Appendix 3 about „Hamlet“, part 3: Need a hero?

 Now I have to begin this blog with the sad news that, of course, having now looked into Hamlet himself a great deal more – mainly with the help of Dover Wilson – I had to discard my theory about Ophelia’s pregnancy. There is no way that Shakespeare could have wanted to play with the possibility that she was pregnant because this would virtually damage the basic logic of the Hamlet-plot. Of course this leaves now a newly opened can of questions about the Ophelia-plot unanswered (which is great, by the way!) because I am still convinced that the rue and the long purples “carry” meaning. And certainly somebody did already come up with a similarly fascinating explanation for them as Dover Wilson had for the question why Claudius doesn’t react to the “dumb show”, and what this means for the whole scene where the “Gonzago” play is staged. Which I hadn’t even realized as something I hadn’t understood AT ALL. Finding and answering these questions is a fascinating game which could be played ad infinitum, but it isn’t THE POINT. At least not for me. As I am reading Dover Wilson I am digging up new questions almost as fast as I get others answered. Maybe that is why I am having so much fun reading it … So the point is, as this doesn’t occur at this rate in any other one of Shakespeare’s plays: WHY is this so?

And I still like my reading of Ophelia a lot because, in this case, I had the complete story of HOW IT HAPPENED that I came to make “Hamlet” available to me. And that story started even BEFORE my renewed relationship with Shakespeare began. It might even be that a failed reading process gets me a better result than being instantly successful. In any case I am learning a lot more about what I am doing. And, being led astray can even be an essential part of creating meaning. As it was in my reading of Sonnet 1. There it was, in my experience, as simple as that: If you don’t follow the false leads but stay on the path of “straight” reading you will never retrieve what the poem really is about. Because meaning, in this case, is retrieved through performance. You have to COME TO feel even EXACTLY what the person who wrote this poem felt “performing” it. (I wrote “performing” because “feeling” is a difficult issue to deal with talking of other people – like “thinking” is. Of course, in a way, we are trying to figure out what the author of a text felt or thought. But, taken literally, it is about as pointless as trying to figure out what an actor is thinking or feeling during his performance. There are probably MOMENTS that are really “as simple as that”, but usually we cannot know anything about it. As we can know nothing about what Shakespeare was thinking or feeling when he wrote this poem. But I believe that, when the circumstances are right, and I manage to be a good reader, I can come to know what feelings and thoughts his PERFORMANCE is about.) In “Hamlet” creating false leads must be equally essential, very likely in more ways than one. And the communication as such is infinitely more complex because most of what happens in this play is performed through pretending or lying. And there is potentially no end to the process of nailing the truth.

Even having read or heard very close to nothing about the play, I have already collected two references to its “mystery” character. One from someone interviewed on the National Theatre’s production who referred to it as a “mystery play”, one by Dover Wilson who addresses the play as a “dramatic essay in mystery” even before he deals with its being a tragedy. But stating this, in both cases, without any further explanation, is kind of a provocation and should be taken up as such. Because “Hamlet” obviously isn’t a “mystery play” but a tragedy. A “mystery play”, in my understanding, is something that couldn’t have existed in Elizabethan times because, if I remember this correctly, the first “mystery” in world literature was a French kind of novella from the nineteenth century. Which means for “Hamlet” that the objective of the play is not to clear up a mystery in a way that would satisfy the speculative mind of the “scientific” age but to create “catharsis” of the kind where you might come to ask WHY these atrocious things actually HAVE TO happen. Whereas the “dramatic essay in mystery” is a very alluring expression - which might even explain a lot about the difficulties of “processing” the text on a stage or on screen – but what does it actually mean in terms of a structural issue about the play?

The first thing that struck me seeing the RSC production with David Tennant, and the reason why I came to like it, was that I could SEE people LYING all the time. And by playing Hamlet in a way that it was impossible to “take him for granted” David Tennant constantly alerted me to that happening. Because - as I am not able to resist taking a “shortcut” here: what’s “wrong” with Hamlet is not him but OTHER PEOPLE. And it is the kind of structure of reality they create FOR HIM that he is unable to cope with. In this disagreement about the character of Hamlet – which, as in Dover Wilson, dates back at least to the late eighteenth century when Goethe put him down as a WEAK character – I noticed, to my own surprise, that I stood entirely on Dover Wilsons side who states that it is the “sheer weight of the load” that is too much for him to handle. I even came to the conclusion that Hamlet is probably one of the very few tragic characters that are actually tragic because of what HAPPENS TO THEM, not because of what they DO. And this even makes it more difficult to take him seriously as a tragic character! In his case – as in the case of the other main characters as well – it is probably more useful not to dwell on introspection but to look on how he reacts to what happens to him. And to figure out what happens to him in the first place. And what happens to him is that, politically and on a personal level, a structure of reality has been created where it is impossible for him to act as the person HE SHOULD BE, as well as the person HE KNOWS HE IS. Because he KNOWS, and can FEEL, that there is something in him that “passes show”, and which he knows is more important than whatever other people judge to be important, and on what they base their actions and reactions. As, at one point, everybody important to him has shown what he himself HAS FAILED to show until then: WEAKNESS.

