Hamlet – “I see family …”

(“Hannibal”, season one, episode four)

Apart from the usual unpleasantness regarding “Hamlet”, there is still another source of frustration. I noticed this when I read Claudia’s general remarks as to what she found puzzling or inconclusive about this production, and I didn’t understand what she meant. It alerted me to the fact that I am ill qualified to write anything about “Hamlet” because of my insufficient knowledge of the text. Usually, when I am writing something about one of these plays the first thing I do is to read it (again). Usually more often than once. Which is just not possible right now (because, if I do, I will never begin to read “Coriolanus”, respectively “Uncle Vanya”…) But what REALLY puts me off where “Hamlet” is concerned: that reading Dover Wilson again would be so much more useful to understand the play than reading the play itself. Nothing against Dover Wilson – but what I really liked about his book is that he was an extremely accurate but also very IMAGINATIVE reader. Where I am concerned, “Hamlet” doesn’t really speak to my imagination. And even though I haven’t seen as many productions of the play as Claudia I have seen quite a few, but not a single one that furnished me with a convincing theory of what this play might be about. (Of course I don’t believe that any Shakespeare play actually is “about” anything – except about creating a hit show that brings lots of people into his theatre. But, for example, the sudden realization that “King Lear” might be about “Nothing” gave ME a clue where to START reading.) A few times I picked up a scent but lost it at some point when everything becomes the usual inconclusive mess … Sometimes, when I have the energy for it, I find it fascinating that there are so many possibilities and (false) leads. And something that Claudia said even before I got to see this production made me aware of the most likely explanation for this, which is disappointingly mundane: that there is NO FINAL VERSION of “Hamlet”. Much more than we can usually be aware of, seeing it on the stage, the play is just an accumulation of (great) ideas which often are not properly linked. Especially where the main protagonist is concerned: Unlike most of Shakespeare’s characters Hamlet isn’t something from “real life” but a conglomerate of human predicaments, philosophical theories, and fascinating new ideas that don’t really fit together. And this might even be the main reason for the overwhelming and continuing success of the play! But it defeats MY reading. For me, the main focus is always how close the plays are to real life, displaying fascinating human stuff that I can read with MY OWN knowledge or experience.  

So, to begin where Claudia ended her first reading: that she couldn’t see any underlying idea or leading thought in this production. I think it very likely that she is right, and that there wasn’t one. Where I am concerned, watching what Andrew Scott was doing gave ME an idea of what might REALLY be the matter with “Hamlet”, one that made this character – and this play – suddenly a lot more consistent. I already had this idea seeing him on YouTube, and it definitely helped me to get through this production: roughly, that Hamlet is about somebody GROWING UP. And there was ONE decision they took in this production that played very much into my idea. I will come to this, for now I just mentioned it because it is the reason that I cannot skip “Hamlet” this time, even though there are lots and lots and lots of other things to do …

Another thing I noticed when Claudia mentioned inconsistencies: The first thing everybody has to do with “Hamlet” – reading it or, especially!, playing it – is to make it more consistent. Which also means to TAKE OUT a lot of its potential for creating meaning. Of course this applies to all of Shakespeare’s plays – even more so, I think, than it applies to fictional text in general – but most of the time we don’t notice. We don’t notice it reading, and we don’t notice it watching a play like, for example, “Richard III” performed on the Almeida’s stage, as I recall, because everything they did made sense. Reading “Hamlet” – for the reason I mentioned in the first paragraph – MEANS consciously engaging in the activity of making it more consistent. As far as I was concerned, they did a good job in the Almeida Theatre, but only for about two thirds of the play. After that I was stuck with the usual question: What is the bloody POINT???

In particular, I think, they did well where the relationship of Hamlet with his girlfriend and mother were concerned. Claudia expressed puzzlement on behalf of the Ophelia plot which had something to do with shifting the scenes about. I noticed that there was considerable shifting about and tampering with the text – or the VERSION I read in the Alexander text! – but I cannot look into this because I cannot take up reading “Hamlet” again. Where Ophelia is concerned, it is pretty straightforward anyway. They fall in love, Hamlet displays strange behaviour which Ophelia reports to her father who sets her up to find out the reason for it. Hamlet notices that Ophelia is dishonest with him and distances himself from her. They get estranged, and after he has accidentally killed her father this relationship is dead anyway, even more so as she probably never gets to know what really happened. Hamlet is sent away because of this, and Ophelia - with her father dead and brother absent - is suddenly left without anybody to turn to and cracks. This is MY VERSION of the Hamlet-Ophelia plot – and I still remember how much effort of making it consistent went into it! Either my own or Dover Wilson’s … (If it is Dover Wilson, Claudia and I were probably talking about the same text!)

