„To be or not to be – THAT is the question“

Now, finally! It feels like a year or so has passed since “Macbeth” … There was a lot of change, and I realize that I have still no idea where this is going. To say that I like this would be to lie, at least in part.

In fact, a lot had happened before “Macbeth” which got suspended but which I knew would not “go away”. When I wrote that the “ship” had launched on the occasion of seeing Andrew Scott as Hamlet I hadn’t been wrong. Some of this added power I think I used for “Macbeth”, but there was something important that happened with “Hamlet” and which I never got to write about. Something to do with AUTHENTICITY which I discovered through my “lightning approach” of “Hamlet” as a key concept of my reading. (See my post from June 12^th.) I already observed that the “doctoral thesis” part of my blog has been neglected in favour of the therapy and fictional relationships part, and had this idea of assembling all the key concepts I had used, and to examine how they are connected. I already started this, implicitly, reading “Macbeth” where I used the new concept of TEXT PRODUCTION and, recently, REFERENCE TEXTS and “TIMELESSNESS”. The next two posts, however, will be about “To be or not to be” and other “nothing moments” in Shakespeare – something extremely personal and subjective, no doubt. But they will also contain important reference material for the “thesis”.

I already put a great deal of thinking and work into “Hamlet” some time ago, and, from my present point of view, very little came of it. But the important thing is that I got started. It appears a bit ridiculous to me: all these actors who want to play Hamlet before they have kids and Lear before they might have to retire from the stage. Nonetheless I seem to believe that Hamlet and Lear really ARE that important – not just for an actor’s career, or to know your Shakespeare, but, ultimately, because of the great human stuff they contain. And I think it galled me that I didn’t “have” Hamlet. Lear, actually, isn’t that difficult to understand, and I had had Simon Russell Beale and Ian McKellen to help. It is great, by the way, that I really need the right actor for the human stuff to unfold. It is even kind of funny sometimes how easy the impossible suddenly becomes.

“Hamlet” is in fact a text with which I have a very long, very unsuccessful reading relationship – which mostly consisted of NOT READING it. It started with Derek Jakobi’s Hamlet in the old BBC cycle of plays which I saw - with German subtitles?! - when I was fifteen or sixteen. Now I like him a lot for his uncompromising approach of weirdness, but at the time he probably just convinced me that Hamlet is weird and not worthy of my attention. And he was much too old, of course, to play Hamlet, even at the time – which were all the actors I have seen playing Hamlet, from Kenneth Branagh (in his film) to Benedict Cumberbatch, including, in fact, Andrew Scott. (The solitary exception was Ethan Hawke in the contemporary film adaptation by Michael Almereyda (2000) which worked so much better than any theatrical production I have seen just because of the right age.) It is kind of inherent to the character, though, because he has some of the most difficult lines that Shakespeare has written (and which, of course, get lost in a film). But Andrew Scott was the only one of these actors too old to play Hamlet who was able to find the knack of not APPEARING too old. He put all these failed readings right in a wink, so that it felt as if I had always known this: Hamlet isn’t weird, he is JUST YOUNG. He is in shock, and grieving – for his own screwed-up life more than for anybody else … I think Andrew Scott finally made me shed this notion that stubbornly clung to “Hamlet”: that the play is somehow unnecessarily complicated, kind of “blown up”, and ultimately pointless. No doubt this was the secret synopsis of my unsuccessful readings, and the reason why I needed more than a little persuasion to approach the play again. But I believe I already knew that I was wrong. There might have been quite a different reason for my reluctance which came very much as a surprise: a potential of REAL discomfort about the human stuff in “Hamlet”.

Becoming more involved with theatre again lately, I repeatedly experience one of its benefits compared with what I am getting out of written fiction or text “on screen”. It is something that, strangely, appears to happen independently of seeing the play live in the theatre or in the cinema: the experience that there is nowhere to hide. For some reason I cannot do what I always can do with movies: raise some kind of protective shield to prevent the human stuff from getting too close. I will always remember how I experienced this difference for the first time – consciously at least – in 2015, when I left the cinema after having seen “The Crucible” (recorded from the Old Vic) in a state of bliss about how incredibly perfect it had been, savouring an experience I never had before and probably would never have again. And then, the next day in the afternoon, without warning, it crushed me … I like the memory – now! – but at the time it wasn’t pleasant. I remember how ANGRY I was – how helpless that something like this could happen because of a play! I didn’t even know what had happened, and I still don’t. It’s all just theories …

