Memento Mori part 2

I found a short, interesting essay (by Elizabeth Brunner, "graduate student in English at California Polytechnic") about Hamlet, Yorick and memento mori. A few excerpts:

"Shakespeare's Hamlet wallowed in death -- facing his father's ghost, contemplating suicide, planning deadly revenge, and playing in a graveyard."

"The contrast between the memories of 'merriment' and the realities of disintegrating bodies traps both the audience and Hamlet somewhere between amusement and regret. Shakespeare plays on the appearance of skullbones, the exposed jaw pulled back as grin or grimace."

She relates this grin/grimace dichotomy to her own mother's death. For the funeral, she, at seven, and her sister were dressed up in pink dresses, matching her mother's dress: "We had posed in these matching outfits for a holiday photo just weeks before, with my mother propped up in a hospital bed, wearing a wig to cover the ravages of chemotherapy, and with chocolate bunnies cradled in our arms. For me, death will always be associated with pale pink dresses, a color made horrid but soon faded to nothing in a San Jose cemetery. I remain fascinated by this bizarre and tragic scene from my childhood, by this symbolic joining through shared pinkness of still living daughters with a dead mother."

"...Yorick's skull represents definitive knowledge: bodies rot after death. Religious explanations cannot compete with evidence from the graveyard."

Pic above: Hamlet und Horatio auf dem Friedhof by Eugene Delacroix (1839)

Memento Mori

I've been reading about "memento mori."

From UCLA: "A memento mori is a form of image that urged a European person of the late Middle Ages to "remember thy death." To do this, a memento mori might represent death as a human skeleton--perhaps as the Grim Reaper gathering his harvest--or it might depict human bodies in an advanced state of decay. Its purpose is to remind the viewer that death is an unavoidable part of life, something to be prepared for at all times. Memento mori images are graphic demonstrations of the fact that death was not only a more frequent, but a far more familiar occurrence in medieval Europe than it is today."

Shakespeare was writing during the era of memento mori. I've written before about the plague and Hamlet. Lots of death in Hamlet, of course. Hamlet is haunted literally and figuratively by the death of his father, he gives several speeches about how death is the great equalizer: about how we all wind up food for maggots, or how even the great Alexander dies and decays into earth. Etc.

Interesting that there isn't much talk in terms of any after-life. Two exceptions: 1) Hamlet's father (the ghost)--the fact he exists, and he makes reference to coming from a hell-like world and 2) Claudius expresses (some) remorse as he prays; Hamlet sees him praying & decides not to kill him, believing he'll be sending him to heaven.

But believing in "heaven" doesn't figure in, say, the "to be or not to be" speech; what lay in the undiscovered country is not "heaven," but a mystery. (One that has endured, obviously--death is still the great mystery/great equalizer it was then, still the same undiscovered country.).

I'm very curious how Shakespeare's audiences took Hamlet's death-speeches. If a play like this were to be written today, or a movie, it would be surely be perceived as gloomy and macabre. But in a time when theaters were still being closed during plague-outbreaks, I wonder if it wasn't just perceived as normal (not overly dark); our version of macabre = utterly normal back then.

The idea of memento mori fascinates me, having gone through cancer. I was shocked, shocked, shocked by my diagnosis--in a very basic way, I was shocked by the idea, even, that I was mortal.

The three images above are from the "Final Farewell: The Culture of Death and the Afterlife" exhibit at the University of Missouri, featuring artworks with memento mori iconography.

Top image is "The Card Game of Death," by Giuseppe Erts, 1663.

The second image is an engraving by Philip Galle, no date, but sometime in the late 1500s-early 1600s.

About the third image: "Beginning in the later seventeenth century, undertakers supplied the living with objects concerning the recently deceased. Printed ephemera, such as this funeral invitation, were common. They often featured popular memento mori text and iconography, such as the phrase “Remember your death,” the skull and crossbones, and the winged hourglass. Similar to other works in this exhibition, this invitation shows allegorical figures of Death and Time (a skeleton holding an arrow and a winged man, respectively)."