Which, especially in the women, Getrude and Ophelia, means that, if they have had something in them which passes show, they have at one point shown weakness which resulted in betraying it and in creating a structure of betrayal that proves fatal to Hamlet. And what convinced me of my approach is that exactly the lines that “we” don’t want to hear and try to reject, suddenly gather context and make sense, as: “frailty thy name is woman”. Because “in Shakespeare” where there are so many strong women as probably nowhere else in classic literature, this frailty is supposed to be SIGNIFICANT and should raise questions about these characters and about what is actually “rotten in the state of Denmark”. Because, for Hamlet, the real problem isn’t just Claudius. It is the fact that he has nobody, apart from justice, on his side. It’s the people he actually trusted, like his mother, the woman he loves, and the people he considers to be his friends, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who should be on his side and “help” him against Claudius, not the other way round! But Claudius has just “occupied” the position of the

“massy wheel fixed on the summit of the highest mount, to whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things are mortised and adjoined, which when it falls, each small annexment, petty consequence, attends the boistr’rous ruin …”

Which I recommend to read ALOUD so as to feel the full impact of how this wheel moves inexorably, and how heavy it actually is. So heavy in fact that people cannot find the strength to stand up against it and, because of that, let things happen that shouldn’t happen. On a political level because they don’t want to know, or don’t care, if this position of power is taken lawfully. (As, I think, Dover Wilson states correctly: everybody in the audience would have understood that it wasn’t!) On a personal level because, for various reasons, they are not strong enough to listen to that which is within them THAT PASSES SHOW. Because, to survive in this “rotten” state of reality, SHOW is actually enough! As long as there is nobody to question the state of reality created by show there is no problem. And this is actually the point where “Hamlet” is growing INCREASINGLY contemporary just now within the political reality I am living in. Where DOING NOTHING is actually the best way to survive politically. And these politicians of course don’t care and not even think about where what they DON’T DO will get us because their SHOW of activity is sufficient for people to believe in them. But they don’t believe in them, at least I think so, because they are actually THAT stupid, but because they WANT to believe that everything will stay the way it is while they are doing nothing “about it”. Which, of course, it will not! I think that lots of people are aware of the fact that, if there is no change, the world or political system we are living in will not survive. But most people, myself included, don’t want to believe this. And they don’t want to act upon it because they are not “cut out” to be heroes. But what makes Hamlet, of all people, the ideal victim for the questionable fate of becoming a hero is exactly that he totally lacks THE USUAL KIND of human weakness which makes it so easy for those that move the spokes of the “massy wheel” to manipulate people into doing what they ARE SUPPOSED TO DO.

There is another quote which I feel should be taken very seriously, and which cannot be taken seriously if we put Hamlet down as weak:

“The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!”

Because it doesn’t only suggest that Hamlet himself doesn’t feel that he is cut out to be a hero. Which, at least for me, certainly isn’t an indication of weakness but rather of good sense. (What, of course, I like a lot about Hamlet is that he is obviously very intelligent and has a shrewed sense of humour of the kind that people often don’t get it that he is actually joking. And, personally, I don’t think that being brainy is the reason for his inability to act and just “erase” the problem by using his dagger. Which is something that can of course be contested quite easily …) It is as well an indication that he is very well aware of the scope of his task which somehow passes the personal issue of revenge and redeeming his honour as well as the political issue of removing Claudius and establishing himself as the rightful king. But WHAT is this supposed to be?

At this point I somehow came to extend my perspective and started to look around for other “heroes” in Shakespeare. And the most important thing I came up with was that I wasn’t able to “dig up” more than one! There are certainly many characters that are kind of “naturally heroic”, like Othello, Macbeth, and Mark Anthony. Even Richard III, whom I think Shakespeare wanted to put up a heroic fight in the end – as he did, by the way, in “real life” where he ended up hacked to death instead of being ransomed, as kings usually did. And making them heroic certainly is meant to make them kind of attractive as a character - probably with the exception of Richard III? - but quite certainly doesn’t redeem them IN ANY WAY as a human being.

The only “real” hero I detected was Henry V. On a cursory inspection I concluded that one important issue about him might be something like an “essay on heroism” which is certainly very interesting and so shrewed that I don’t pretend to have made sense of it as yet. But it is certainly significant in some way that the only character who, in the end, emerges as a hero, wasn’t cut out to be a hero in the first place, rather the opposite! And it is certainly significant that the only character cut out to be a hero in this play, namely Henry Percy, called “Hotspur”, ends up the way he does. Trevor White, in the recent RSC production, even played him as somebody with a mild case of autism. And I think he definitely has a point there. And then there is of course Sir John Falstaff and his subversive subtext – which is even “louder” probably where it isn’t that explicit: “What is honour? A word. What is that word? Honour. What is that honour. Air. (…) Who has it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Does he hear it? No …” (Henry IV, pt. 1, act 5, scene 1)

As far as I am probably still from understanding “him” it is certainly safe to state that Shakespeare isn’t “big” on heroes. And that he even might have thought of the “classic” type of a hero as BORING and STUPID. (As I have always done myself, by the way …)

Anyway, what makes Henry V a hero, and what this character really is about, remains rather obscure. Whereas I think in “Hamlet” we might find the answer what exactly Shakespeare thought a hero is made of.

Some time ago my sister gave me a postcard I totally loved. It is like this kind of advertisement students, for example, use to search for a room, and where people can tear off small strips with their phone numbers on it. Only that, in this case, there are identical little men you can tear off, and the text says:

“Need a hero? Take one.”