(In fact, I have been through a number of theories. At the moment I got the idea that, basically, it might be something very subjective and personal about how I LEARNED to read certain text. I know that theatre as well as tragedy have always been very important for the way I learned to think and feel – and they have always been connected. So, theatre is the only place where I ALLOW for this to happen, where, deep down, I WANT it to happen. Like probably many people, I could write a post about crying in the cinema though I don’t have a lot of actual experience. I remember only one instance of it, ages ago, in “Cyrano de Bergerac”, and one of almost crying recently in “The Desolation of Smaug”. In fact, I hate crying in the cinema and am always trying to distance myself from the kind of “tragic relief” that goes with it. Watching the “Hobbit” films I experienced that I actually DECIDE if I want to cry! (And since Ken Stott almost crossed me in this I like every tiny bit of what I have been able to acquire of his work on DVD, or seen in the cinema …) But I know that this is NEVER going to happen when I am in the theatre. I will never cry in the theatre – though all kinds of great and disagreeable things I don’t yet know might happen there - because, in the theatre, tragedy is FOR REAL. I obviously find tears self-indulgent and believe that I would never cry about real “catastrophe”.)

So, basically, Andrew Scott convinced me to take Hamlet seriously for the first time, just because he managed to make “To be or not to be” AUTHENTIC – as if it happened there and then, on the stage (or rather in miniature on UTube!) FOR THE FIRST TIME. In “Shakespeare”, these unsettling experiences usually occur in a very controlled and conscious way, so that I know what is happening already when it is happening. Accordingly, this time I was in a position to OBSERVE what happened when authenticity struck, and could judge immediately what a world of a difference it makes. If anybody had asked me before what “To be or not to be” is about I would have said without blinking that I had no idea. And this would have been a lie. Not a conscious lie of not wanting to say it, but an unconscious lie of avoiding the issue. To say that I didn’t “get” Hamlet would have meant that I didn’t WANT to get Hamlet – and this might even have been the REAL reason for trying to dodge the play all along. In truth, I suddenly found that I knew only too well what he was talking about, but I AM NOT GOING THERE (AGAIN)! NO WAY …

And I even KNOW now that it is not just me! I know this because I made the test. Inadvertently, by the way. It was also something we talked about, briefly, when I met Claudia who was at least as delighted with Andrew Scott as I was. I explained to her what had happened, that I suddenly understood Hamlet when Andrew Scott spoke these lines BECAUSE I HAD BEEN THERE. And she thought about it for a brief moment and said that she had been there as well. Of course I couldn’t make the test as easily with other people because you first have to build this trust to be able to speak about things like this in a matter of fact manner, and they would have to know “Hamlet” … But, nonetheless, when the first person to whom I explained it understands me LIKE THIS I don’t think this could be a mere coincidence.

Of course I have been there! As far as I remember I have been there only once, but it certainly was some kind of state of depression I was in, not just this moment that I remember. I think it is important that Hamlet SERIOUSLY considers the option of being dead, and of killing himself, WITHOUT making any concrete plans how to do it – or any kind of serious attempt on his life. This is the next step which only very few people take. He is just VERY CERTAIN at this moment that it would be BETTER to be dead than to live under the circumstances, and he is very certain about what the circumstances are. I never understood Hamlet before that because I considered him to be some kind of weird adult, somebody probably in need of “fixing”, not what he still is: a child. An adolescent still on his way to manhood, sheltered by his parents who love him, studying at Wittenberg where he likes it, probably having great friends there and a lot of fun. A lot of exciting input and great perspectives about what holds this world together. (I remember this state of mind!) Knowing everything, but without any responsibilities other than about himself BEING A GOOD PERSON. And he has just fallen in love for the first time … And then, very suddenly, he finds out that the world is not like this at all. NOTHING is as he thought it is. As he thought it would be. Of what seemed so good NOTHING is left. The people he loved and trusted are dead or proved unreliable. And there is NOTHING anymore he really wants to live for … And my impulse was, of course, to deny this. Hard to believe now that it could have been AS BAD AS “Hamlet”. Certainly it wasn’t as disruptive. Of course, as tragedy originates from the stage, it tends to be hard, fast, and disruptive. But I think that the sudden and full realization that NOT A SINGLE ONE of these dreams would ever become reality was just as bad.