Muslim Hamlet, II

I was flipping through the Voice on the train the other day and found an article about Sulayman Al-Bassam, a director staging a Muslim Richard III at BAM this summer. (Called "Richard III: An Arab Tragedy.")

Prior to Richard III, Al-Bassam re-envisioned Hamlet as "Al-Hamlet Summit." It won awards at both the Edinburgh Fringe Festival & the Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre. Read an interview with Al-Bassam about Al-Hamlet Summit here.

The names of each act in Al-Hamlet Summit are those of the five daily prayers in Islam. Ophelia is re-imagined as a suicide bomber.

From one of the reviews: "The moral conundrum posed by the ghost in Shakespeare (is he to be believed, and what is his provenance?) finds its ingenious equivalent in the People's Liberation Front, which claims that the old king was murdered by his successor. Instead of a visitor from beyond the grave, this Hamlet (the handsome, intense Mohammed Kefah Al-Kous) is waylaid by a suited Western arms-dealer, who, in the fashion of such folk, is quite promiscuous about whom he's prepared to deal with."

Al-Bassam has directed/written other Hamlet variations as well: "Hamlet in Kuwait" and "Arab League Hamlet," all through his London-based theater company, Zaoum. Three Hamlets. So fascinating.

From his notes about Al-Hamlet Summit:

"Hamlet as an expression of politics…

This has been the driving force behind this work as it moved through its various stages of development that began in January 2001. The following text is a cross-cultural piece of writing in which I have tried to capture a sense of geographical context and contemporary resonance.

As performed by my London-based theatre company, Zaoum Theatre, it aims to allow English-speaking audiences a richer understanding of the Arab world and its people, and how their fates are inextricably linked to that of the West's.

I have endeavoured to avoid the polemic; favouring a concrete and poetic formulation of an Arab viewpoint.

The style of writing combines aspects of the Arab oral poetry tradition with the rhetoric of modern-day politics.

In directing the piece, I sought to bring out a precise and grotesque hyperrealism in the work. The conference chamber that gradually slides into a war room directly illuminates the political setting of the piece. It is a huis-clos that parodies the so-called 'transparency' of today's political processes and it is a deadly arena of internal conflict.

It is not a piece about any specific country in the Arab world.

Rather, it presents a composite of many Arab concerns that affect peoples from the Arabian Gulf to the Atlantic and beyond…"

From his notes about Arab League Hamlet:

"I will try to describe briefly the concerns which I myself was trying to address in the shaping of the piece:

We are living in an age of political charades, where the emphasis on 'spin', public opinion focus groups and the so-called transparency of government hides a callous agenda of economic and political barbarism. In the recent scramble to unite world opinion behind 'America's War on Terrorism', the slogan mentality that pitches good against evil, crusade against jihad presents us with a world split into two halves each baying for the other's blood.

The politicians that surround us are actors, grotesque frontmen for corporate interests and venal puppets of sham democracies.

This Hamlet is about these things, but also about a world where televised diplomacy reigns supreme, where the terrible paralysis of political discourse reaches epileptic heights, from which it is impossible to conceive what damage is being done to human beings on the ground.

Inside the Kingdom of Denmark, the delegates are consumed by vanity, overwhelmed by their own sense of self-importance, insouciant of the dangers threatening them from outside their borders and concerned uniquely with in creasing their stockpile of armaments to defend themselves against each other."

Yorick for kids.

Read about the Animaniacs. Thanks to the bard blog for this.

B or not a B.

Thanks to the bard blog for this.

Sex.

Hamlet about to watch the play Mousetrap, acting crazy-sexy w/Ophelia (III.ii):

Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia: No, my lord.
Hamlet: I mean my head upon your lap.
Ophelia: Aye, my lord.
Hamlet: Or did you think I meant country matters?
Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.
Hamlet: That's a fair thought, to lie between maid's legs.
Ophelia: What is, my lord?
Hamlet: Nothing.