And I love to analyze, in a case like this, what EXACTLY I am laughing about. And I think that I am laughing about myself and my NEED for a hero. And that I take this need seriously. But I have found out that being cynical often is a form of lying about something important, and laughing doesn’t change anything. When I had my laugh I still kind of need to believe in the POSSIBILITY of a hero, and even - maybe? - in the possibility of being one. As Richard Armitage said in an interview about playing John Proctor:

“It is such a high point to take a human being to. I don’t know if I aspire to do that myself. But I certainly aspire to be a man that could, you know, chose that.”

What I love about this quote – apart from the fact that somebody ACTUALLY said something like this IN PUBLIC - is the precision and truthfulness about the feelings implied. Because the reluctance probably implies something that I have always felt to be true, and what might be Shakespeare’s own conclusion on heroism. (And why I think I am STILL RIGHT about despising people who put their life at risk in a show of heroism for nothing but fame, and don’t feel the least bit sorry for them if they get hurt.) Namely that somebody who ASPIRES to be a hero probably is an idiot. But at the same time it is really important that we can kind of feel this FORM of heroism “in us”, in case the need for it might arise some day. And I think this is not even as unlikely as it appears on first sight. Because it might just mean as “little” as being able to realize that we still HAVE A CHOICE where we couldn’t SEE it before. For example, I like it that most productions of “Hamlet” give Gertrude a choice in the end and make it apparent that she tries to save her son, on expense of her own life, and in that way shows considerable strength, even though it is then too late. And it is not “out of character” because it might be the only thing within her that “passes show” – where she still can feel herself as a human being.

And maybe this is very naïve, but I think that this is what Benedict Cumberbatch meant when he said that every actor has a Hamlet “in him”. I don’t think, as I said, that this is literally true, as I have seen great actors play Hamlet, even in a significant way, who didn’t have a Hamlet “in them” but who played what they thought this character is about with amazing imagination and expertise. Namely Derek Jacobi and David Tennant, who obviously both had a Richard II “in them”! But Hamlet, as played by them, didn’t emerge in the way he emerged kind of “naturally” when Benedict Cumberbatch played him. Because I think he has something in him which “passes show” which enables him to play characters like Sherlock or Julian Assange in “The Fifth Estate” – which would have been my choice for an Oscar, by the way – and, of course, Hamlet, in the totally unique way he played them. As all of them are obviously “heroes”, but of the kind which doesn’t emerge as a hero on first sight. But in fact their heroism goes deeper and is more real because it is something the actor can make himself believe in, and, in that way, makes us believe in it as well. And I think that Julian Assange, as played by Benedict Cumberbatch, is even the best version of a Hamlet for our own time because he has to take on this task of “cleaning up” single-handedly, knowing that it is dangerous and can be lethal to his “mission” if he trusts anyone. And this is basically what Hamlet is about. He even has a stupid German “Horatio character” by his side, played by Daniel Brühl, who betrays him as well, in the end. Of course the two stories are quite different, but in both cases there is this person who believes that he is “born to set it right”. And the actor has to make us believe in this. Even if it passes our understanding, as it does in my case. Because I think I can CONTEMPLATE John Proctor’s choice of death over having EVERYTHING being taken away from him – even how hard it is, which probably is the reason why it is kind of painful to watch, and “catharsis” actually “works”. It wasn’t the same with Hamlet. John Proctor is, in a way, a very “basic” kind of hero, very close to himself and, by that, close to the audience. Whereas Hamlet is certainly a complex character, like Julian Assange in the film, not immediately likeable at best, probably manipulative and devious, responding to the situation he lives in of course, at worst even with a cruel streak. Which probably precludes that I can feel “cathartic grief” for his sake, as something that actually hurts. But, for the first time, in the end I didn’t feel kind of relieved that he is now “put out of his misery”. For the first time I felt sorry for him. In fact, Hamlet goes much further than I can follow. And still, I think, “we” have a dire need to believe that this kind of hero EXISTS. Maybe even more than ever.

Appendix 3 on “Hamlet”, part 2: About Ophelia’s madness

 As I said, there might be hundreds of similar minor questions to ask and minor oddities to notice about this play, but there must have been a reason for me to ask THIS question before I singled it out as a strategic approach which I felt would work as an approach to the play AS A WHOLE. I think there are even a number of reasons, the most important one probably that I already had an opinion on this matter. Although I didn’t really know this, it was kind of already “there”. And I think it was created by a maze of irrational and illogical things going on around Ophelia, especially in her relationship with Hamlet, and then where her madness is concerned. The most obvious thing, that everybody would notice, is what she is talking about in her state of madness. There is some stuff about death and burial, but most of it is about men and women, and sex - which as such even appears quite logical because it is meant to make it perfectly clear that she is mentally disturbed. As these are things that she certainly wouldn’t talk about if she had still some control over what is “getting out”. But there is always this: external reasons, as, of course, Shakespeare wanting Ophelia to become mad for reasons of plot, and, of course, he needed the audience to believe in this. So he used these rather strong sexual allusions which are kind of strange for a young girl like Ophelia who, at least from what we know about her, doesn’t have any personal experience of this kind. But there are always “internal” reasons as well, and there is the content of her speech that is developing a life of its own. So there is of course MEANING created by these two contrasting “texts”: the one about the innocent, inexperienced young girl and the one about men and women, and sex, and losing their virginity. And the question will just automatically arise: What is this supposed to mean?

