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

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I've always thought it could be playable not just as that, but as the Ghost not actually being Hamlet's father but the Devil trying to bring the family down; it would put an interesting spin on the tension between non-Christian avenge-your-dead-father and Christian virtues in the text, which I see as the engine of the whole plot. (Cutting Claudius actually confessing to the murder would, alas, be going too far.)

[sovay]

the Ghost not actually being Hamlet's father but the Devil trying to bring the family down; it would put an interesting spin on the tension between non-Christian avenge-your-dead-father and Christian virtues in the text, which I see as the engine of the whole plot.

I am less interested in the Devil or a false Ghost, I think, but I agree that I would love to see a production which engages with the fact that while Hamlet's father couches his charge for revenge in Christian terms—confined to fast in fires, with all his imperfections still upon his head—what he's asking for is right out of a Norse saga. And it obliterates the royal family of Denmark. I mean, good for Norway, but I'd like to know how old Hamlet feels about it.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I've only ever seen the Brannagh, but it left me wondering whether Horatio wasn't an agent provocateur for Norway, goading the rest of the court into killing each other off and leaving a convenient power vacuum.

Oh, and what I've heard about the original saga version is pretty interesting (IIRC, Hamlet does go to England and has a bunch of adventures there; marrys a Scottish warrior queen who comes back and helps him rescue Ophelia and burn down Elsinore; then the three off them go off and live happily ever after until the next revenge plot breaks out.)

[sovay]

(IIRC, Hamlet does go to England and has a bunch of adventures there; marrys a Scottish warrior queen who comes back and helps him rescue Ophelia and burn down Elsinore; then the three off them go off and live happily ever after until the next revenge plot breaks out.)

That's awesome!