work of our Bard, bar none.
I thought all of you might like to share your guilty pleasures with us, those works that most overlook but which you find as compelling as catnip. Go at it, my lads and lasses! Tell us of your “guilty goddesses.”
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Them Pesky Ghosts
(Read Claudius Got a Bum Rap before this)
A second support for the theory that Hamlet, not Claudius, killed his King Hamlet rests on the nature of those pesky ghosts. “Ghosts” he says, emphasizing the plural. “Surely you mean ‘ghost.’”
No I don’t. The plural is supported by the play.
Now, everyone assumes there is just one ghost because in all ghostly appearances it is that of the deceased King Hamlet. But if you honestly think there is a real ghost, then you’re no further evolved than some primitive who has no knowledge beyond fear. News bulletin: There is no such thing as ghosts!
And it doesn’t excuse you to say that Shakespeare believed in ghosts. Do you honestly believe that a mind as rare as his held stock in such unprovable and ludicrous nonsense? Granted, he used such things as elves and fairies in his trifles such as Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. But Hamlet is a serious work and cannot rest on such whimsy. Only one other serious work contains any supernatural elements, that being Macbeth (and we’ll debunk the supernatural in that piece at another time), so don’t go thinking that our Bard actually believed in ghosts.
Yes, of course I know that a ghost appears in the story, but Shakespeare was playing with us, seeing if we would be stupid enough to fall for something so patently absurd. And obviously we as a society, over the past four hundred years, have.
Time for a new look at these ghosts.
There are clearly two different ghosts in this story—one jumps out of the way when it is pursued by weapons (whatever does a dead shade have to fear from sword points and has need of armor, for God’s sake!?); the other one can walk through walls. One can be seen and heard by others and one cannot be seen or heard by anyone--except Hamlet. One ghost appears only in the dark of night, while the other appears during the day. Hmmm. Suspicious. Let’s explore.
The ghost that does all the talking to Hamlet, that tells him how dear old dad died and that he, the son, should get revenge, seems to have some terribly earthbound characteristics. Other than the fact that we are told it is a ghost, is there anything that proves it to be from the supernatural? There is not, so I contend that this ghost is a person playing a ghost!
Why do people assume it is King Hamlet? (a) Because it’s in the king’s castle and (b) because it’s wearing the kings armor. Come on. It’s night, and this ghost has to disappear with the crowing of the cock (until it doesn’t have to obey such rules later on—that’s weird). Why does it come out only at night? So it can’t be seen as the hoax it really is.
It never speaks in front of anyone but only allows Hamlet to hear it speak. Why? Because the voice is NOT that of the late king, but rather of a person playing him.
Who would be playing this part? Why, an actor of course. Someone trained in impersonation and in learning lines and performing for money. Are there any actors in the play. You know there’s a whole troupe of them that mysteriously show up at the castle. To their leader, Hamlet says, “O my old friend! Why, they face is valanced since I saw thee last.” I believe that the last Hamlet saw the actor was playing King Hamlet’s ghost on the battlements of Elsinore!
And just what are we to make of Hamlet’s line, “I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted, or, if it was, not above once.”? This line is glossed over as unimportant, but it is crucial to understanding that the speech that was spoken was the one given by the ghost about the death of King Hamlet. Of course it was spoken only once!
Therefore, the lead player is the earthly ghost of King Hamlet. But who is responsible for this? Well, it would have to be someone who could let the player into the castle, and only one person knew the player. That would be the prince. Also, when Hamlet learns from Rosencrantz that players are coming, he registers no surprise but incredibly says, “He that plays the king shall be welcome.” You see, these players whom Hamlet was “wont to take such delight in” are arranged by him to come. But one has had a previous royal performance written so as “might [not] indict the author.”
And who might be the author of the speech that the earthly ghost did give? Why, Prince Hamlet, of course. Imagine that the words of the ghost were written by Hamlet, giving a detailed description of how his crime was committed. Only the perpetrator of the crime would have been able to describe the details in the way they are done. Dead men, even in Shakespeare’s day, did not relate the manner of their deaths. Then, as now, it took an eye witness.
If you say this is nonsense, then you might as well you say you believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, too. Keep telling yourself that you are a citizen of the 21st Century and there is no such thing as ghosts—and you MUST come to a new interpretation of this play!
More coming on those pesky ghosts, namely WHY? WHY? WHY?
Claudius Got a Bum Rap
Can anyone tell me one good trait that Hamlet possesses? I didn’t think so. Yet the traditional view of this boy-man is that he’s this poor, put-upon tragic soul.
I think it’s way past time that we put this notion to bed and start exploring a totally new look at what ACTUALLY was going on there in Denmark.
