Bits of language excellence.

These are fantastic, much prefer them to their contemporary counterparts:

unfold yourself = identify yourself (I.i.2)
with martial stalk = stealthily (I.i.75)
keeps wassail = parties (I.iv.10)
drabbing = hanging with hookers (II.i.28)
sift = question to figure out what is going on, as in "we shall sift him" (II.ii.62)
candied tongue = flattering/fawning manner (III.ii.56)
envenom = fill with anger/embitter (IV.vi.93)

I like them better because:

unfold yourself is just lovelier than identify yourself.
martial stalk is stronger & spookier.
drabbing -- for some reason feels like there's some onomatopoeia in there, word sounds kind of funky.
keeps wassail -- "wassail" originated as a drunken pagan tradition & suggests awesome debauchery, while "keeps" gives it a ceremonial feel, like "keeping kosher," something done with prescribed intent.
candied tongue is more unctuous-sounding.
sift and envenom = pitch-perfect in terms of what they mean.

The pic above: from The Tragedie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke
Weimar: Cranach Press, 1930.

Poster

Poster by Polish designer Leonard Konopelski, 1974

Of our time...For our time.

Wow. I was doing a random Hamlet image search and found this. From 1969. I'm netflixing this. Looks like Hamlet is a vampire, like this could've been a poster for a Hammer film--Hammer studios in England churned out lots of vampire flicks in the 60s & the women were always shagadelic-Brit-chicks in diaphanous wench-type-dresses. With cleavage for days. Like in this poster.

I found one review through imdb, from Time Magazine. The review is hilariously gushing.

On Williamson: "His eyes sear the viewer. He is not speaking to the air; he is speaking to you. As far as Williamson is concerned, elocution be damned. Poetry be damned. Meaning is all. Never has Hamlet been rendered with more clarity or more biting timeliness, and that includes Gielgud, Olivier and Burton. Shakespeare held the mirror up to nature. Williamson holds a mirror up to the soul."

On Marianne: "Marianne Faithfull's Ophelia is remarkably affecting. She is ethereal, vulnerable, and in some strange way purer than the infancy of truth." (ed. note: ummmmmmm)

I have to say, though, I love the opening paragraph of the review. The guy who wrote it obviously just loves Hamlet and is effusive from the start. This is lovely:

"Hamlet has obsessed the Western mind for 369 years. Why? It is not because most people love great works of art. On the contrary, most people find great works of art oppressive, since such works invariably center on the nature of human destiny, and that destiny is tragic. Quite simply, Hamlet is a world, and like the world, it cannot be ignored. Every man has lived some part of the play, and to be a man is to be inextricably involved in the play. Hamlet probes and grips the profound themes of existence—death, love, time, fidelity, friendship, family, the relationships of a man and a woman, a son and father, a mother and son, murder and madness. Above all, it probes the value of existence, man's most anguishing question put in the form that every man knows from the time he first hears and ponders it—to be or not to be."

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern = players

So I'm re-reading Hamlet. Shakespeare's language is scraping a crust off my brain.

I've been trying to pay attention to a number of things, including what phrases in Hamlet survive today (so many). I came across one I hadn't expected—the use of the word "play" in the same slang sense we use it today. As in, I got played. I have no idea about the etymology of this particular use of "play." But there it was, in Hamlet.

A little set-up: everyone has finished watching The Mousetrap, the play Hamlet has on-the-sly arranged to reenact his father's murder (the idea being to watch King Claudius watching The Mousetrap, in order to figure out if he is in fact guilty). Sure enough, Claudius gets really upset, says stop the play (Give me some light: away!) and storms off.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern approach Hamlet, telling him his mother wants to "to speak with you in her closet" (uh-oh). Hamlet believes, rightly, that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are working for Claudius, keeping an eye on Hamlet/getting in his shit. Hamlet asks Guildenstern, "will you play upon/this pipe?" referring to a recorder. Guildenstern is puzzled, and repeatedly tells him, no, I can't, I don't know how. But Hamlet is insistent. (III.ii.337-353)

HAMLET
I do beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN
I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET
'Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with
your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your
mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music.
Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN
But these cannot I command to any
utterance of harmony; I have not the skill.