I frequently find that “Shakespeare” becomes most personal, most uncomfortable, and most interesting when it is about these “NOTHING moments”. “To be or not to be …” certainly is one of them, but I have kind of collected them – consciously - since Simon Russell Beale’s “Not mad!” And, unconsciously, probably a long time before that. I realized this about a moment in the “Spooks”, where they used Shakespeare quotes frequently, mostly in a questionable and pompous manner. But there are also a few genuine “Shakespeare moments” which, if you manage to get past the adhering bullshit, hit you like a punch in the stomach. One of them was the moment before Lucas North jumps off a tower block, and where he says: “I AM NOTHING!” This must have been a long time before Simon Russell Beale and “Not mad!”, but already then it FELT like “Shakespeare”, being one of these moments where the bullshit and the cliché is penetrated towards the unsettling content that lies at the bottom of these stories. Which are mostly NOT about what “the job” MAKES of people but what it TAKES AWAY from them. A bleak discussion of what makes us human because, basically, if they are trying to hold on to ANY of this, it’s usually death and destruction. And worse. There IS worse, by the way, which I noticed much later when I recognized this moment in “Othello” (see my post of September 21^st 2015). I think it was then that I became aware of my long and intimate history with “Nothing” in and outside “Shakespeare” and got the idea of writing about it. Now, with “To be or not to be”, another impressive sample got added to the list – in fact, seen biographically, one of initiation to “nothingness” as a human condition. The others - like “Not mad!” - we only understand much later in life. And - always suspecting the worst! - I get a feeling that there might be a lot more …

Still – footnotes on „Macbeth“

I already wrote „To be or not to be“, and took extensive notes on „Nothing“ – but then I had a doctor’s appointment and finally got to read the introduction to my beautiful new edition of „Macbeth“ by the RSC which I purchased in Stratford. And was amazed …

If I hadn’t already known why I love the RSC I would have found out when I read this. Of course it is because “they” are basically doing what I am doing when they are getting these plays on the stage: REALLY READING them. For me it all started with the vague idea that, if I could just be patient and obstinate enough, I would finally understand Shakespeare JUST by reading his stuff – not by being fed opinions and received ideas about it. (Watching the plays being performed and getting this valuable input on the “human stuff” by diverse great actors from John Cleese to Christopher Eccleston is part of really reading because this is how these texts are meant to exist - and the “gold standard” of reading them.)

Jonathan Bates’ introduction was kind of a final proof that my “method” works – if I still needed one - because it basically contains everything that I had gathered about “Macbeth” just by reading it and never reading anything ABOUT the play. He begins with the question which I came to discern as the key question about “Macbeth” - and the main reason for countless contemporary “misreadings”: “WHAT IS TRAGEDY?” (Interesting that it was written on the occasion of the former “Macbeth” by the RSC with Antony Sher which I have in a TV version on DVD, and which – even though it is rather beautiful - I consider to be one of these blatant – and clearly intended! - misreadings.) Jonathan Bates basically writes the same I have written, just more “history based”. (I find it increasingly fascinating that there is this persistent awareness of tragedy. Even though the concept appears to be misused or forgotten it might still be part of our ideological DNA. And reading texts like “Macbeth” or “The Crucible” – which will doubtless resurface as a success in ten years, in twenty years … - might continue to preserve it. Of course THIS is the main function of canonizing: that we don’t forget, or forget so much more slowly!)

Tragedy I already dealt with extensively, even before Stratford. Then there are the “weird sisters” which I always found fascinating but have never written anything substantial about until my last post. For Bates, as for me, they only have a superficial connection with witches – which doesn’t even seem to have been contemporary but was mostly added later by Thomas Middleton. I still uphold the connection in one important respect: Especially in the beginning there are obvious references to what common witches were supposed to do – make mischief and hurt people. This is certainly an attractive feature I would like to see displayed on the stage, but it is not an important function for their fundamental role in the play. Bates rightly states that their basic function is to know the unknown and to predict the fate of people. He sees them as contemporary versions of the “Three Fates” from Greek mythology – which certainly originate from the same source as the Three Norns from Norse mythology which I referenced. And this is everything we strictly NEED to understand about the weird sisters. There is a lot of beautiful ephemeral context, of course, which can be used and played with at leisure.