First off, let’s look at the supposed villain of this piece, Claudius. According to absolutely all critics and scholars, Claudius committed (1) fratricide, (b) regicide, and (c) something akin to incest with murder thrown in to achieve it. Wow! This is the Shakespearean trifecta of unforgivable sins, and all in one man!
But in his soliloquies and behavior, does he display even one iota of a nature so perfidious that hell would have to have a special addition just for him? Does anyone but Hamlet have even one suspicion—or even one unkind thing to say—about this man? Surely SOMEone in Denmark would have uttered a demurring word about such evil.
Yet none of this happens. There is only one person on a hate campaign against Claudius, and this is the narcissistic, demented Hamlet, the man passed over to be king in favor of a former king’s brother. Doesn’t this make you just a wee bit suspicious about whether Shakespeare might have played a really nifty hoax on us mortals?
Well, it does me, and I’m here to set the record straight. Claudius didn’t kill King Hamlet—he was done in by none other than his madcap son!
King Hamlet died with an earful of dripping poison and a body covered with strange eruptions—so I’m assuming Danish forensic methods were indeed so backward that their investigators, who were assigned to the biggest crime in Denmark possibly ever!, just shrugged and said, “Nothing out of the ordinary here.”
Pshaw! If Claudius had been even remotely implicated, he would not have been elevated to the throne and allowed to marry the queen. However, if a royal son known for erratic, irresponsible behavior had been implicated, there might indeed be a cover-up to prevent the shocking scandal from becoming public. But that son would be denied the throne.
Now, doesn’t this make more sense? And it also explains why Hamlet never complains about not being king—he does, from time to time, know a hawk from a handsaw, and he knows the reason only too well. “Hamlet, dear, you know perfectly well that you killed your father, the leader of a sovereign country, and that, well, somewhat disqualifies you. You’re completely mad, you see. Now don’t bother Mommy with this matter of why you’re not king ever again.”
So this is the starting point for a theory. Discard the notion that Claudius killed his brother, accept the premise that Hamlet killed his father, and let’s see where this trail leads us. First point of proof: Who has the more likely disposition to crime? Point awarded to Hamlet!
I think it’s way past time that we put this notion to bed and start exploring a totally new look at what ACTUALLY was going on there in Denmark.
First off, let’s look at the supposed villain of this piece, Claudius. According to absolutely all critics and scholars, Claudius committed (1) fratricide, (b) regicide, and (c) something akin to incest with murder thrown in to achieve it. Wow! This is the Shakespearean trifecta of unforgivable sins, and all in one man!
But in his soliloquies and behavior, does he display even one iota of a nature so perfidious that hell would have to have a special addition just for him? Does anyone but Hamlet have even one suspicion—or even one unkind thing to say—about this man? Surely SOMEone in Denmark would have uttered a demurring word about such evil.
Yet none of this happens. There is only one person on a hate campaign against Claudius, and this is the narcissistic, demented Hamlet, the man passed over to be king in favor of a former king’s brother. Doesn’t this make you just a wee bit suspicious about whether Shakespeare might have played a really nifty hoax on us mortals?
Well, it does me, and I’m here to set the record straight. Claudius didn’t kill King Hamlet—he was done in by none other than his madcap son!
King Hamlet died with an earful of dripping poison and a body covered with strange eruptions—so I’m assuming Danish forensic methods were indeed so backward that their investigators, who were assigned to the biggest crime in Denmark possibly ever!, just shrugged and said, “Nothing out of the ordinary here.”
Pshaw! If Claudius had been even remotely implicated, he would not have been elevated to the throne and allowed to marry the queen. However, if a royal son known for erratic, irresponsible behavior had been implicated, there might indeed be a cover-up to prevent the shocking scandal from becoming public. But that son would be denied the throne.
Now, doesn’t this make more sense? And it also explains why Hamlet never complains about not being king—he does, from time to time, know a hawk from a handsaw, and he knows the reason only too well. “Hamlet, dear, you know perfectly well that you killed your father, the leader of a sovereign country, and that, well, somewhat disqualifies you. You’re completely mad, you see. Now don’t bother Mommy with this matter of why you’re not king ever again.”
So this is the starting point for a theory. Discard the notion that Claudius killed his brother, accept the premise that Hamlet killed his father, and let’s see where this trail leads us. First point of proof: Who has the more likely disposition to crime? Point awarded to Hamlet!
Sunday, January 13, 2008
The Dark Lady Lifts Her Dress
I was going to get into my totally new interpretation of Hamlet that I started with the last posting, but I’ve become a bit sidetracked because of something I read this week.