But there is one really important question left open that has to be answered – one that has fundamental impact on how we see the relationships in this play. It is WHY Ophelia is doing this. And not even ANSWERING this question matters because it is easy: as a loving daughter she trusts and obeys her father. And it doesn’t preclude that she is genuinely concerned about Hamlet! But we can ANSWER this question as much as we like, on the stage they have to SHOW us their answer because we need to SEE what happens with Hamlet. Why he reacts and acts as he does. And there, at least I understood it like this, Claudia thought that the production failed or was inconsistent because Ophelia is shown as a contemporary young woman who has her own mind and is loyal to Hamlet, and then - without explanation – betrays him. I basically agree with this, but, finding a lot of consistency in how they set up family relationships in this play, I came to a different conclusion in the end.

(As usual she lost me in the scene where she is shown to be mad, which was as uninspired as it is in any production I have seen – and I could see no tragedy in her death. There was never any Ophelia that could make me empathize with her fate, she is only ever important because of Hamlet. Pity! I remember that I already minded this pattern reading “Faust” at school and am always pissed off when they “kill” their girlfriends to make us empathize with MEN! I mean: Ophelia is just a young girl – like Hamlet is a very young man – who loses her father – just like Hamlet does - who’s world is breaking apart – just like Hamlet’s … What is it I see in Hamlet ABOUT ME that I don’t see in Ophelia??? See – this is what I HATE about “Hamlet”: Its unending potential to question my reading of it. I just have to scratch the surface …)

So, I have still one issue to clear up about Gertrude before I can come to the point that I saw in this production. And this time I actually have to check on the text. Between the two of us we picked up a lot of points where they made her more consistent in one particular respect: that she is loyal to Hamlet AFTER she has come to believe him about what Claudius has done. (The scene where Hamlet confronts her and is telling her is always so inconclusive on the stage because she doesn’t see the ghost and might just be trying to accommodate Hamlet, being convinced that he is mad.) Thinking about it, there is a strong point in the text for Getrude being loyal to Hamlet – not Claudius! : that she doesn’t give his plot away. But it probably doesn’t even matter much because she doesn’t take any positive action either until the end when she drinks the poison trying to save her son. Though I wasn’t able to confirm – not even when I saw it another time - that she observes Claudius putting the poison into the drink, I believe Claudia about this because I noticed two other moments where they tried to make the Gertrude plot more consistent – even pushing her towards positive action. When Claudius is speaking with Laertes alone for the first time we see Gertrude reflected in the polished surface of the wall. So she is listening but is probably called away because they discovered Ophelia’s death. She hears the beginning of the conversation but not that Claudius intends to get Laertes to kill Hamlet, and she probably BEGINS to suspect Claudius. And what we both found puzzling: that she kisses Claudius immediately after the bedchamber scene, might indicate that her loyalties are still divided at this point. It is made very clear in this production that they are very much in love – which I think is a good point to make, not just for the effect it has on Hamlet but because it is a natural explanation that she doesn’t suspect anything where Claudius is concerned. But, just before Claudius is talking with Laertes a second time, they INSERTED a scene where Gertrude is talking to Horatio about Hamlet - and in this case I have to make sure that it is nowhere in the text. I just did (– and was puzzled how much they have changed and shifted scenes about that I almost didn’t recognize the end of act 4 and the beginning of act 5. Maybe there was even LESS consistency because of this. To bring “Hamlet” on the stage – actually, a nightmare! But I insist on being naïve, pretending that there must be a reason for doing it apart from box office – knowing that people will pay to see “Moriarty” play Hamlet.) As this scene isn’t really about anything, or makes us understand better what is happening, I took it that they did this to give Getrude a more active role and assert her loyalty towards Hamlet.   

The point of this - in the context my reading is trying to create - is that the people on whose love Hamlet depends genuinely care about him but become disloyal because of other ties and predicaments – which creates a situation that is extremely complex and confusing. Too complex and confusing for somebody still so inexperienced in the ways of the world to process and to deal with. And there I am finally close to what I found so striking and true-to-life about this production: that they took the concept of people being parts of families so seriously, and, in my opinion, successfully applied as a key concept for reading “Hamlet”.

