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.  

Hamlet – again (“O cursed spite …”)

I am just counting my blessings – and there are too many!? First the personal highlight of finally having seen “The Crucible” again, and now the Harold Pinter Theatre has announced that another one of my many favourite actors has joined the cast of “Uncle Vanya”:  Ciáran Hinds whom I should have “followed”, if not after I saw him as the only “viable” Mr. Rochester then certainly after playing the only duly impressive male character apart from Colin Firth in an adaptation of Jane Austen (as Captain Wentworth in “Persuasion”), or at least after he delighted me as Julius Caesar in “Rome”, but of course I did no such thing. There is just no time to follow all of them. Now he does me the favour and comes where I am going anyway – how very considerate of him!

(Of course I know that there is no way I will actually see all these eminent actors in February. As it appears at the moment, we can count on Brexit to find a way to prevent it. And I am uncomfortably aware that neither the pilots, nor crew, nor ground staff, nor security, nor flight controllers in Munich have been on strike for quite a long time … Hey guys - what about February?! And if neither of them will rise to the occasion I count on the S-Bahn to develop a malfunction of switch – as it did last time, but this time one lasting long enough to prevent me from actually getting to the airport. And if I should get to London against all the odds then certainly one of the actors will have the flu or something and be unable to play. And, by the way, I could catch the flu myself, though I never do … Well, we’ll see when the time comes! I’ll just continue to be organized and ruthless - and patient, of course - and to expect the RIGHT things. Then good things will eventually happen.)

And these are not even all of my blessings!!! Somebody has been able to furnish us with a recording of “Hamlet” with Andrew Scott by the Almeida Theatre. After having seen bits on YouTube,  this became number three on my wish list for productions I wanted to see or see again (or, ideally, have on DVD!!!). (1 = “The Crucible”, 2 = “Richard III” with Ralph Fiennes, also by the Almeida Theatre! So, definitely: they should put their stuff on Digital Theatre, or something like this, as far as I am concerned … Or make DVDs. I know, nobody but me needs DVDs anymore! There aren’t even any new notebooks on offer with a DVD drive, which is shit!) Now I have been granted two of my greatest wishes, and who can beat that? (Except, maybe, actually seeing Richard Armitage on the stage in February. Though it appears unlikely, it isn’t an UNREASONABLE thing to wish for.)

Bad news first: It wasn’t actually THAT great. After having started amazingly, the play kind of fizzled out – as “Hamlet” always does, at least in my experience. So, as far as I am concerned, a really great production of “Hamlet” doesn’t exist yet – and probably never will because, as I have to admit: I just DON’T LIKE the play! So it might be impossible anyway to procure a production that I will be satisfied with. And this cannot be helped. Claudia, for example, doesn’t like “King Lear” – which is not one of my favourite plays either, but I don’t mind it. And there are bits in it that I really like - which I cannot say about Hamlet. So I decided – yet another time! – to skip it. But – “cursed spite”! - Andrew Scott (and Juliet Stevenson!) on YouTube convinced me that I might have missed (for the umpteenth time!) some really important “bit” of Shakespeare. Now I am stuck again with this play that I never wanted to read in the first place – and which I always end up reading anyway, already at uni! - instead of reading “Coriolanus”, which I have wanted to do for months, and then, if I will ever get through with it, or at least as of next year: “Uncle Vanya”. (But of course I want to get through with “Coriolanus” because I am getting more and more curious about “Uncle Vanya”. Now all this has to be delayed indefinitely …)

“O cursed spite!” is all I am saying. “Hamlet” has always been an inconvenience, but I also get this feeling every time that I usually get with Shakespeare – and which usually turns out to be right – that it is ME who must be wrong about this … And, besides, there was this singular opportunity that we both – Claudia and I – wanted to see this play AT THE SAME TIME and FOR THE SAME REASON. (We often are interested in the same things – which is why we went together to Stratford to see “Macbeth” last year, and are planning to see “Uncle Vanya” next year – but it usually turns out that there are very different reasons for us to see somethings, or different expectations (for example, where “Macbeth” was concerned), which makes it unlikely that we actually end up reading “the same text”. Which is just what USUALLY happens. I was pleasantly surprised when we talked about “The Crucible” again – after me having seen it a second time and managed to get rid of my erratic and extremely subjective first reading! – and I got the impression that we actually might be talking about THE SAME TEXT!)

In this case, Claudia saw “Hamlet” first and actually wrote down her first impressions WHILE SEEING IT. After that I HAD to put back everything else and watch it on the first occasion – at the end of a really stressful weekend, in the middle of a developing family crisis – and, on the next day, put everything on hold at work – where there are quite a few unresolved issues as well at the moment - and write an answer.