It was a bunch of twaddle about the Dark Lady and who she might be and I just couldn’t resist bashing this nonsense. The “Dark Lady” begins putting in “her” appearances in the sonnets about 127. Now, the first one hundred and twenty-six sonnets are an ever-increasing obsession with a young man, and then, voila, a “dark lady” appears.
Critics fall all over themselves trying to identify this Elizabethan lass, and they think themselves quite clever by quoting all the possibilities buried in obscure places. But no matter how clever our scholars are, they make one huge mistake: They take the sonnets out of context!
De Vere did not suddenly abandon his obsession. People, even bards, just don’t do that. Perhaps the critics feel relieved that FINALLY there is a woman seeming to enter Oxford’s life and this puts to rest those nasty innuendos that perhaps our bard was walking a bit too far away from the fence on the gay side of the pasture. So people have jumped on the Dark Lady (well, a poor wording) like a sailor who’s been at sea way too long on the first strumpet he lays eyes on.
But this Dark Lady mystery is not solved by looking into dusty records of that long-ago time, but rather must be solved, as are all of Shakespeare’s mysteries, by looking into the sonnets themselves.
Granted, there is the illusion of a new character finally being introduced in the sonnets about the 120’s, but rather than the emergence of a new person, it is really something quite different. The mystery is not WHO the Dark Lady is but rather WHAT she might be!
In 121, de Vere says, “I am that I am.” Almost Biblical, that, don’t you think? Though the great King James translation wouldn’t be done during his lifetime, I wonder if someone on the committee didn’t put this wording there in honor of our bard. Well, be that as it may. What does he mean by this quote? He’s clearly confessing something that he sees about himself that is vile (“Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d”) but he doesn’t get around to identifying what this is.
Well, if the previous 120 poems aren’t enough to tip you off, then you are being deliberately obtuse. He’s referring, of course, to his compulsive homosexual attraction, that same flamboyant obsession that probably landed him in disgrace (or at least out of fashion) with “fortune and men’s eyes.” But until relatively recently, homosexuality truly was the love that dared not speak its name, and so it was wise to speak in heavily veiled terms, lest one’s outspokenness might lead one to some nasty imprisonment, torture, and death or banishment.
I believe that he had already come to be known as the second queen of the time, and that it was only his lineage, connections, and quick wit that saved him this fate. As Henry was slipping inexorably from his orbit of control, he dabbled more in the dark recesses of his sexuality until finally, in sonnet 130, he comes right out and says who his mistress is: His Homosexual Lust!
Think about it. No man of Oxford’s stature would have had a female mistress of such lowness and ugliness that he would refer to her in the terms he does in 130. Sonnet 129, its immediate precursor, laments his one true love which is “lust in action.” His sex drive is “past reason” and “no sooner had” than hated. This is no woman he’s talking about.
Read Sonnet 130 again and you’ll realize that the cheeks he’s talking about are ass cheeks on a man—hence no roses there! And the breath? Well, I need not get graphic. Every detail makes much more sense describing the object of his lust that is not a female—and what’s more, it makes sense in context.
The Dark Lady is man-to-man sex; “black” is his code for this and lets us make sense of lines like “Thy black is fairest in my judgment’s place,” and “In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds” (Sonnet 131).
Yes, our bard was indeed in love with his Dark Lady, but she is a part of him that he was able to compartmentalize and, somewhat, conceal from his contemporaries. But then, they didn’t have access to the whole flood of sonnets and we do, and yet we choose to ignore what he is telling us.
So, the next time you read something about Shakespeare’s love for a mysterious Dark Lady, roll your eyes heavenward and think what fools these mortals be.
Oxford's Dark Lady didn't mysteriously come into being after 126 sonnets had been composed. She wasn't some new lady in waiting who surfaced at Hampton Court or anywhere else. This gal was present from the start of the sonnets though he himself wasn't acknowledging her presence or the power of her appeal to him. Shakespeare's mistress was alway trotting along with him but so heavily veiled that maybe even he didn't recognize her. But when he finally does unveil her, to us and to himself, he knew she must have no name.
It was a bunch of twaddle about the Dark Lady and who she might be and I just couldn’t resist bashing this nonsense. The “Dark Lady” begins putting in “her” appearances in the sonnets about 127. Now, the first one hundred and twenty-six sonnets are an ever-increasing obsession with a young man, and then, voila, a “dark lady” appears.
Critics fall all over themselves trying to identify this Elizabethan lass, and they think themselves quite clever by quoting all the possibilities buried in obscure places. But no matter how clever our scholars are, they make one huge mistake: They take the sonnets out of context!