HAMLET
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of
me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know
my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my
mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
the top of my compass: and there is much music,
excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot
you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am
easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you
cannot play upon me.

As in, you're trying to play me asshole but you can't.

The pic above: "Rosenberg and Goldstein," neighbors of Harold & Kumar in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. Hamlet references in stoner flicks = love.

The Plague

So I was talking about rot and disease in Hamlet and I started wondering about what sickness/death was like back in Elizabethan England. The plague was still around, after all—not the way it was during The Black Death, but there were outbreaks in England in as late as the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries. (However, from what I glean, exactly what the “plague” was is in debate, perhaps it was a number of things, etc.). Shakespeare was around the plague; it was a reality. At least twice during Shakespeare’s tenure as London’s the-shit playwright, outbreaks occurred, during which theaters were shut down for extended lengths of time; in 1593 something like 10,000 people died.

The plague. How fucking utterly grim. No cure, no one knew what caused it. Humours? Magic? Sin? “Miasma” (bad air)? The plague = oozing, fist-sized "buboes" that turned red, then black. Your house would be sealed. Death came in days. I really wonder what the average Elizabethan’s attitude towards death was, and how Shakespeare’s festering imagery played to those audiences. So much use of the word "rank." And "pestilent." Words rooted in the reality of the time.

...the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours (II.ii.302-304)

I used to work with a man who was HIV-positive. He had been since the eighties, but had never gotten sick. I remember him telling me about what his doctor had said--that there was a theory going around having to do with people who were descended from survivors of the Black Plague. Descendants may have inherited the same gene mutation that had allowed their ancestors to survive; this same mutation, the theory went, might have been what was allowing my co-worker to stay healthy.

The pics above = garb of the “plague doctor.” Robe, black-brimmed hat, gloves, long black overcoat; the beaked mask was filled with aromatic herbs/spices/stuff, presumably to camouflage the smell of sickness. Scary as hell. Not sure what century this garb was in use, though, given all the semi-facts loose on the web.

I think the engraving above is from an Italian broadside warning about the plague. (Note the children running away from the creepy doctor in the bottom left hand side).The photo above is from the Danish Museum of Science and Medicine.

Incidentally, I have a student who “freelances” as an assistant funeral director around Queens. I really can’t tell if he’s 25 or like…40. He told me that as an assistant funeral director, he specializes “in removal.”

Rotten in etc.

Top painting by Eugene Delacroix, "Hamlet Before the Body of Polonius," 1855. Bottom by Dali, "Hamlet Stabs Polonius," 1973

Class last week: we discussed the repeating imagery of rot, decay & disease in the play. I asked class: what could it mean? Why all this rot stuff? Tried presenting Shakespeare like a cool & intricate puzzle to be solved. Lively discussion ensued about the various ways characters are rotten, or are beginning to rot/corrupt. What is the source of infection? Claudius and his murder most foul? Or could there be more than one source—the ghost’s mandate-for-blood, perhaps? Hmmmmmm.

One student made an interesting point about how alike/corrupt/rotten or rotting both Hamlet and Claudius are. Both have creepy “unnatural” desires surrounding Gertrude. Both are cunning. Both are contemplative (we do see Claudius in soliloquy, considering his crime). And, as she pointed out, both are stone-cold murderers: Hamlet seems to feel nothing after accidentally killing Polonius; after that murder, Hamlet dispatches Rosencrantz and Gildenstern with nary a guilt-twinge. Yes I said nary.

In groups, students identified all the rot/etc. images from III.iv, the scene in which Hamlet confronts his mother in her bedroom, why are you screwing my uncle, etc., killing Polonius, etc. My favorite images:

In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed,
Stewed in corruption

Hamlet is referring to the bed his mother shared with Claudius.
Enseamèd = greasy

It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen

Hamlet says this right after telling his mother, and I paraphrase, Don't comfort yourself by telling yourself I'm crazy and that you don't know what the hell I'm talking about (that your slutty gross behavior is an atrocity). Doing so will "but skin and film the ulcerous place..."