Of course there was more and more to say and to discover, so I decided to dedicate my unexpectedly empty weekend to it and watch the play again on Saturday evening. On Sunday I woke at four in the morning and couldn’t go back to sleep – not because of the brewing family crisis, or stuff at work, or because I need to buy a new computer … but because I had to think through the political dimension of “Hamlet”!!! “O cursed spite” ... I wasn’t that much better pleased with the production, seeing it a second time, maybe even less so, but it became genuinely INTERESTING nonetheless.

So, I get no choice. I will have to spend this beautiful Sunday entirely at my computer and begin to summarize what we came up with. Beginning with the actors …

… which is important in this case, as, I expect, will become obvious later. We were both mostly pleased with them, I think, with the exception of Andrew Scott. I suppose, if one just sees the YouTube video with the one monologue on it – and the very beautiful bedchamber scene with Hamlet’s mother – one focuses on the exceptional thing he does, and expectations get raised that can never be met. Seeing the complete play, one becomes aware that he has a very monotonous style of acting with mostly unattractive features, as speaking affectedly and unduly pronounced face acting and gesticulating. Nonetheless I was PREPARED to see through this – and this was probably the only reason why I did. Only if one is prepared to get past the unpleasantness, it is possible to see what he is trying to achieve with his style of acting. And actually does achieve, in my opinion. Since Lucian Msamati as Iago and Christopher Eccleston as Macbeth I have become really interested in singular and unusual ways of dealing with Shakespeare text because I perceived their style of acting as a way to “penetrate” the text – not just to display it brilliantly, as, for example, Benedict Cumberbatch did as Hamlet – and so get unexpectedly close to the “immediate” human content just underneath the beautiful surface. In Hamlet’s case this is especially important and particularly difficult. I don’t think that playing Hamlet “naturally” could really work – but of course I don’t know this because I haven’t seen it. (And I am looking forward to Claudia contradicting me.) The reason why I appreciate Andrew Scott’s acting – event though I don’t like it – is because he realized that he had to ANALYZE the text in some way to make it work. As he is probably skilled at mime, he uses it systematically to “translate” Shakespeare text. Which is kind of ridiculous because it cannot work, but nonetheless it conveys this impression that the text is getting CREATED just as he is speaking it. And this, very strangely, creates this feeling of spontaneity and authenticity which I found so striking watching the bits on YouTube. But, going on over some time, it gets irritating and tedious.

We were mostly pleased with the other actors in substantial roles, maybe with the exception of Jessica Brown Findlay as Ophelia. She was kind of stiff and affected but did alright, and was able to express the important things that are going on between her and Hamlet and within the Polonius family. So, didn’t bungle anything. And maybe Angus Wright as Claudius who, as Claudia put it, “did everything right” but appeared kind of unattractive as an actor – somebody whom you don’t really notice if you don’t have to. I kind of liked him, though, being so precise and unobtrusive because I have seen a range of fundamentally different versions of this character (among others by Derek Jacobi, Patrick Stewart (twice!), and Ciáran Hinds) and – even though I liked this - it didn’t really make a difference to my understanding of the play. So, in this case, I just didn’t have to bother with Claudius and could concentrate on the main issues.

Same reason why I liked Peter Wight as Polonius. Apart from the fact that I was really pleased - having seen him in so many series and one of my favourite films “Another year”, mostly playing unattractive supporting roles – to see him “looking so good” in Shakespeare. The fact that I remembered his name when I saw him told me that I “filed” him among the relevant actors – without thinking a great deal about it. Playing Polonius completely unobtrusively and naturally – as a loving and concerned father – but with a very exact and complete understanding of the person he was playing, as he always has, felt exactly right in this context.

Best comes last: I was really, really pleased to see Juliet Stevenson as Gertrude – as I had anticipated seeing that scene on YouTube. Uncontestedly: best actor on that stage - and some of the best Shakespeare I have seen. The first time I saw the play I couldn’t look away and noticed everything she was doing, and that made my perception of the play more than a bit biased. But the second time I watched it I was used to it and noticed that she did the same thing as everybody else (except Andrew Scott): being incredibly precise and doing everything right – except she made sure that everybody NOTICED! I think – even though I was already well aware that she is a great actress – I actually saw her play “something big” for the first time quite recently in the BBC series “Accused”, and was genuinely pleased – and moved! But she is obviously one of these actors that thrive on the stage and get twice - or ten times - as “big” as on the screen, and who really enjoy to throw themselves into it and do all kinds of physical stuff. Amazing! (This is even one of the things why I like the Brits so much that they can do almost anything they want without antagonizing me: that a woman with a face like a horse and piggy eyes, and a body like a broomstick (sorry, that was overdoing it a bit for the effect!) can star on TV and on the stage, and gets to play characters that we actually empathize with – just because she is SO GOOD!)