De Vere did not suddenly abandon his obsession. People, even bards, just don’t do that. Perhaps the critics feel relieved that FINALLY there is a woman seeming to enter Oxford’s life and this puts to rest those nasty innuendos that perhaps our bard was walking a bit too far away from the fence on the gay side of the pasture. So people have jumped on the Dark Lady (well, a poor wording) like a sailor who’s been at sea way too long on the first strumpet he lays eyes on.
But this Dark Lady mystery is not solved by looking into dusty records of that long-ago time, but rather must be solved, as are all of Shakespeare’s mysteries, by looking into the sonnets themselves.
Granted, there is the illusion of a new character finally being introduced in the sonnets about the 120’s, but rather than the emergence of a new person, it is really something quite different. The mystery is not WHO the Dark Lady is but rather WHAT she might be!
In 121, de Vere says, “I am that I am.” Almost Biblical, that, don’t you think? Though the great King James translation wouldn’t be done during his lifetime, I wonder if someone on the committee didn’t put this wording there in honor of our bard. Well, be that as it may. What does he mean by this quote? He’s clearly confessing something that he sees about himself that is vile (“Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d”) but he doesn’t get around to identifying what this is.
Well, if the previous 120 poems aren’t enough to tip you off, then you are being deliberately obtuse. He’s referring, of course, to his compulsive homosexual attraction, that same flamboyant obsession that probably landed him in disgrace (or at least out of fashion) with “fortune and men’s eyes.” But until relatively recently, homosexuality truly was the love that dared not speak its name, and so it was wise to speak in heavily veiled terms, lest one’s outspokenness might lead one to some nasty imprisonment, torture, and death or banishment.
I believe that he had already come to be known as the second queen of the time, and that it was only his lineage, connections, and quick wit that saved him this fate. As Henry was slipping inexorably from his orbit of control, he dabbled more in the dark recesses of his sexuality until finally, in sonnet 130, he comes right out and says who his mistress is: His Homosexual Lust!
Think about it. No man of Oxford’s stature would have had a female mistress of such lowness and ugliness that he would refer to her in the terms he does in 130. Sonnet 129, its immediate precursor, laments his one true love which is “lust in action.” His sex drive is “past reason” and “no sooner had” than hated. This is no woman he’s talking about.
Read Sonnet 130 again and you’ll realize that the cheeks he’s talking about are ass cheeks on a man—hence no roses there! And the breath? Well, I need not get graphic. Every detail makes much more sense describing the object of his lust that is not a female—and what’s more, it makes sense in context.
The Dark Lady is man-to-man sex; “black” is his code for this and lets us make sense of lines like “Thy black is fairest in my judgment’s place,” and “In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds” (Sonnet 131).
Yes, our bard was indeed in love with his Dark Lady, but she is a part of him that he was able to compartmentalize and, somewhat, conceal from his contemporaries. But then, they didn’t have access to the whole flood of sonnets and we do, and yet we choose to ignore what he is telling us.
So, the next time you read something about Shakespeare’s love for a mysterious Dark Lady, roll your eyes heavenward and think what fools these mortals be.
Oxford's Dark Lady didn't mysteriously come into being after 126 sonnets had been composed. She wasn't some new lady in waiting who surfaced at Hampton Court or anywhere else. This gal was present from the start of the sonnets though he himself wasn't acknowledging her presence or the power of her appeal to him. Shakespeare's mistress was alway trotting along with him but so heavily veiled that maybe even he didn't recognize her. But when he finally does unveil her, to us and to himself, he knew she must have no name.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Dusting Off Hamlet
In Culture’s dress-up box there are many fun costumes that we can wear to the Grand Party. But none has been taken out, shaken up a bit, and donned in fashion all anew as Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The old warhorse has been trotting the boards for lo these four hundred years, always new, always bright, and always---insufferably dull. Like that legendary unmarried aunt in the next county, who is always reputed to be a beauty beyond compare, a cook extraordinaire, and a pillar of all the virtues we hold dear. Until she materializes in the flesh, as it were. Then we discover that she is less than the songs of her praises.
And such is the masterpiece of our Western World. We study her; we profess our love to her; we admire her for the quality of her parts. But dear Lord, don’t make me spend any time with her! She’s a bore! She talks too much. She gasps breathlessly, endlessly like the self-obsessed, delusional patient upon the psychiatrist’s couch that she is. A neurotic woman with too much time on her hands and not enough love in her life.
I don’t hate Hamlet. I just won’t spend another minute of my ever-diminishing lifespan watching her prance and preen upon the stage or screen. And yet the old girl won’t rest. Like the old whores who lived in my hometown, she keeps rising like Dracula and his brides, to shimmy and shake every time a new man comes to town.