And, having noticed countless times how exactly and strategically Shakespeare uses this technique of establishing relevant content by what people say INADVERTENTLY, I always believe that when I “stumble” over something I was meant to do so. Of course I can be wrong in every single one of these instances, meaning that I may have stumbled by accident, and I never base my reading on just one of these moments. But, every time I stumble, I start looking for clues, and I think this is what happened. Apart from the fact that Ophelia irked me, and I didn’t like her, and I had learned this to be a good place to start. And I think, somehow, all of this together suddenly made me realize that I just didn’t BELIEVE that the reason for Ophelia’s madness that is suggested by most people in the play - and which we tend to accept because of this - is the REAL reason. Because I am totally convinced that nobody would become mentally disturbed because of a parent dying, not even if it is under horrible circumstances which you don’t understand. And not even if somebody you are very close to has killed them.

(And just asking one question in this case almost automatically raises another one. Because we actually don’t know if Ophelia knows HOW EXACTLY her father died. Especially not if she knew that Hamlet did it because, the way Claudius describes it, they tried to bury everything about it as fast and as deep as possible. And in that way - by “taking” the play “seriously” and asking “reasonable” questions about it - we soon come to realize that what we don’t know about things, and people!, is infinitely more than what we know. Quite like in “real life”.)

Of course I had to think about this long and hard because there are at least two arguments against what I am thinking which I could make up on the spot. But I did, and I haven’t changed my mind. One of the reasons for this, which I like a lot, is that I have come to TRUST Shakespeare in a way I shouldn’t trust anybody, and in fact DON’T trust anybody else about BEING RIGHT about this kind of issues. And what I just realized is so weird that I have to break off right here and think about it …

But I have, and I have found that I actually believe this! There are in fact exactly two people in the world – one of them absurdly already dead but still probably more “alive” through what he has written than many people actually living – whose opinions I would trust in these matters. And this is because they are the only two people I know about who appear to have a similar “approach” to them, so they would understand why they are important, and who are definitely more intelligent than I am. (Of course there must be millions of people who are more intelligent than I am, but I don’t know them.) And one of these two obviously “is” Shakespeare.

So, to put it crudely, I just don’t believe that Shakespeare is talking bollocks where his “special field” is concerned, which is human issues. And, in my belief, it is bollocks that people become mad because of things that happen to other people (with the possible exception of parents becoming mad about things that happen to their children, but NOT the other way round!) In fact, the situation Ophelia is in is exactly the kind of situation where people who are susceptible to it would become depressed – as Hamlet himself does, in the beginning of the play. But Ophelia is not depressed, she is “cracked”, and, although there might of course be any number of examples to prove me wrong, it is not what “usually” happens when a parent dies, even under dire circumstances. To become “cracked” the damage must somehow go “deeper” than that. That is, it would not be something to do with other people but something that happens to YOU. And, when I realized this, I became aware that the most convincing explanation for me is that she must have found out that she is pregnant.

Of course I liked it that I was so convinced of this because it is something that nobody I know about has come up with. And, as with so many things that are suggested in this play, we will never find definite proof for or against it because we AREN’T MEANT to find it. So, strictly speaking, the question If Ophelia and Hamlet had sex and Ophelia became pregnant isn’t even “academic”, it is pointless. And people who brought this play on the stage are completely right about NOT taking up this issue in an obvious way. And Kenneth Branagh was TOTALLY WRONG when he inserted a hot sex scene into his “Hamlet” film, even though it was an interesting thing to do, just as he was totally wrong about all the clarifications he tried to make in his film so that people would understand the play better. Not as such, because in other cases this kind of thing works great, but in “Hamlet” it is exactly THE POINT that we are NOT SUPPOSED to understand what is happening!

But I realize that I have jumped too far ahead already and have left out my argument about Ophelia’s pregnancy. Because, even though Shakespeare DELIBERATELY doesn’t give away the truth about what happened between Hamlet and Ophelia, he nourishes the suspicion that something might have happened very carefully. And there was this moment that convinced me: where I stumbled and probably bruised my knee or something, so that I couldn’t just walk on and pretend not to notice. It was in the scene where Gertrude is reporting Ophelia’s death. A scene that had irked me every time I saw or read it, probably just because of the illogical point of view. When it appears as if she or other people had witnessed Ophelia’s drowning without doing anything about it. (Which in my opinion strongly suggests, by the way, that her report is deliberately incorrect, and that Ophelia has killed herself – that is, didn’t die in an unfortunate accident. And that Getrude didn’t want Laertes to know this …) And when I am irked I probably “slow down” and notice a lot of things I wouldn’t have noticed or wouldn’t have put down as “odd”. In this case it was the flowers. Who the f… cares, in this kind of tale, what flowers Ophelia had been playing with??? And, in this case, the list is so long that I think that Shakespeare deliberately wanted us to “slow down” and make us notice the ADDITIONAL CONTENT he had so artfully inserted in this scene.

For me it worked in a similar way as one of my two favourite bits “in Shakespeare”. Which is from  “Richard II” (Act 3, scene 2) when Bolingbroke is trying his hand on an elaborate, and audacious!, metaphor – and then realizes that he has “overstepped”, and tries to mend it:

“Methinks King Richard and myself should meet with no less terror than the elements of fire and water, when their thund’ring shock at meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven. Be he the fire, I’ll be the yielding water; the rage be his, whilst on the earth I’II rain my waters – ON THE EARTH, AND NOT ON HIM.”