“Country Matters” = sex. Love this. And not so unusual, in terms of sex slang--like saying “the birds & the bees,” in use today, or using the word “rutting” sexually-- putting sex in the animal realm, etc. (James Ellroy used “rutting” a lot in the Black Dahlia, one of my all-time favorite books.) According to Shakespeare's Bawdy, "country matters" is also a play on "cunt" -- cunt was slang for vagina back then, as now. So the phrase is a pun wrapped in a euphemism. Excellently doubly-smutty.

Incidentally, "country matters" is not the only phrase in the above exchange that refers to female genitalia--"nothing" was also slang for vagina. More on that later.

Read about the etymology of the word cunt here--an interesting blog by a "recovering medievalist" and a former linguistics teacher. Also, here: this guy has an entire (and elegantly designed) site dedicated to the word "cunt," which includes etymology.

The above pics: The top is of King Henry VIII (note codpiece), the bottom is one his suits of armor (note codpiece), on display at the Tower of London. The exhibit is called "Henry VIII: Dressed to Kill." He died in 1547, almost 20 years before Shakespeare was born. But, codpieces were worn in Elizabethan England as well.

All about rock out with your cock out back then apparently.

"Denmark's a prison."

From This American Life: "We devote this entire episode to one story: over the course of six months, reporter and TAL contributor Jack Hitt followed a group of inmates at a high-security prison as they rehearsed and staged a production of the last act—Act V—of Hamlet. Shakespeare may seem like an odd match for a group of hardened criminals, but Jack found that they understand the Bard on a level that most of us might not. It's a play about murder and its consequences, performed by murderers, living out the consequences."

Listen to the show here. It's fascinating, chilling, poignant.

One chilling moment: The man who plays The Ghost is in prison for murder. He talks about how when he first read the Ghost's opening speech--describing his own murder--he felt it was his own victim speaking through the lines, about the horror his victim had endured. When he delivers this speech, he says it his victim is speaking through him.

The program also talks about Claudius--in particular, the soliloquy Claudius delivers, admitting the horror of his crime (III.iii: O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven...). Claudius admits to the abject horror of what he is done, and also admits he will not give up everything his foul crime has brought to him: the queen, the kingdom. Says the director of the play, when that soliloquy was performed in front of an audience, "You could hear a pin drop. These are guys with deep regrets."

At one point the reporter says, "The actors tell me they've been practicing their lines whenever they can, often shouting them from cell to cell."

The most poignant moment for me was listening to one of the Hamlets (there are four) speak about grappling with Shakespeare's language. We hear him stumbling over the lines, Up from my cabin,/My sea-gown scarfed about me (V.11.13-14). The director tells him "sea-gown-scarfed" means "fog" (in my version it says this actually means a kind of sailor's uniform--but anyway). The inmate is really struck by this image, then talks about Shakespeare's language, about how wonderful it is. Sounding surprised, he says, "he's actually really good."

Yes.

The pic above is the prison cast, part of Prison Performing Arts. Their trailer is spooky, especially in the first half--the guy who plays the ghost is scary. You can see razor wire in the background

Tiny Hamlet

Love this poster, from Tiny Ninja Theater's production of Hamlet. They've also produced Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, all to very good reviews. From the group's site: "Tiny Ninja Theater is a New York City-based company dedicated to the principle that 'there are no small parts, only small actors.' It was founded in 1999 by company director Dov Weinstein."

The Ghost is played by a mouth with a ninja in it.

Excerpts from Curtain Up's review:

"Tiny Ninja Hamlet, oddly enough, is just what it sounds like -- Hamlet performed with tiny plastic ninja figurines, all manipulated by Dov Weinstein. It's just what every eight-year-old boy does with his toy soldiers, only this is, you know, Hamlet."

"It's one of the most inventive shows I've ever seen. Using televisions, small pin lights and smaller cameras, the tiny plastic world is writ large for the audience. The figures (mostly ninjas, but there are other sorts of figurines) are moved about on three briefcase-size stages."

"Weinstein does an excellent job of maneuvering the ninjas, and of providing clear, distinct voices for each one even though each is no more than an inch tall."

DIY Hamlet

"Monologue by Craig Bazan in Camden NJ." He does the rogue/peasant slave speech. Cool.