Well, here I am, the new man in town, and she is shimmying and shaking not only in my face but in my subconscious, wanting to be loved, to be embraced, but most of all--to be understood. Why should I give one moment’s thought to this crazy old whore? The Cliff Notes plot summary tells us all. A Danish prince’s father is cruelly murdered so that the perpetrator can obtain the throne and the queen; the prince is told to seek revenge via the ghost of the father; the murder is avenged but at a cost (of the entire Danish royal family). So what’s not to understand?
Yes, if only it would end there and this Reader’s Digest plot summary be the be-all and the end-all. But something is dreadfully amiss that skirts the edges of our consciousness, something that doesn’t sit well, good acting be damned. And that something is that the Genius of the World, the man who wrote this work, the Bard of Avon, created something that doesn’t make sense.
The man we know as Shakespeare poured more of his ineffable brilliance and insight about the meaning of being a human being into this work than into any of his other works. Using the language of English but the gift of the gods, this man let escape insights into humanity that have never before captured the essence of the mystery, majesty, and divinity of human life itself. Even with the prejudices and predilections of a man of his time, birth, and condition, he was able to see beyond all of these things into the infinite, into the sublime, into the black hole where resides the excised sacrificial beating heart of humanity.
And thus we must treat Hamlet reverentially, tiptoeing around the corpse in the living room, the stern countenance of our great ancestor--intimidating and profoundly serious. But it is this attitude about the play that keeps it in a state of suspended animation that with each passing year, each passing generation, makes it more and more remote, with its rarefied dust eventually striking the nostrils of only the highest of the high priests of arcane literature. Well, quite frankly, this work is headed to the dustbin to be added to the ash heap of oblivion if some fundamental restoration isn’t done to it.
This thing has to get personal or it’s doomed!
Every creator’s greatest work is all about himself. Whether a building, a painting, a musical composition, a literary work--the masterpieces are what they are because they are autobiographical. Who’s that Christ-like figure sitting in the center of that long table in “The Last Supper”? Why, it’s DaVinci as he saw himself, the center of the universe, patient, beatific, all-knowing, in a world of chaos and betrayal. I don’t care what the medium: Look at the masterpiece and you are looking into the heart and soul of the creator.
Yet this is absolutely not considered when looking at Hamlet--the author is as detached from his masterpiece as was a French king from his peasants. It’s as if it makes no difference who wrote the thing--the work is all that matters. But without an author, the work is soulless, like a reflection in a mirror without anyone standing in front of the mirror. Or like a vampire standing in front of the mirror and causing no reflection.
No. The author and the work are complementary and inseparable.
We must know what the author was up to when he created his work, but with Shakespeare this is less than easy. Tradition has it that the part of the ghost in Hamlet was actually played by the author when the play was first performed at the Globe Theater. And I think this is very telling that we’ve treated Shakespeare as a ghost ever since, never as a man.
Why is this? Why do we deny humanity to the most humanistic of writers? Are we so pompous and cocksure that we don’t need the author? Not really. The answer to this oversight or omission or whatever it might be considered has not been deliberate--on OUR part. I do think it was deliberate and forced upon us by the author himself.
Elusive is a word that is an understatement in describing our attempts to know the man behind the words that were penned in the English Renaissance. The traditional view of the playwright as the man from Stratford on Avon is a laughable fiction maintained more to promote tourism to the English countryside than to provide a plausible biography of our bard. That an uneducated country bumpkin who never went more than forty miles from home in his whole life was able to create the world of Shakespeare’s poetry is utter nonsense. Our man was an aristocrat of the first order with a great education and great connections who took the bumpkin’s name--with whatever financial arrangements the two of them worked out lost in the mist of time. I can take no criticism of the works of Shakespeare seriously if the critic does not attribute the works to their only rightful source--Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford.
People do not leap from writing nothing into writing masterpieces of poetry and drama--yet we are to believe that the man from Stratford did just this. And great writers do not degenerate into subliterate drivel as the will of Shakespeare attests to. There is too precipitous an ascension to the heights and a too profound sinking to the depths to be remotely believable.
But de Vere was educated, trained, traveled, and connected from an early age, and his writing shows progress in letters and poetry. De Vere was early known as a wit, bon vivant, and exceptionally skilled verbal talent. But there is no stage where he shows a maturing talent. Why? The reason is undoubtedly that he quit writing under his own name in favor of the assumed one of William Shakespeare.
