While memory holds a seat in this distracted globe

[sovay]

I wonder if anyone has ever done a production of Hamlet where the prince is genuinely driven mad by his experience of the Ghost.

I am watching the RSC production with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart currently being broadcast on PBS—I thought of it when I saw the armored Ghost reach for its son, pull him close and embrace him; he clutches on to his father's cold flesh and it was unexpected and poignant, but no more. It should be strange to be hugged by a dead thing. It should be disordering and profoundly wrong; it should leave you wrecked in all your certainties, not only that a civil mask has been ripped off the corruption of human life, but that heaven and earth are not even secure in their relations. Hauntings are one thing to speak of, another to feel. From that moment on, of course it's a tragedy. Hamlet belongs to the other world. It's put forth its hand and touched him. And how can you think about life the same way after that?

(Okay, John Woodvine rocks as the Player King.)

Comments

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

It should be strange to be hugged by a dead thing. It should be disordering and profoundly wrong; it should leave you wrecked in all your certainties, not only that a civil mask has been ripped off the corruption of human life, but that heaven and earth are not even secure in their relations.

That's good ghost. Story?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Or poem--another alternative Hamlet?

[sovay]

Or poem--another alternative Hamlet?

I'm not sure what it is about Hamlet. If you asked me for a favorite Shakespeare, I'd have said Much Ado About Nothing and then flipped a coin between Julius Caesar, The Tempest, and The Winter's Tale. But this one is full of the right kind of ambiguities. I'll let you know if anything comes of them.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

I'd change A Midsummer Night's Dream for Julius Caesar, not being so avid a classicist.

In Hamlet I love the Players. Quelle surprise.

Nine

[sovay]

I'd change A Midsummer Night's Dream for Julius Caesar, not being so avid a classicist.

I love A Midsummer Night's Dream, but no single character in it compels me as much as Brutus and Cassius.