So, that’s it for now. But – cursed spite! – I will have to continue immediately and get to the actual points we discussed. (If I don’t, I’ll never get to read “Uncle Vanya” …)

Postscript on „The Crucible“ – and tragedy

For future reference: I WILL NEVER AGAIN SAY THAT I AM THROUGH WITH A FICTIONAL TEXT.

I met with Claudia for breakfast on Tag der Deutschen Einheit (October 3^rd) to plan our theatre trip in February. YESSS! We have got tickets for “Uncle Vanya”, and I sorted the credit card shit and applied for a passport. So I should be “Brexit proof” now. (As usual, I don’t really believe that I will actually see it until I see it, but at least I have left no stone unturned …)

This, and seeing “The Crucible” again, has obviously dispersed the black mood. I fully realized this only when I went to see my mother on the weekend, and she said: “O, you are always so cheerful, and this cheers ME up.” O – good! I wasn’t aware that my permanent inward grin showed on my face. And I really wish that people might see some time what they are doing not just for themselves but FOR OTHERS when they make the world a more beautiful place. It’s contagious …

At the moment it isn’t even that I am ”actively” looking forward to seeing Richard Armitage on the stage – which I cannot do because of the surprise factor. I got used to it that I can never know WHAT KIND of surprise it will be. I will have to be patient (which I can do extremely well …) Instead I have begun to look forward very much to seeing Toby Jones in Chekhov. I became increasingly fond of him as an actor during the last few years, having seen him play substantial characters in “Sherlock”, “The Tale of Tales”, and the TV series “Capital”.  I think I have never realized how much I enjoy his acting until recently when I saw him in a really tiny role in “The Way We Live Now” with David Suchet as Augustus Melmotte (gruesomely good!!!) where he played the lawyer Squercum for about thirty seconds, and I just went like 😍 … Blink!!! I imagine that he and Chekhov will get on extremely well.

Well, we’ll see … As usual, at this breakfast meeting we had an extensive exchange about our reading in the meantime, and of course I reported about seeing “The Crucible” on Digital Theatre, probably with little lights blinking in my eyes. And I realized even more what I had realized writing my post about it: that I had tried to look away from tragedy and its potential to overwhelm me to get a clearer look at the complete picture. It actually was a good idea to focus on tragedy AS A VEHICLE to carry the content Arthur Miller wanted to convey, not as an end in itself. But of course this was just a working hypothesis for me to be able to analyze it more comprehensively. Because, when we talked, Claudia said something that brought tragedy back with full force and answered practically everything that was still open about my reading of this text, and why it is actually as important as I felt it was. And it answered one of the most important questions that I have carried with me “all my life” – more precisely: since I have been a teenager. As it happens, I remember my first encounter with TRAGEDY extremely well …

(It was actually quite ridiculous – which may be why I remember it so well. It must have been when I was thirteen or fourteen because, before that, I would have been too young to read something from “Nibelungensage” in school, and after that I would have been too old to want to play it. We read this bit in class where Hagen of Tronje decides to kill Siegfried, and I was ultimately fascinated with it. I remember it because I wanted to go out into the garden and play it – as this was what my sister and I always did when we liked something we had seen or read, though, usually, it was about keeping horses or living on some Swedish island … - and realized that I couldn’t. This was really frustrating, as I recall. And I even remember that I knew I was being ridiculous but wanted to do it NONETHELESS. I think this was because I was totally fascinated with the tragic content of this scene, and utterly frustrated that I couldn’t DO anything with it.) 

Tragedy came back with a vengeance when Claudia recalled having seen “Antigone” with Christopher Eccleston as Kreon. And when she remembered how she COULDN’T ACCEPT the decision Antigone takes. At this moment, I suddenly realized what, above all other things, had been wrong with the film version of “The Crucible” and what had been so right in this theatre production: There MUST be this moment where “we” are unable to ACCEPT the decision John Proctor takes. Not being unable to UNDERSTAND it – because I think I actually did, this time. I mean, I completely understood how he comes to MAKE this decision but, nonetheless, was unable to accept it. And, if I got this right, we had both felt the same.

Maybe there hadn’t even been anything wrong with the film, only with my READING of it. There might have been a moment like this when I saw it half a lifetime ago, but it got “cancelled” by something that they often do in films, and which cannot happen in the theatre. There was this kind of postscript where they explain that a certain number of people declined to sign the false confessions and got executed, and that, because of the way people reacted to this, they had to stop the trials. Historically speaking, this is extremely important information, and it is extremely comforting. Because, all of a sudden, this agonizing decision we see John Proctor struggling with on the stage begins to MAKE SENSE. And I think this is exactly what Arthur Miller went to such lengths to AVOID. That “we” would be able to do what we are always trying to do with tragedy. He wanted this moment where we are totally unable to accept the “tragic” decision because we understand that it has nothing to do with heroism. It may seem so AFTERWARDS, for the “survivors”, but at the moment it happens there is no solace in being heroic. There is our “goodness”, or decency, or humanity, or whatever we want to call it, to fall back on JUST because there is NOTHING ELSE. I always felt that Antigone’s sacrifice is absurd and unnecessary, and AT THE SAME TIME totally understood why she does it. It only makes sense if we understand that it is ABOUT HERSELF, not about any other person or any greater good that she wants to achieve. It is just that what is at the core of her being would be annihilated if she gave in. SHE would be annihilated even BEFORE her death.