Of course not! For he himself is in no doubt about who will win this “pissing contest”. There is no mistaking his real intentions NOW, although he might have hidden them successfully until then, even from himself! - In Gertrude’s elaborate enumeration of the flowers there is one moment where I think everybody must feel what Polonius says some time before this about the actor’s monologue: THIS IS TOO LONG! And it is the moment when she comes to the “long purples that liberal shepherds give a grosser name, but our cold maids do dead man’s fingers call them”. Of course it is not literally too long, especially for a time when people obviously enjoyed HEARING actors (not SEEING them in the first place!) (See “Macbeth”: where “life’s but a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is HEARD no more”). But it is kind of too long and totally IRRELEVANT where the hearers want to know what happened to Ophelia! Of course Shakespeare wouldn’t have left out such a stellar opportunity of inserting double meaning into his text through ONE flower with TWO names. But the way this “weighs down” Gertrude’s report is really hitting us on the head with the metaphor to make us notice that SOMETHING is wrong. And it implies the two possible reasons for Ophelia’s madness: having had forbidden sex and presumably ending up pregnant, and her father being killed. And this seemingly dispensable double metaphor contains such a “key structure” of this play where nothing ever is what you think it is!

Digging for more was great fun in this case, and just starting to dig brought up so much more that I still think this was just scratching the surface. Strictly speaking I didn’t even dig, I just shook the tree a bit, and see what fell out! The first thing was a shrewed observation by my friend about one of the plants Ophelia is distributing earlier on in the play. She noticed that Ophelia gives RUE to Claudius and to herself. As this is the only plant she gives to herself as well as others I had noticed this but hadn’t got the meaning. Which is obvious in Claudius’ case, but what the hell has SHE done to deserve it???

What is even more interesting about this is that “rue” might be one of the very few “residues” of a whole world of meaning that we still are able to detect just using our own experience, semantic, in this case. Of course there must be a lot more, as there are probably any number of academic theses and articles about plants and flowers in Shakespeare. And I think I “pulled out” one of these “strands” of meaning accidentally by recalling another text. Which is another basic methodical approach I am very fond of – as anybody who has read this blog would have noticed. In this case it was a German poem from the Middle Ages about somebody describing how winter is kind of taking over his house (or hers, as it turns out) so that it suddenly doesn’t appear like a homely place anymore. It was a very popular text which was made into a song, probably by more troubadours than one, something that everybody knew. And there is no mentioning of a love relationship or a pregnancy, but everybody KNEW what this song meant: that it was about a girl who got pregnant and was deserted by her lover. I don’t even remember a single line or phrase of this poem, just this structure of concealing sexual content completely “within” a metaphor – but of course in a way that everybody who is used to this technique would be able to read it. And, as this is a technique which is not generally used anymore, a lot of the finer points in Shakespeare are probably lost on us.

(My stellar example for this is the other one of my two favourite “bits” which is from “Henry V”: “If I conjure up love with her in his true likeness it must be naked and blind …” And this bit I loved mostly because of HOW LONG it took me until I “got it”. For I had actually NEVER BEFORE realized what the cute little innocent Cupid stands for!)

I liked it that the poem, which I recall having heard as a song, was there “before” Ophelia. That this was like some kind of tune that would automatically be played in your head if a story like the one about Ophelia comes up in a fictional context. It is even very likely that this wasn’t originally a German poem, but something translated from Provencal, or French, or English, or at least something similar would have been a well-known “tune” in popular culture everywhere in Europe. And Shakespeare just had to give a few hints so that this tune would automatically have been played and would have engendered the thought that Ophelia MIGHT be pregnant, and that this was a likely explanation for her to “crack” and to kill herself. (Obviously, at least one of the reasons for the gravedigger’s talk about suicide and Christian burial is certainly to RAISE DOUBTS about the version Gertrude is giving of Ophelia’s death!) Some of these “hints” would certainly be in the flowers Shakespeare is so explicit about. And I found one of them, accidentally, by reading “The Winter’s Tale”, on the occasion of the recent Kenneth Branagh production being shown in the “Cinema”. As there is a part about which plants are traditionally connected with certain seasons. And the plants Ophelia mentions in connection with rue are plants of winter.

I guess, if I really started digging, there would be even more of these hints that are meant to trigger a certain tune being played in our heads. And I liked it when I actually HEARD the tune being played really loud IN MY HEAD. Which was when Ophelia mentions the violets that withered when her father died. In this case I know from experience that violets are flowers of early spring because they suddenly appear in abundance round my house in the early days of April. And I always collect them for their scent, and am always disappointed when they disappear shortly afterwards. In times of global warming it is usually the fast-growing grass that finishes them off. But in “Hamlet” it is an untimely frost, the returning of winter. Obviously this is because of Polonius’ death, but when you have heard this tune playing for some time there will always be this double meaning. Not least because with a violet there always “comes” this scent - which evokes the awakening of spring IN US, and all the hopes and desires that go with it.