Mmmmmm...the ulcerous place.

Graphic Hamlet

Two pages from No Fear Shakespeare's graphic novelization of Hamlet. Very cool art by Neil Babra. The second page is the beginning of Hamlet's famous "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I" (II.ii.535) speech -- would have much preferred to see this in its original language:

Is it not monstrous that this player here...
instead of
Look how this player here...
etc.

Why not use the original language? Plenty of room in a project like this to allow visuals to flesh out meaning (and in that way make the language more accessible, as opposed to "translating" the language into present-day English).

But, love the art.

Yorick.

From the Brothers Brick,"a LEGO blog for adult fans of LEGO." Caption above the pic:

“Alas, poor Yorick…”
Legohaulic created a cool looking skeleton for yesterdays Halloween.

Yorick.

From Corbis. Caption: David Bowie sings in concert during his Serious Moonlight Tour in 1983. He is holding a skull while singing, a reference to the "Alas, poor Yorick" scene of Hamlet.

Yorick.

From on-site at a hyena dissection. The caption beneath the pic:

Alas, poor Kodiak. We knew her, readers. A bitch of infinite hunger, of most excellent construction; she hath devoured me in her imagination a thousand times; and now, how devoured in my imagination she is! My curiosity rises at it. Here hung those lips that have laughed at me I know not how oft. Where be your yelps now?

Yorick.

From "Cowboy Bob's Home Spread."

The pic's caption:

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.... Cowboy Bob does his version of Hamlet -- with a horse skull! (A special thanks to Jay Johnson for his help in cutting the skull!)

taH pagh taHbe'

Hamlet is available in Klingon.

Reviewed at Siskoid's Blog of Geekery. Available through Amazon.

DIY Hamlet for kids

Beautifully done. And so simple. From the creator's website:

"An 8-minute, animated short for kids, adapted from Shakespeare’s play. This film has been shown in film festivals around the world, including Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, Redcat Film Fest, Nashville Independent Film Festival, Toronto Images Festival, the Boston Museum of Art, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and more. I made this film in three weeks in 2001 for a high school project."

Hamlet, Grant Morrison, Superman

From Act II, one of Hamlet's famous speeches:

“What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god—the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!” (II.ii.293–297)

The sentiment in the speech (according to falling-apart Shakespeare books crammed into the bookcase near my desk on campus) is based upon one of "the major texts of the Italian humanists," Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man. I just found it online.

I found a related interview with comics writer Grant Morrison (who I fucking love); seems he based his All Star Superman on the same text.

Morrison on the Doctrine:

"I see Superman in this series as an Enlightenment figure, a Renaissance idea of the ideal man, perfect in mind, body and intention.

A key text in all of this is Pico’s ‘Oration On The Dignity of Man’ (15c), generally regarded as the ‘manifesto’ of Renaissance thought, in which Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola laid out the fundamentals of what we tend to refer to as ’Humanist’ thinking.

(The ‘Oratorio’ also turns up in my British superhero series Zenith from 1987, which may indicate how long I’ve been working towards a Pico/Superman team-up!)

At its most basic, the ‘Oratorio’ is telling us that human beings have the unique ability, even the responsibility, to live up to their ‘ideals’. It would be unusual for a dog to aspire to be a horse, a bird to bark like a dog, or a horse to want to wear a diving suit and explore the Barrier Reef, but people have a particular gift for and inclination towards imitation, mimicry and self-transformation. We fly by watching birds and then making metal carriers that can outdo birds, we travel underwater by imitating fish, we constantly look to role models and behavioral templates for guidance, even when those role models are fictional TV or, comic, novel or movie heroes, just like the soft, quick, shapeshifty little things we are. We can alter the clothes we wear, the temperature around us, and change even our own bodies, in order to colonize or occupy previously hostile environments. We are, in short, a distinctively malleable and adaptable bunch.