Seeing it a second time, I was extremely pleased with the beginning. Not just the ghost turning up on CCTV, but when they set up the whole family – respectively: the Hamlet AND the Polonius family coming to together for the royal marriage – as one family unit. (For example, I noticed Gertrude cuddling Laertes all the time, whereas Hamlet sat at one side of the room, not interacting with anyone. Looking upon this as an outsider, there could be MORE THAN ONE explanation for it.) And, looking back at this, I liked the way they set up the ending, without really understanding it: when everybody is getting up, walking slowly towards the old Hamlet, and all these ties – all these vibrant, inconsequential human relationships – suddenly cease to matter … and just now it strikes me: THIS is why “Hamlet” is still a tragedy! In fact, he destroyed all this even by not really doing anything. If we don’t SEE in the beginning what is to be destroyed, the ending of “Hamlet” is just the usual inconclusive blood-dripping mess that tragedy tends to become on a contemporary stage.

I’ll try to stop my train of thoughts here because I have just discovered why I loved this version of the play – even though, as a whole, it isn’t convincing. Being myself part of a big family that I always thought worked rather well – until the moment it got tested for the first time and developed a mess! – I am particularly susceptible to what they did on that stage. I fully understand now why I was particularly pleased with all the small inconsequential things they did to make it true-to-life – one example will follow! – because this is what families are like. (And I know that there always is a mess – and always WAS, by the way, because it is just GOODWILL that is holding it together until something happens to upset it. And if there is goodwill left it will just take time and patience to sort it out, though, at the moment, I am not that confident …) By the way, I just found out why “Marple” upset me! I noticed recently that I was GENIUNELY upset when I watched the second episode of the third series of the “new” ITV “Marple” - which I bought when I found out that Richard Armitage played in it – and found it weird that I was upset. This episode is about a big family, living together in a big house. A family that is thoroughly unhappy. Then one member of this family gets murdered – and the next thing we see is: a HAPPY family that works so well that it even “absorbs” the unhappy and ungracious, making them part of its radiance! And this is exactly how big families work, and why family ties are so strong and efficient that people are tied down and changed by them – for better or worse! – and why it is so extremely difficult for their members to do anything about this ON THEIR OWN. (Unfortunately, murdering somebody is not really an option! 😉) And – who would have thought! – there I am landed in “Hamlet” again. Obviously, my “key quote” for this production became:

“O cursed spite – THAT EVER I WAS BORN TO SET IT RIGHT!”

And I even remember now the moment when it took on meaning because I realized with enormous relief THAT I WAS NOT! The moment I wanted to say to Hamlet: Good luck with this concept because you will need it!

In this production Hamlet realizes the implications anyway and gets genuinely upset.  But now I got too far ahead of myself. I just wanted to add another example because it is about these small, inconsequential ideas they had about characters or plot which I was so pleased with. And it is usually something “we” find puzzling at first, or even dislike. I think Claudia disliked it and I found it puzzling: that they never leave out the moment when Polonius, in the scene where he is sending someone to spy on his son, loses his train of thought. This time they even decided – or Peter Wight decided? – to do something meaningful with it. He made this moment really long and made his face “fall down”, as if to suggest that Polonius has Alzheimers in an early stage. Claudia particularly disliked this, and I agreed with her at first because it is the only moment something like this happens, and it has no bearing on anything else. But, like many of these little moments – as, for example, Gertrude cuddling Laertes – it had a big impact on my reading. It might even have been this efficient “ruse” to make me look closer – even closer than I was already looking because I was so pleased to see Peter Wight as Polonius anyway. I liked it that he made Polonius so “different”, and I just love it when somebody is so “naturalistic” and psychologically precise with a Shakespeare character. So I noticed, for example, though he shows him as a kind father who cares about his children and tries to give them good advice – not like a family tyrant who wants to keep them contained – there is one moment where he gets irrationally angry with Ophelia –  without warning or genuine reason. This was the second incident where I felt that he wanted to show Polonius as somebody who is already failing because of old age. And THIS, for me, became the missing motivational link in the Ophelia plot. Why she is loyal to her father and fails Hamlet. As I experience myself at the moment: We cannot do anything about our parents “failing” when they are getting old. And at least the female part or their descendants tends to notice and to feel obligated to do something about it. So, obviously, Ophelia is PROTECTIVE of her father when she is taking his side against Hamlet. And THIS is family ties for me: IF the family works, they are so strong that they can DESTROY almost anything – even a growing love relationship. Even if it bears on other issues important to us, “we” will always feel OBLIGATED to do something about it.