But the actual point of tragedy – as something that happens on a stage! - is not to understand but to EXPERIENCE it. When Claudia said that she remembered how SHE couldn’t accept Antigone’s decision I knew that something had HAPPENED when she saw that play and realized that it was the same thing that happened when I saw John Proctor taking this decision. And that this was why the production finally turned out so right.

I think I got it now what it was about when Richard Armitage said that he didn’t know if he could do it. That it was not just some kind of “inverse” motivation thing – to make the stakes higher so that he would leap higher – but actually the truth of the matter. As he said, he had a history with this character. What we saw on the stage had been “in the making” for twenty-three years or so, and it shows! He knew better than anybody else where he had to go, but you can ANTICIPATE something like this as much as you want, you only know the moment it has happened that it actually CAN happen.  And having achieved something like this, having been there FOR REAL, probably makes the emotional chasm in the aftermath unavoidable. It is even very likely that it has been the same chasm for both of us, regarding my own obsession with tragedy. And this wouldn’t have been the least bit weird or special, by the way, because tragedy is (still!) extremely consensual. It is really very seldom that I feel Claudia and I totally agree about something we have seen, even though we have established such an efficient way of talking about it. But where great tragedy is concerned, it is rather likely that many people who saw it would have ended up in the same place.

This finally concludes the issue of why this text has been so special for me – from the time when I first saw the film. What the long history that I had with it was ultimately about.  And why it has obviously been so special for many people, and still is. But it also answers one of the big questions I tried to come to terms with in my blog: What tragedy is about, and why it still is the “format” we use to discuss certain important content that cannot be dealt with by just thinking about it.

I realized that I had been SO close already, discussing Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and how they react differently to their lives having become “tragic”. I think I even wrote this already, word for word, but didn’t quite understand what I was writing. Tragedy is about ACCEPTING THE UNACCEPTABLE.  Which means, when tragedy turns out ultimately beautiful and rewarding it has to be there FOR REAL: the moment where we CANNOT accept what is happening, and THEN accept it.

It is a blatant contradiction, and I think this is even the most important thing about it. Contradictions  are not only one of the most fascinating challenges of philosophy, they are one of the basic structures of real life. Most of the times when we cannot resolve an issue by thinking, or by just dealing with it, there is probably some kind of “genuine” contradiction behind it. I believe that the tragic is still so important because it is the ONLY technique that “we” have ever learned of dealing emotionally with a certain kind of ubiquitous contradiction. I just hit on this great synopsis of the tragic constellation by Vampire Weekend in their song “Harmony Hall”:

“I don’t want to live like this. But I don’t want to die.”

I loved it because it is delivered so casually, kind of deadpan – but most of all because it shows that the “tragic” is in fact a feature of everyday life, not just this far out situation at the end of all things that will hopefully never arise because we will drop dead before it does. No - It is kind of THE underlying structure of our lives. (Or at least one of the most important ones. I am afraid the RIDICULOUS might be the underlying structure of our lives, most of the time. I am just not prepared to look at it like this, most of the time. And quite often they lie close together - as in the song!) And we ARE dealing with it all the time, of course, depending on the nature of the situation: by not taking it seriously, by fighting like mad to get ourselves out of this position (Which is, by the way, the BIGGER part of tragic storytelling, basically the complete “Macbeth”: how we get ourselves into a deadly fix and are struggling in vain to get ourselves out of it. Thinking about it, I find it interesting that Chris Eccleston gave his Macbeth a very brief, very matter of fact moment of acceptance – which is NOT in the text …), or by being able to find that there is a “third way”. Even most of the time, like myself, by cowardly avoiding everything that could get us into one of these positions. Or, if it has happened already, by starting to “need the things that stop you dreaming” (Passenger) or making the awful mess we are in a more comfortable place in one of a hundred other ways - by lying about it to others and to ourselves, by taking drugs, by falling back on stoicism, or self-pity, or irony, or deadpan … But I am convinced that, deep down, “we” are all extremely aware that this moment WILL come where nothing of this will work anymore. When we will have to make this leap: to ACCEPT the unacceptable. And then it just MIGHT be that we find our own “goodness” underneath it all. This may seem ridiculously elevated, but I believe that - IF we haven’t “sold out” before the end! - we actually might.