And why would he assume a name of a real contemporaneous person? For a nobleman in Elizabeth’s court to write poetry under his own name was certainly not forbidden or frowned upon; indeed, it was encouraged. But writing for the theater most certainly was seen as less than honorable for one of the noble class. It was akin to working in commerce. The nobility did not soil their hands for the rabble to applaud or hiss.
Though his reason to use a pseudonym was surely to shield himself and the court from disgrace, still the world of Elizabeth’s court and that time’s London were fairly small. This is a secret that was likely known in the inner circles and perhaps in larger circles as well.
I think his reason for doing so was more complex. Part of his reason surely lay with the name William Shakespeare itself. De Vere, I believe, wanted that name for its verbal possibilities. His own did not have any play within it, but Will Shakespeare--now here was a three syllable combination that can be at least three verbs or three nouns or combinations thereof that the clever de Vere could imagine all pertained to him. By altering the meaning of one of the syllables, an identity could be whatever he wanted it to be. The name, in short, amused him.
That it was attached to a real person, albeit a not overly bright one, working at a theater in London must have appealed to de Vere’s sense of dramatic comedy, intrigue, irony, and drama. With money and puffery, he probably convinced the real Shakespeare to allow him to use his name and maintain the fiction that he, the lowly one, was the author of the works. (Had a man of Oxford’s status, wit, and money approached me with such an offer of money for silence, I would have jumped at the chance.)
More in the Next Posting
And I promise I will get back to the subject of Hamlet.
And such is the masterpiece of our Western World. We study her; we profess our love to her; we admire her for the quality of her parts. But dear Lord, don’t make me spend any time with her! She’s a bore! She talks too much. She gasps breathlessly, endlessly like the self-obsessed, delusional patient upon the psychiatrist’s couch that she is. A neurotic woman with too much time on her hands and not enough love in her life.
I don’t hate Hamlet. I just won’t spend another minute of my ever-diminishing lifespan watching her prance and preen upon the stage or screen. And yet the old girl won’t rest. Like the old whores who lived in my hometown, she keeps rising like Dracula and his brides, to shimmy and shake every time a new man comes to town.
Well, here I am, the new man in town, and she is shimmying and shaking not only in my face but in my subconscious, wanting to be loved, to be embraced, but most of all--to be understood. Why should I give one moment’s thought to this crazy old whore? The Cliff Notes plot summary tells us all. A Danish prince’s father is cruelly murdered so that the perpetrator can obtain the throne and the queen; the prince is told to seek revenge via the ghost of the father; the murder is avenged but at a cost (of the entire Danish royal family). So what’s not to understand?
Yes, if only it would end there and this Reader’s Digest plot summary be the be-all and the end-all. But something is dreadfully amiss that skirts the edges of our consciousness, something that doesn’t sit well, good acting be damned. And that something is that the Genius of the World, the man who wrote this work, the Bard of Avon, created something that doesn’t make sense.
The man we know as Shakespeare poured more of his ineffable brilliance and insight about the meaning of being a human being into this work than into any of his other works. Using the language of English but the gift of the gods, this man let escape insights into humanity that have never before captured the essence of the mystery, majesty, and divinity of human life itself. Even with the prejudices and predilections of a man of his time, birth, and condition, he was able to see beyond all of these things into the infinite, into the sublime, into the black hole where resides the excised sacrificial beating heart of humanity.
And thus we must treat Hamlet reverentially, tiptoeing around the corpse in the living room, the stern countenance of our great ancestor--intimidating and profoundly serious. But it is this attitude about the play that keeps it in a state of suspended animation that with each passing year, each passing generation, makes it more and more remote, with its rarefied dust eventually striking the nostrils of only the highest of the high priests of arcane literature. Well, quite frankly, this work is headed to the dustbin to be added to the ash heap of oblivion if some fundamental restoration isn’t done to it.
This thing has to get personal or it’s doomed!
Every creator’s greatest work is all about himself. Whether a building, a painting, a musical composition, a literary work--the masterpieces are what they are because they are autobiographical. Who’s that Christ-like figure sitting in the center of that long table in “The Last Supper”? Why, it’s DaVinci as he saw himself, the center of the universe, patient, beatific, all-knowing, in a world of chaos and betrayal. I don’t care what the medium: Look at the masterpiece and you are looking into the heart and soul of the creator.
Yet this is absolutely not considered when looking at Hamlet--the author is as detached from his masterpiece as was a French king from his peasants. It’s as if it makes no difference who wrote the thing--the work is all that matters. But without an author, the work is soulless, like a reflection in a mirror without anyone standing in front of the mirror. Or like a vampire standing in front of the mirror and causing no reflection.
No. The author and the work are complementary and inseparable.