One little thing I found very interesting, though. They expressly used the old spelling “weyard” (=wayward/marginal) instead of “weird” to eliminate the contemporary connotation of “weirdness”. Even though I like “weird” – and uphold weirdness as their most important aesthetical feature (see the first encounter between Macbeth/Banquo and the sisters!) – they were probably right to do this. “Weyard”, in the original sense, goes deeper than “weird” because it places these characters at the margin of society and the known world, linking them to the unknown. Which is an unknown that is supposed to actually exist as it has the power to influence the events in the known world. This is what links the weird sisters to witches on a deeper level – and to the not so unfounded, deep-rooted fears they inspired at the time. Or – in contemporary terms – to everything that influences our lives that we cannot comprehend and handle successfully. It is what makes these characters so attractive as an inexhaustible well of primeval fears and fantasies which can only be dried up by trying to pin them down and reduce them to ONE specific meaning. (As Thomas Middleton’s witches they become more than slightly ridiculous, and much less scary, whereas making them little girls links them to all kinds of contemporary fears, taboos, and nightmares.) And it is their most relevant feature, as regards content, because it is inherent to their fundamental role as “the spirits that know all mortal consequence” and places them at the centre of life’s fundamental “equivocation”: Their marginal existence – or borderline non-existence – is also the reason for their factual influence and power. Scary. Irresistible!

This sinister quality, in my opinion, is substantially increased by the “timelessness” I discussed in my last post. The realization that what they represent was always there – not just “at the time”, when people believed in witchcraft, but from the beginning of time. And always will be! (Right now, watching the 9^th series of “Doctor Who” which is rather big on nightmares, I am toying with a “space-version” …)

This was very interesting, but basically just some kind of spelling out of what I already associated with the weird sisters. Of course I can dream of seeing all this – their witch-like mischievousness and “anarchist” disregard for order and the common good as well as their aesthetical weirdness and “wayward” qualities - on the stage, but on an actual stage clear choices are in order. Trying to show too many things at once will just make the production confusing and weak. It might actually be the most efficient way to deal with them to eliminate their “fatal” influence and just avoid any specifications and clarifications as to their role and social status in the real word, as the RSC did. Doing the exact opposite – making them real people with some kind of actual impact on the events – can be an attractive choice if it is done cleverly, as in the “Shakespeare Retold” with James McAvoy as Macbeth: The binmen are very real but “marginal” at the same time. The kind of people we would miss instantly if they weren’t there but that nobody ever notices, that nobody ever heeds until they begin to utter their weird prophecies in a local accent I haven’t been able to manage without subtitles.

The most relevant input I got from reading the introduction was about the question I expressly avoided in my last post. When I wrote that I didn’t want to elaborate on my opinion that the political issue about good leadership and tyranny is not a crucial issue in “Macbeth” I knew that I was onto something important but something I couldn’t yet make out clearly. I didn’t yet know what questions to ask. Jonathan Bates’ remarks about the SPECIFIC political context of the play in the beginning of King James’ reign became kind of an eye-opener. One of the things that fascinate me about Shakespeare – and certainly one of the reasons why his plays remain attractive throughout the centuries – is his GENUINE interest in political issues and grasp of historical complexity. In my experience, it is part of this COMPLETENESS which makes the plays so satisfying: that I always get this feeling, like in real life, that there would be more if I could just be bothered to dig for it. It is basically what I tried to describe as a “fictional world” in some of my former posts. As I was just reading the “Revenger’s Tragedy” again, and other revenge plays, like the “Spanish Tragedy”, from the same volume, I came to experience the difference. The “Spanish Tragedy” and the “Revenger’s Tragedy” both are good plays in the sense that they are written beautifully – as I noticed when I finally got the hang of reading them - but I never got the feeling that there is a real world “behind” the stage from which these characters surface. And I always assumed that this phenomenon is due to the relative completeness of the political and historical background as well as to the complexity of the “human stuff”. It is just that, in case of the human stuff, I am myself in a position to judge because it is what I bring to the plays myself, or can gather by understanding what great actors are doing with these characters. As to the political issues it is usually just hunches and guesswork.

