I recently visited Shakespeare's Birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon. Before you enter the house itself, you pass through an exhibition and get bombarded with information.
A little fact stood out about Shakespeare's popularity. "While you have been watching this presentation," said the presenter of the short film, "a production of Hamlet will be underway somewhere in the world."
That's a remarkable fact. I would have been stretched to believe that a production of any Shakespeare play would be underway at any given moment - but Hamlet specifically?
The fact reminded me about a blog post I wrote back in November last year in which I reported that Hamlet was voted Shakespeare's most popular play in a survey of actors, directors and writers. Looking back, I admit to being a little naive about the sheer scale of Hamlet's popularity!
So where are this week's productions of Hamlet? Have you just got back from the theatre? Perhaps you were in it? I'd love to read your Hamlet reviews big and small on About.com.
Photo © NYPL Digital Gallery
Comments
About Hamlet:
Maybe it’s Shakespeare’s best; but maybe not. Let me think about it. Let me think about it some more.
To my humble thinking, Hamlet is Shakespeare deepest play, in the sense that it deals with the drama of life and death. Depression is depicted in detail and the idea of suicide appears so well-explored!
The desires for ending frustration and pain, Hamlet feels are definitely a masterpiece on the study of an insane mind.
However, only with the passing of time and experience can someone really appreciate Hamlet’s depth.
And always remember: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, that are dreamt of in your philosophy”
From Posadas, Misiones, Argentina, a big hug, ma.ma.
In terms of use of the author’s poetic blank verse, complex image patterns, dialogue, making something fine out of unpromising material, the play can be called one of the best ever in these limited senses. But for modern minds, a play that turns on the central character’s Medieval hesitation to avenge his father on the guilty man, save a kingdom and “get a life” because he won’t kill him in mid prayer (and thus send his soul to ‘heaven’ according to Catholic ‘doctrinal opinion’ disqualifies the play from serious consideration as an eternally important drama for realists. “Julius Caesar” despite its author’s betrayal of Brutus’s arguably moral-ethical purpose is still much more powerful for rational minds, more important dramatically, the scenes more memorable, and the poetry not far behind (in second place) the eminently quotable “Hamlet”. Sorry; but the play has self-evident problems, almost as many as does the astonishing attribution of the Shakespearean Poet’s work to Will Shakspur grammar school front man for the brilliant poet we all admire and still learn from, this side idolatry.
I teach Hamlet every fall to my seniors, so I see the Brannagh version for 9 weeks every year. I love the play. The more I teach it the more I enojoy the nuances of the speeches and characters.
In Hamlet, one of the ‘problem plays’ of Shakespeare, the poet’s dramatic craftsmanship is not at its best. Othello is perhaps the best while Julius Caesar is not very far. But, to my mind, Hamlet and King Lear are a class by themselves. They cannot be viewed merely as ‘plays’. They possess some epic qualities which it is very difficult to define.
I would like to add to my above comment by elaboration – Hamlet represents more than his individual self – Time may go out of joint not only in Denmark but elsewhere also and in fact it does do so and confronted with the social, political and moral changes what agonies a consciencious person suffer, how does he react? Let us look around ourselves. To make my point clear let me re-post my poem on Hamlet again here – I had posted it earlier on this site in connection with another blog. Here it is -
HAMLET
Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood,
I wish you peace my son.
But why do you suffer so much
As if a smouldering cauldron
Your boiling heart will burst
And you seek your peace in death?
Not yet full of years
What makes you feel
The full burden of your time?
Why do you think it is out of joint
And something is wrong
In the state of Denmark?
Here justice is denied in delay
And the weak oppressed
By insolence of office
The villains wear a smiling face
While this quintessence of dust
Sublimates itself not in love but in lust?
Why the question to be or not to be
Haunts you continually
And a morbid obsession
Empties your being of all meanings
For wrongs suffered not only by you but all?
Your friends complacently live
In perfect peace with this world.
They never think
They were born to set it right
No doubts gnawing their blessed souls
They placidly drift
With the ebb and flow of things.
But you are maddened
By a lack of method in this world
A garden overgrown with weeds
Things rank and gross possessing it merely.
To suit your fancy
You fashion a world of your own
Your philosophy
Posits a pattern behind this distracted globe
That eternally revolves on its arbitrary axis.
Neither any cause nor any goal
Pushes it or pulls
It simply is.
In it there is nothing either good or bad
Only your thinking makes it so.
You hallucinate a hell or a heaven
When there is none
And your illusions and visions
Burst like bubbles in a broken dream
In a raging flame you profitlessly blaze
Finding your scalded existence
Purposeless and stale.
Do you repent over that skull
Dug up by the gravediggers’ spades
How in a metaphysic maelstrom you missed
To live your life in full?
Chastened rebels at last
Do all of us feel
Readiness is all?
Or there is a nobleness for our frail frame
Despite the diseases it is heir to
To take arms against a sea of troubles
In a world where all else take
Their inevitable end as something given?
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Yes, it is a very popular play. But why so?
Is it because the style was so different than was tradition back then?
is it because of the double meaning and the deeper meanings behind it?
Or is it because it touches on a double level when a prince is haveing pauper like strugles and toils?