So, Pico is saying, if we live by imitation, does it not make sense that we might choose to imitate the angels, the gods, the very highest form of being that we can imagine? Instead of indulging the most brutish, vicious, greedy and ignorant aspects of the human experience, we can, with a little applied effort, elevate the better part of our natures and work to express those elements through our behavior. To do so would probably make us all feel a whole lot better too. Doing good deeds and making other people happy makes you feel totally brilliant, let’s face it."

Muslim Hamlet

This is the CD cover of a Hamlet soundtrack--Bosnian director Haris Pašović's version of Hamlet, music performed by East West Orchestra. The music is "oriental/ambiental, improvisations based on classic Turkish themes."

Song number 3 is: "She's Conjunctive To My Life." (Sounds like a John Mayer title, if he wrote in Elizabethan.)

Claudius speaking about Gertrude (IV.vii.14-17):

She's so conjunctive to my life and soul,
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
I could not but by her.

Pašović's Hamlet is situated in a Turkish court instead of Danish. See a CNN World clip about this production here. From an interview with Pašović, on why he set it where he set it:

"It is a story about power, about rebellion, about human essence in all its greatness and all its irrelevance. Since this play is so universal that every epoch has its own Hamlet, I decided to refer to an empire that was a super-power during a certain period of history – the Ottoman Empire. It became interesting to me to view the whole story from the perspective of a powerful empire that encompassed several dozens of different peoples, cultural identities, and from the perspective of the Muslim world."

He continues:

"It may sound paradoxical, but I think that if he were to write Hamlet today, Shakespeare would set it in the Ottoman court . . . The structure of the Ottoman state is absolutely Shakespearian. That is something about which Shakespeare wrote in all his plays. I did not change the story, I have not changed anything in the story, I did not change the names, I only changed the titles; instead of king and queen, we use sultan and Valide-sultan, and where in the original there is a Christian religious reference, we have translated it into Islamic references."

DIY Hamlet

This is pretty great. Total DIY, zero-budget Hamlet. Done for a 10th grade English class. Hamlet meets The Godfather in eight minutes. They hit all the key points and are able to fold in "Godfather" elements pretty smartly, actually.

Instead of smoking Claudius out with a play that depicts the murder Claudius committed, Hamlet goes up to Claudius (who is now called Godfather) and asks him, hey I'm thinking about taking a hit on this guy by putting poison in his ear. What do you think?
I asked the star/director a few questions:

1. Your name.
Giordan Diaz

2. Where was this filmed?
This was filmed in Hialeah Gardens, Fl. In the house of the girl that plays Gertrude. In 2006.

3. Why Hamlet?
Well I didn't have any other choice. My 10th grade English teacher gave out the assignment. He wanted us to adapt and modernize Hamlet in any way we wanted.

4. Anything you like about the play?
I filmed this movie 3 years ago, and its been just as long sense I've read it, but I'll give it my best. I like the concept of a family slowly but surely destroying themselves little by little. The character of Hamlet himself is also very important to me because I don't think you can ever run out of ideas when analyzing this character. As an actor myself, I see why Hamlet is "the" role to play. I wish I would have known half the things I know now back then. I would have done this film differently.

5. What made you decide to give it the Godfather angle?
I'm a HUGE film buff. I really enjoy classic filmmaking more then the average person my age. So I had recently finished reading and seeing The Godfather that very same year. When this assignment came up I realized there are many similarities between a crime family and a royal family as far as titles of nobility and things of that nature. So I just decided to sit down and write down the main characters I needed and write down a very condensed version of Hamlet as if it were set in that particular world. Basically this little film is an Ode to the greatness of The Godfather.

A few (more) random words/phrases I love:

palmy state = Horatio is referring to Rome ("the most high and palmy state of Rome"). Palmy = glorious, prosperous, flourishing
sharked up = indiscriminately gathered together
(gotta shark up the rent)
distilled almost to jelly = scared the hell out of (though turning-to-jelly is a cliché now, loved reading it in perhaps its first, or at least a very early use?)
reechy = filthy, gross, as in "reechy kisses."
knave (hear that a lot in Hamlet, also knavery) = as my class decided, jackass or douchebag