We must know what the author was up to when he created his work, but with Shakespeare this is less than easy. Tradition has it that the part of the ghost in Hamlet was actually played by the author when the play was first performed at the Globe Theater. And I think this is very telling that we’ve treated Shakespeare as a ghost ever since, never as a man.
Why is this? Why do we deny humanity to the most humanistic of writers? Are we so pompous and cocksure that we don’t need the author? Not really. The answer to this oversight or omission or whatever it might be considered has not been deliberate--on OUR part. I do think it was deliberate and forced upon us by the author himself.
Elusive is a word that is an understatement in describing our attempts to know the man behind the words that were penned in the English Renaissance. The traditional view of the playwright as the man from Stratford on Avon is a laughable fiction maintained more to promote tourism to the English countryside than to provide a plausible biography of our bard. That an uneducated country bumpkin who never went more than forty miles from home in his whole life was able to create the world of Shakespeare’s poetry is utter nonsense. Our man was an aristocrat of the first order with a great education and great connections who took the bumpkin’s name--with whatever financial arrangements the two of them worked out lost in the mist of time. I can take no criticism of the works of Shakespeare seriously if the critic does not attribute the works to their only rightful source--Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford.
People do not leap from writing nothing into writing masterpieces of poetry and drama--yet we are to believe that the man from Stratford did just this. And great writers do not degenerate into subliterate drivel as the will of Shakespeare attests to. There is too precipitous an ascension to the heights and a too profound sinking to the depths to be remotely believable.
But de Vere was educated, trained, traveled, and connected from an early age, and his writing shows progress in letters and poetry. De Vere was early known as a wit, bon vivant, and exceptionally skilled verbal talent. But there is no stage where he shows a maturing talent. Why? The reason is undoubtedly that he quit writing under his own name in favor of the assumed one of William Shakespeare.
And why would he assume a name of a real contemporaneous person? For a nobleman in Elizabeth’s court to write poetry under his own name was certainly not forbidden or frowned upon; indeed, it was encouraged. But writing for the theater most certainly was seen as less than honorable for one of the noble class. It was akin to working in commerce. The nobility did not soil their hands for the rabble to applaud or hiss.
Though his reason to use a pseudonym was surely to shield himself and the court from disgrace, still the world of Elizabeth’s court and that time’s London were fairly small. This is a secret that was likely known in the inner circles and perhaps in larger circles as well.
I think his reason for doing so was more complex. Part of his reason surely lay with the name William Shakespeare itself. De Vere, I believe, wanted that name for its verbal possibilities. His own did not have any play within it, but Will Shakespeare--now here was a three syllable combination that can be at least three verbs or three nouns or combinations thereof that the clever de Vere could imagine all pertained to him. By altering the meaning of one of the syllables, an identity could be whatever he wanted it to be. The name, in short, amused him.
That it was attached to a real person, albeit a not overly bright one, working at a theater in London must have appealed to de Vere’s sense of dramatic comedy, intrigue, irony, and drama. With money and puffery, he probably convinced the real Shakespeare to allow him to use his name and maintain the fiction that he, the lowly one, was the author of the works. (Had a man of Oxford’s status, wit, and money approached me with such an offer of money for silence, I would have jumped at the chance.)
More in the Next Posting
And I promise I will get back to the subject of Hamlet.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Death by Footnotes
To decry the dearth of interest in Shakespeare by the younger generations is to overlook the obvious cause of this decline: The Bard is creaking with age and is sinking into incomprehensibility.
His language is glorious, yes, but in a terribly archaic way that has approached the point of being another language. Any text of his works to be even remotely understood requires so many footnotes and interpretations that they fill up nearly half of each page with tiny print explanations. A young reader seeing this naturally is turned off. Anything really fun doesn’t require this much effort.
And they’re right. Imagine watching a movie that was interrupted every few seconds with a commentator telling you what was going on or being said but that without the interruptions wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever. That would be a real crowd pleaser, wouldn’t it?
It is time—no, it’s way past time—that we admitted the English of the 16th Century and the social and political framework of that time are so far removed from our own that we must stop with the footnotes and start with the translations, just as we do with Beowulf and with Canterbury Tales.
Let’s rework Shakespeare’s writing to retain the flavor if not the letter of the master’s stories. We do it with the Bible, so why not him?
Oh no, say the scholars and purists, Shakespeare must be read only in the original. Well, if that is the final opinion, then Shakespeare won’t be read at all--except by those tiresome people who treat him as the voice of a cult.
De Vere never really thought the language would change as much as it has. He speaks in the sonnets of conferring immortality to his precious Henry by force of his unexcelled ability with language, language which he felt to be immutable, since he himself was setting the gold standard for that language.