That Shakespeare’s presentation of the political situation often appears inaccurate, even false, to our understanding doesn’t mean that it was MEANT to be inaccurate. On the contrary, I always get this feeling that he was a lot more interested in the historical and political situation HE BASED HIS PLAYS ON than contemporary historians are able to imagine. The ready example that Shakespeare thought that Bohemia had a sea-coast implies nothing more than that he didn’t care about Bohemia. That, IN THIS CASE, Bohemia is just some far-away country that nobody knew, and which came in handy. Whereas Scotland is SCOTLAND – always was, and always will be! It always had a very SPECIFIC meaning where English politics were concerned. I take it that, AT FIRST, he was just looking for a Scottish subject matter to please King James, but I bet that he GOT as excited as Arthur Miller was about Salem when he hit on the story of Macbeth. That the historical facts don’t concur with what contemporary historians can tell us about the reign of Macbeth doesn’t mean that he didn’t take them seriously. They just told him a DIFFERENT STORY. I cannot prove this, of course, but Jonathan Bates’ remarks gave me the impression that Shakespeare intended the play as a very specific commentary on the contemporary relationship between England and Scotland. Most of it would have been obvious to his contemporaries so that there is not that much “spelled out” on the surface – like the “two-fold balls and treble scepters” of James’ heraldry, or the Scottish thanes becoming earls. And, of course, there is the overall situation of Malcolm running to the English King for back-up, and what this entails!

I always get thrilled when I hit upon such links but always disliked the “Scottish angle” to be shown on the stage at the same time, and now I know why. I acted on the assumption that the political situation the play referred to – and the way it was experienced by an audience at the time! – must have been fundamentally different from what “our” contemporary political context would be. I even remember deferring my reactions to the “anti-English” implications, just found it fascinating that the obvious conclusion that Macbeth’s overthrow is used by England to gain influence on Scotland is not somehow avoided or countermanded. But Shakespeare never does this, and it is probably just an outcome of his complete assessment of the situation that we are ALLOWED to get to this conclusion. Jonathan Bates’ description of the political context at the time convinced me that neither I – nor probably any contemporary historian – would ever be able to make an adequate reconstruction of the situation Shakespeare actually referred to because it is too specific - dependent on this specific political MOMENT in time. And, as such, no use to a 21^st century audience. Also something important about “timelessness”: the bits that are not timeless tend to get chucked out.

Understanding this, I can now explain why I find contemporary “translations” of the historical and political background on the stage so often ill-advised and misleading – even why they can become this kind of “dead short” that will kill a production. They often make fall the productions so much short of what Shakespeare actually intended that the potential of the play cannot unfold. It happened to “Macbeth” in the National Theatre’s production, even though they were onto something important about the historical context of the play: The state of unlawfulness that results from Macbeth usurping the throne by a criminal act doubtless is an important feature of the political situation the play refers to. But, on the level of action, it is just the outcome of things going wrong - not what makes them go wrong. To put it in the foreground like this changed the logic of the play and stopped it working. It mostly just became empty declamation and striking demonstration – rather like their much overrated “Hamlet” with Benedict Cumberbatch. Nothing really MOVED, in ANY direction.

And I can now explain why the reference to the Holocaust should be avoided where “The Merchant of Venice” is concerned. It is because Shakespeare became so much involved with Shylock as a character and the specific predicament of the Jew in a Christian society that the simplifying reference to the Holocaust will just jam this intricate machine he set up and stop it working. It is the inner complexity of characters, relationships, and situations that GENERATES ACTION on the stage. When something happens in “Shakespeare” we always know why. Likewise I am convinced that nothing relevant would HAPPEN if somebody tried to update the political context of “Macbeth” in the way Claudia speculated about – making it about tyranny and the failing of order – whereas this will always be an interesting option for other plays, as for “Richard II” where the argument about kingship is part of the core action. Basically for all the histories, and the Greek and Roman stuff political updating might appear to be a requirement. At least the National Theatre’s political update of “Julius Caesar” worked great. That in my favourite production of “Julius Caesar” by the RSC they did nothing of the sort - quite the contrary! - is matter for another post which I will probably never get to write … But it showed me again why, in my opinion, the RSC’s productions usually are so much better than the National Theatre’s. They never fall for these dangerous reductions and clarifications at the expense of the complexity and inner dynamics of the play. Which is basically what I understand by “really reading”.

In “Macbeth” the historical reference is either too specific or too vague – depending on our historical perspective – to yield anything substantial. What remains of the play actually is this TIMELESS TRAGEDY which is certainly the reason for “our” ongoing fascination with it. Accordingly, I have always been looking for this great update of the human stuff until I saw it in Stratford – or still am, as substantial parts of it were unsatisfactory, like the Macbeth/Lady Macbeth angle. There will be no end to “Macbeth” any time soon – and that’s great!