But it doesn’t matter if there is much more or not. And it is still only about one small, probably insignificant issue in “Hamlet”. I just wanted to make the little tune play really LOUD so as to demonstrate the method Shakespeare used. Because this is his way of dealing with the central question of what “is rotten in the state of Denmark”. And to tell us that there is NO SIMPLE ANSWER to this question. Because, if there was, there wouldn’t be a problem, and there wouldn’t be a TRAGEDY. And I can now say exactly why I liked the RSC film production with David Tennant and disliked the one by Kenneth Branagh (even though it has some great features, like Derek Jacobi playing Claudius or Kate Winslet “becoming mad”.) It is because the RSC production tries to “raise up” the MYSTERY in “Hamlet”, “dig up” the shady and discontinuous elements of the play, even uses additional features like mirrors and CCTV cameras in an attempt to make the irrational and complex structure of reality visible, whereas Kenneth Branagh labours to CLARIFY all the major issues, using stories and images we are well acquainted with.

And I have even answered another question, which was one of the initial questions that made me become involved with “this”. It is about why – and HOW EXACTLY – British actors are generally so infinitely better than others, at least at what I consider to be “proper” acting. And from the time I became involved with Shakespeare I had always felt that “he” must be one of the reasons for this. Now I think I know why. As I became aware that I kind of “quoted” Richard Armitage making my central point about the structure of “Hamlet”. The quote is from an interview on “The Desolation of Smaug” (given to some online magazine called “Hero Complex”) which is the most remarkable interview I have ever heard an actor give. And I still didn’t understand everything he said then, until now, when I used it to understand “Hamlet”.

“… I feel like in filmmaking we look for continuity and rationale in a character, and actually being able to flip that on its head and look for things that are discontinuous and irrational in a character was a way of portraying a breaking mind …”

And I think it is THIS – not even that he obviously “looked into” various Shakespearean characters for playing the dwarf Thorin: being able to somehow leave the safe ground of things we already know, and which are established by a CONTINUOS line of thinking and feeling, which great actors like to do, and where they know they can prove themselves. But there has to be SOMETHING somewhere to refer to when you leave this well-known ground. And even if not all of these actors have actually played significant parts of Shakespeare on stage they have some kind of relationship with Shakespeare. And they “have” some of these characters as a reference for creating this kind of “additional meaning” which makes characters on screen COME ALIVE in the same way it makes a play like “Hamlet” come alive. Because becoming aware of the MYSTERY of a character or a play makes us look ten times as long and as hard. And, of course, makes us leave the theatre or cinema with something we didn’t expect to find.

Appendix 3, and first appendix on “Hamlet”: A crooked road to Elsinore

In the meantime, while I was distracted by films like “Macbeth” and “Irrational Man”, there happened a lot with “Hamlet”. As I said, I had a hunch that this play, which has always been one of my least favourite, would “get me”. And of course I was right about that. A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a friend about the play which probably lasted about an hour. There I presented my argument about Ophelia probably being pregnant which I based on just one expression in the text, and I think she didn’t really understand what I meant, so I knew that I had to examine this again. But, as it turned out, it was worth looking into. Not so much because I found definite proof for my theory but because I detected a basic principle of how this text works (for me? Of course I cannot know about others …)

The other massive influence was seeing Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet. I saw the show again yesterday, and I loved it even more, although I still think, as a production, it is highly overrated – as being in fact the fastest selling show in the history of the National Theatre! (And they have added again two recorded presentations in the cinema called “Cinema” in Munich where I go to watch these plays.) Apart from single exceptional performances - as of course the one by Benedict Cumberbatch, and Ciaran Hinds as the most convincing Claudius I have seen (though my favourite will probably always be Patrick Steward) – it wasn’t an exceptional show. It was “just” good theatre, which certainly isn’t the most insignificant praise I could think of! For somebody who has seen a lot of productions of this play and hopes to see some original ideas about certain characters or situations it might not be very enlightening. It is a well-done, classical approach, very suitable for schools, I’d say - and not too long! And it is very entertaining, which isn’t bad either. I only noticed this the second time I saw it that people were laughing all the time, even at moments where I couldn’t detect anything remotely funny. But there is a lot more of funny and ridiculous in “Hamlet” than you think if you are watching the play for the first time! - The main thing for me, though, was that, having thought a great deal about the play in the meantime, I enjoyed it a lot more than when I first saw it. And this is not a bad thing either. They had a clear and simple approach to all the characters, apart from the few that were weak, like Horatio (who, as a character, is probably not a good idea because he always turns out weak) or casted all wrong, like the Ghost. Maybe, generally, it is a fatal development that “classical” theatre only sells if the lead is played by an actor who is well known from tv and international film. Though, in most cases, this turns out very well as such because British actors, as a rule, don’t think of themselves as special just because they have been in a few major feature films, but instead work for an opportunity like this as if it was the last thing they would be doing. And Benedict Cumberbatch, who couldn’t escape knowing how special he is, is certainly one of these. (Which is probably the highest form of praise I could think of …) But I think it engenders a certain kind of approach to the play as such because everybody knows people are going to the theatre to see Benedict Cumberbatch play Hamlet, and what they do with the rest of the play will be noticed only by a few “nerds” anyway.

