Shakespeare

[Karl Henning]

That's the one. It's an enjoyable romp.

Love it!

[Karl Henning]

I've begun reading The Winters Tale, a play I've ignored until now.  It is a late play and considered among his best, but not often staged.  My recent interest was sparked by a YouTube of an individual's ranking of the plays. 

Pretty good commentary.

Like The Tempest, a play which it is high time I approached.

[Mandryka]

I'm about to take a 12 hour course on Hamlet.

Any good recent books published about it? New ideas etc?

[SimonNZ]

I'm about to take a 12 hour course on Hamlet.

Any good recent books published about it? New ideas etc?

I haven't yet read it (or even found a copy), but I know Martin Dodsworth's Hamlet Closely Observed is spoken of as a classic.



That's 1985, but I don't think this is the kind of subject where more recent means superior or an advance. except in exceptional circumstances. There may be more recent journal articles on, say, what computer analysis of the text has suggested about this or that.

[Madiel]

I don't get why you'd need a book when taking a course. Surely the purpose of the course is the same as reading a good book?

[SimonNZ]

I don't get why you'd need a book when taking a course. Surely the purpose of the course is the same as reading a good book?

Well...courses do usually have required reading lists. And even if they don't have tests or essays to write to pass they'd still have suggested reading lists.

[JBS]

The play's the thing...


I found the critical essays vastly helped me when I first read it in school.

Of course, the version I used was the first edition, from the 1970s. I can't speak about anything added in the second edition.

[Madiel]

Well...courses do usually have required reading lists. And even if they don't have tests or essays to write to pass they'd still have suggested reading lists.

Yes, but those of things, the course tells you about the books.

Anyway.

[Mandryka]

I haven't yet read it (or even found a copy), but I know Martin Dodsworth's Hamlet Closely Observed is spoken of as a classic.



That's 1985, but I don't think this is the kind of subject where more recent means superior or an advance. except in exceptional circumstances. There may be more recent journal articles on, say, what computer analysis of the text has suggested about this or that.

Ah -- I know of Dodsworth because he wrote a good essay on John Berryman. I'll see if my college library has a copy, if so there'll be a way I can wangle it out.

[Mandryka]

The play's the thing...


I found the critical essays vastly helped me when I first read it in school.

Of course, the version I used was the first edition, from the 1970s. I can't speak about anything added in the second edition.

I didn't know there was a Norton Critical Edition.

 

[Mandryka]

I've just finished watching Peter Brook's Hamlet -- it's on youtube.

My feeling now is that this play is so full of "Elizabethan World Picture" ideas -- time out of joint, ghosts, hire and salary not revenge  etc --  that I can't find a way of making Shakespeare my contemporary.

[SimonNZ]

I've just finished watching Peter Brook's Hamlet -- it's on youtube.

My feeling now is that this play is so full of "Elizabethan World Picture" ideas -- time out of joint, ghosts, hire and salary not revenge  etc --  that I can't find a way of making Shakespeare my contemporary.

Funnily enough the book I'm reading right now is called "Shakespeare Our Contemporary". A classic from 1965 and heady stuff. I'm only half way through but already highly recommended.

I have to chuckle at the casual mentions of Marx - not to Marxist theory, but as cultural touchstones as they would have been understood in 1965. What would we employ now to make the same allusions and reference points? Star Wars?


Is Peter Brook's Hamlet the one from 2002? You might want to try the Branagh.

[SimonNZ]

The Jan Kott book has some interesting things to say about the character of Fortinbras in Hamlet, and quoted this Zbigniew Herbert poem I hadn't encountered before:

Elegy of Fortinbras

To C.M.

Now that we're alone we can talk prince man to man
though you lie on the stairs and see no more than a dead ant
nothing but black sun with broken rays
I could never think of your hands without smiling
and now that they lie on the stone like fallen nests
they are as defenceless as before The end is exactly this
The hands lie apart The sword lies apart The head apart
and the knight's feet in soft slippers

You will have a soldier's funeral without having been a soldier
the only ritual I am acquainted with a little
There will be no candles no singing only cannon-fuses and bursts
crepe dragged on the pavement helmets boots artillery horses drums
drums I know nothing exquisite
those will be my manoeuvres before I start to rule
one has to take the city by neck and shake it a bit

Anyhow you had to perish Hamlet you were not for life
you believed in crystal notions not in human clay
always twitching as if asleep you hunted chimeras
wolfishly you crunched the air only to vomit
you knew no human thing you did not know even how to breathe

Now you have peace Hamlet you accomplished what you had to
and you have peace The rest is not silence but belongs to me
you chose the easier part an elegant thrust
but what is heroic death compared with eternal watching
with a cold apple in one's hand on a narrow chair
with a view of the ant-hill and the clock's dial

Adieu prince I have tasks a sewer project
and a decree on prostitutes and beggars
I must also elaborate a better system of prisons
since as you justly said Denmark is a prison
I go to my affairs This night is born
a star named Hamlet We shall never meet
what I shall leave will not be worth a tragedy

It is not for us to greet each other or bid farewell we live on archipelagos
and that water these words what can they do what can they do prince