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 12th.) 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 21st 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 …
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