There was one thing Benedict Cumberbatch said about playing Hamlet that I felt is very important. He said that every actor “has a Hamlet in him”. Because this is what is really so difficult about this character: that he is such a general “mold” that every actor (of an appropriate age) could fit in. And, ideally, there would be as many Hamlets as there are actors, and all of them would kind of “work”. I think there is much to that, but of course, for me, certain actors and approaches to that character worked a lot better than others. For me Derek Jacobi and Kenneth Branagh didn’t work at all. Ethan Hawke worked really well, but, considering my approach to the play as a whole, the entirely subjective and contemporary perspective didn’t convince me. It was kind of “too small” for what is at stake in this play, and too much reduced to Hamlet himself, whereas, in Shakespeare, practically all the characters are important to make the play “emerge”. Which is probably true for every relevant work of fiction, and this will even be a central point in my approach later on. David Tennant was the only Hamlet that raised some really interesting points about this character I hadn’t noticed, and it was a brilliant performance, but “as a person”, in my opinion, he was completely wrong for Hamlet. And this was something ABOUT MY OWN APPROACH that really surprised me. And brought me to examine some basic prejudices I had about this character. But I know that I was biased from the start. Because I started to read “Hamlet” when I learned that I would see Benedict Cumberbatch playing him in October, and this was sometime in the spring. And, from this time onward, reading these lines, I always heard his voice in my head. So the idea that he would be playing Hamlet felt very convincing from the start. And, even though I was totally surprised, when I finally saw it, of the powerful, very “direct” and emotional approach which worked great all the way through, on the other hand I wasn’t surprised at all because I had always anticipated how he would play it and known that I would understand it and like it. So it is obvious that I knew very well what to expect – and, in this case, what NOT to expect! - from him as an actor. But the interesting question is, of course: WHY? Because there must have been an issue ABOUT HAMLET with me before. Something I wanted to see concerning this character. And what exactly was this, and why did I expected him to “crack” it? And I think I figured that out. And it has something to do with the concept of a hero which I brought up in my last blog – which is in fact a great coincidence! And with why, in my opinion, the way Shakespeare is going about this is just INCREDIBLY “contemporary”.

The next thing that happened was that I was on a train and got started on Dover Wilson. And I was even sorry that I wasn’t on a slow train, as he was when he became involved with “Hamlet”, because I didn’t get very far. As I was totally fascinated by the way he became involved. Of course we live in very different times, and maybe there is nothing like a war to put people “on hold” and generate a state where you either “convert, or fall in love”, or develop a “mania for wild speculation” (which, in my opinion, is a much more productive occupation than the other two. We will see why ...). So this kind of thing probably happens much less in an age where there is no significant part of the population involved in a war, and with planes instead of slow trains … But it kind of happened to ME, and this is of course why I was so fascinated. I loved the way Dover Wilson got started on his “road to Elsinore” because it was through an article by a Dr. Greg about “Hamlet” which raised a question that probably irked me every time I saw this play: Why does Claudius, who later breaks off the play when he sees his own murder presented on stage, seem unmoved when he sees the same content presented in the dumb-show before that? I always noticed this, and never tried to “explain it away”, and this is the first important thing. Because, if it happened to this Dr. Greg and me, it must have happened to countless other people, and of course this is only one of probably hundreds of these questions about seemingly minor oddities in “Hamlet”. But Dr. Greg tried to answer this question – as I think in a ludicrous way, at least as presented by Dover Wilson. But by speculating about this issue he got started on one of the central issues about the play which is, of course, an issue about the central plot around Hamlet himself: Is the ghost Hamlet sees meant to be a hallucination, or is he “real”? Personally I don’t see this question as very important, but it is probably one of the central questions about this play people have asked from the beginning. And certainly part of the “big question” about “Hamlet”. Which, of course, develops round the character of Hamlet himself and would be something like: What happens to him, and what is he about? And - as this obviously is the case! - why is this character (still) so important?

My own approach was similar because I entered into “wild speculations” about another question that I saw as important but nobody else seemed to care about: Why does Ophelia become mad? It was not that I detected this as a central question about the play, though a rather important question about this character. But the reason for asking a question about Ophelia was, as I see it now, that I knew there would be no point in asking questions about Hamlet himself. And the reason is an issue I raised in connection with Othello, and which is even more important for Hamlet: that this character is the centre of a web of prejudices which what I would call the “received structure” of the play consists of. And there is just no way of getting past it by a direct approach to the character. So I tackled Ophelia instead.

But why Ophelia? I think it was probably BECAUSE she appeared to me as the weakest, least interesting of the main characters – probably with the exception of Horatio who is certainly the most boring character. And maybe even more because I had always disliked her. And, at the same time, I knew I must be wrong about this. At least I knew that there must be A LOT MORE TO HER than I thought. And why did I know that?

Now I am once again at the center of my favourite issue about reading which is about method. At uni I learned a lot about method concerning the interpretation of fictional text, and I found this fascinating and, at the same time, always had doubts about it. Because what is taught as methodical approach often runs so obviously against what you do when you are reading. But I was a very docile student then – or pretended to be – and always masked my wild speculations with a sound methodical approach. And, of course, I realized already during my first semester what a methodical approach is for: to learn to ask questions and notice things you usually WOULDN’T SEE. In fact I think I LEARNED to read then, but in a very crooked way. Because reading always happens WHERE you become personally involved with the text, but, in this case, often the most crooked paths lead to the best places.