But the forces of the Western Culture were more potent and dynamic than he could ever imagine. The aristocracy that he assumed was eternal is non-existent in most of the English-speaking world, and even in England itself the faintest shadow of what he knew. This aspect alone in his works makes the need paramount to re-do the works—we cannot expect people to read works whose entire social structure might as well be from another planet.
Distillation is necessary. Condense these stories so that their brilliance is visible—and don’t be afraid to say that they are indeed Shakespeare. The New Shakespeare. Improved. Unshackled from its remote past. And we could have a committee, not unlike that charged with the King James translation of the Bible, be assigned to perform this awesome task.
I personally am not sanguine about the future of our Bard. Trends are moving away from seeing him as the “be all and end all” of writers/thinkers. One can already see that educated people are no longer in possession of a command and/or awe of his achievement and his supremacy. Already his works are being relegated to a higher and higher shelf in the library of works one must have at his command to be considered literate and educated, farther and farther away from the culture he so enriched.
He’s lasted longer than anyone else as a master in the voice in which he actually wrote, but now even HE is in need of a facelift. And it must be a facelift so complete that one need not have footnotes destroying the enjoyment of his works. We can’t change society and the direction it is taking, but we can keep Shakespeare alive for our culture by deciding that modification is better than the purity that leads to nullification.
I realize that this is heresy. I am one of those who enjoy reading Shakespeare without being encumbered by footnotes. And, even though I am fairly knowledgeable and adept at reading the old works, I’m sure there are references and allusions and meanings that I just don’t get. But I refuse to be wonkish about my love of the Bard and descend into that arcane world that argues over the number of angels that dance on the head of a pin.
Get thee gone, vile footnotes! Shakespeare will be reworked without you.
His language is glorious, yes, but in a terribly archaic way that has approached the point of being another language. Any text of his works to be even remotely understood requires so many footnotes and interpretations that they fill up nearly half of each page with tiny print explanations. A young reader seeing this naturally is turned off. Anything really fun doesn’t require this much effort.
And they’re right. Imagine watching a movie that was interrupted every few seconds with a commentator telling you what was going on or being said but that without the interruptions wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever. That would be a real crowd pleaser, wouldn’t it?
It is time—no, it’s way past time—that we admitted the English of the 16th Century and the social and political framework of that time are so far removed from our own that we must stop with the footnotes and start with the translations, just as we do with Beowulf and with Canterbury Tales.
Let’s rework Shakespeare’s writing to retain the flavor if not the letter of the master’s stories. We do it with the Bible, so why not him?
Oh no, say the scholars and purists, Shakespeare must be read only in the original. Well, if that is the final opinion, then Shakespeare won’t be read at all--except by those tiresome people who treat him as the voice of a cult.
De Vere never really thought the language would change as much as it has. He speaks in the sonnets of conferring immortality to his precious Henry by force of his unexcelled ability with language, language which he felt to be immutable, since he himself was setting the gold standard for that language.
But the forces of the Western Culture were more potent and dynamic than he could ever imagine. The aristocracy that he assumed was eternal is non-existent in most of the English-speaking world, and even in England itself the faintest shadow of what he knew. This aspect alone in his works makes the need paramount to re-do the works—we cannot expect people to read works whose entire social structure might as well be from another planet.
Distillation is necessary. Condense these stories so that their brilliance is visible—and don’t be afraid to say that they are indeed Shakespeare. The New Shakespeare. Improved. Unshackled from its remote past. And we could have a committee, not unlike that charged with the King James translation of the Bible, be assigned to perform this awesome task.
I personally am not sanguine about the future of our Bard. Trends are moving away from seeing him as the “be all and end all” of writers/thinkers. One can already see that educated people are no longer in possession of a command and/or awe of his achievement and his supremacy. Already his works are being relegated to a higher and higher shelf in the library of works one must have at his command to be considered literate and educated, farther and farther away from the culture he so enriched.
He’s lasted longer than anyone else as a master in the voice in which he actually wrote, but now even HE is in need of a facelift. And it must be a facelift so complete that one need not have footnotes destroying the enjoyment of his works. We can’t change society and the direction it is taking, but we can keep Shakespeare alive for our culture by deciding that modification is better than the purity that leads to nullification.
I realize that this is heresy. I am one of those who enjoy reading Shakespeare without being encumbered by footnotes. And, even though I am fairly knowledgeable and adept at reading the old works, I’m sure there are references and allusions and meanings that I just don’t get. But I refuse to be wonkish about my love of the Bard and descend into that arcane world that argues over the number of angels that dance on the head of a pin.
Get thee gone, vile footnotes! Shakespeare will be reworked without you.
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