(And this might even be another important point about how reading improves us, and where my teacher has been right about fiction being a method to solve problems. Because the real world is always more complicated than we think it is. And there is always more to any significant issue about life than we think. If anything, something like “Hamlet” is much simpler than, for example, one single “living” political conflict, or one important personal relationship. At least I am convinced of this. And I am convinced as well that there is usually no direct and simple approach to solving such a conflict or improving a personal relationship we care about. But the only “playground” where we can probably learn to understand the complexity, the nature and causes of these real life issues, even analyze and “tackle” them without being directly involved, is the realm of fiction. This is probably the reason why truth and truthfulness are such central issues for me where fictional worlds are concerned. Though it is probably one of the most difficult and speculative issues in this field at the same time. And now I might just have taken a forbidden shortcut and touched the centre of “Hamlet” completely unintentionally …)

Concerning method, I became convinced that we use some methodical approach of a basic kind probably in any significant act of reading, which is every time we create meaning of our own. We just don’t become aware of it. Or at least not when everything works fine. The totally exciting thing about “figuring out” Ophelia was that I became aware that I had “created” a methodical approach by repeating a technique I had used on another text. And this methodical approach I had only used – and noticed! – because something I wanted to work just didn’t. To illustrate this I have to tell the complete story. It was about the tv production of “North and South” where Richard Armitage played John Thornton. I really noticed him for the first time in “The Hobbit” – as might be the case for most people who don’t usually watch British television. But, even though I loved his performance in “The Hobbit”, it took some time until I became aware “who” he was because I never “look up” my favourite actors, and nobody would recognize him from seeing “The Hobbit”! I first became aware of him as a real person when I saw an interview with him which made me laugh - because I had seen him “as a dwarf”! - when he kind of folded his long frame into the interview chair. And then I realized that I had seen him before, approximately five years ago, in “North and South”. I had borrowed the dvd and watched the series probably three times, as I usually do. I liked it but didn’t mark it down as “must have”, so I didn’t buy it. Which I did, of course, after having seen “The Hobbit”. And I could see then how great the acting was, but it still didn’t “work” on me, that is: nothing interesting “happened”. I was disappointed about this because I liked him so much as an actor, and you can see how much he had loved playing this. And I probably didn’t watch the “specials” the first time because there is an interview with him which is remarkable, even more so as you can see him positively beaming with pride and happiness about this achievement. And I kind of could see that he was right, so, in a way, I just HAD to be wrong!

But I still didn’t like the story. I know I must have read the book, probably a long time ago, because I recognized the story when I saw the series for the first time. But I didn’t remember having read the book, and I didn’t have it, so I probably hadn’t liked it. And I realized that it had to do with what KIND of story I thought it was. That it was probably the kind of love story I don’t like and have never been interested in. The kind where women make men “in their own image”. And I don’t even think I was completely wrong about this, but there is, of course, much more to it than the love-story. And there is more to the love-story than I could see as I was blinded by my prejudices. But the way I finally came to see that there was “more” I totally loved because it was through looking away from what I liked, looking instead at the characters I positively disliked. Which were Margaret’s mother, Maria Hale, and John Thornton’s sister. His mother I kind of liked, although she is horrible, because she is so tough. Maria Hale is played by Leslie Manville, an actress I like a lot, and who is brilliant at playing these unstable, self-pitying characters – as I guessed from her interview on “Another Year” strangely BY making herself “believe” in them and their good qualities! And I suppose it was her who made me “look”. But it was Fanny Thornton who finally made me ask the RIGHT question: WHAT is WRONG with her?

What is wrong with her, of course, is her mother! Although this is never said expressly anywhere it is so obvious that her mother never properly cared for her because the only person she has ever loved and is interested in is her son. Even her education must have been neglected, and how is somebody like this supposed to turn out as a proper human being? And this is such a common structure, in real life, that I couldn’t believe that I had missed it. And, of course, after this, I detected a lot of these structures. About Maria Hale: My god, I thought, this poor woman! What has she left, being forced out of a life she loved, forced to be in this dark house all the time, with no distractions, no social contacts, no real reason for ever leaving her prison … Yes, for me, this was like BEING IN PRISON! And this kind of character, with no potential at all for becoming tough and mean!, would never survive a prison.

And, after that, I suddenly saw a lot of this. In particular I saw a lot of prison walls. And all of them had a story written on them. Most of these prisons are for women, but there are a few, less visible, for men, especially where John Thornton is concerned. And this is where the story becomes interesting and genuinely moving: where people work their way round these walls to get at the life they really want. And, of course, great actors know exactly how to “hit” these “places”.

I still don’t “have” the story and I haven’t read the book because I still dislike Margaret Hale. I have always disliked heroes that “walk through walls” and people everybody thinks are great when they obviously haven’t done anything special. Though I can see better now why this kind of heroine has probably been important for women at the time! (And I am probably a real spoilsport for love-stories. I always imagine what their life together would probably be like. And, in this case, although they will probably be fine in bed (I never imagine that part!), the one thing I could imagine really well was their first row. I just couldn’t imagine how it would end because neither of them would probably give in …) So I haven’t “obtained” the story, but, by following the “crooked path”, I obtained the part of the story I was interested in.

And, from this experience, I knew this time that I did something deliberate by getting involved with Ophelia. I did something similar, not such a long time ago, when I finally “got my foot” into “Macbeth” by “accidentally” examining the porter’s scene and came up with the principle of “equivocation” which, in my opinion, is a moving principle of this play. So, this time, when I tackled Ophelia, I definitely knew what to expect but was still extremely surprised, as usual, about the nature and the significance of what “fell out”. The way I am planning to do this now, the appendix about “Hamlet” will be in three parts. This one being the first, the second will contain my argument about why I think Shakespeare suggests deliberately that Ophelia might be pregnant, and the third will be about the “ruling principle” of “Hamlet”, and why I think this play, and this “hero”, are at least as significant for the 21^st century as they probably were for Shakespeare’s own time.