Hamlet: The Man, The Myth.

Hamlet, Act 1 through a Mythological lens:

Immediately, we see that Shakespeare's Denmark is a land populated by superstitious people - A ghost appears before Bernardo, Fransisco and Marcellus and Horatio, and they comment that the night time is the time for things like witches and goblins, to explain away the ghosts disappearance at the cock's crow. Hamlet is right off the bat participating in a literary tradition of tales in which the dead communicate with the living. The Ghost is an acknowledgement of the mythological climate of Shakespeare’s era.

As for young Hamlet himself, he is a reflection of a Campbellian hero, in that he is tasked with a quest (revenge) by a father figure (ghost of his father) in a way indicating magical gravity (he’s a flipping ghost) that he must complete to bring order to the world. Or so he thinks.

A few other archetypes are also filled, though it should be recognized that many of our current day archetypes were crafted by Shakespeare himself. Polonius is another father figure, but of a different variety - he’s the one just FILLED with wisdom, who can’t keep himself from bestowing his wise wisdom to his children. They don’t seem too keen on it.

In fact, I imagine that they get this from Polonius a lot - Laertes seemed mighty keen on getting out of there.

All in all, act 1 is in many ways a set up, ramp up kind of act. It introduces the characters and major plot information: This is Hamlet, Claudius, Ophelia, Gertrude, etc. Here’s how they’re all related, and how they feel about that. Now watch Hamlet talk to a ghost.

So far, Hamlet’s relation to mythology seems to be one of open acknowledgement.

In other words, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy!’

Picasso's 'Tragedy'

Blue people on a blue background, hunched over looking sad? Well, if their body language didn't say it, I'm sure Picasso's incredibly subtle palette did the trick - this painting is a tragedy!

Now, it isn't a tragedy in the "woe is me, I've gouged my eyes out" sort of way: Everyone knows a greek tragedy has a lot more red in it.

"WHY? WHYYYYY!?"

Is it just me, or do my blog posts read like a Cracked.com article?

Intellectual, academic reflections: Picasso uses a combination of color and body language in his figures to suggest an internal tragedy that is evocative in its vagueness.

What I imagine is that this family has just been turned out of their beachside apartment by their (obviously) heavily-moustachio'd landlord. They wander a cold beach on a cloudy day, unable to enjoy the same amenities that, through the lens of homelessness, are harsh and unforgiving.

An innocent child tugs on the pantleg of his father, asking why they have no home. He turns away in shame.

A single tear rolls down the mother's eye.

"Tears of BLOOD? Didn't THINK so! The King is unimpressed!"

Or something else. Who knows, really? That family could be as sad as...well, these guys.

Tragedy.

a symbol of tragedy

the assignment:

Bring in a symbol of tragedy. This can be anything but please take time to think about this assignment so our contributions are multidimensional and thought provoking.

I admit I am sorely tempted to make this my symbol of tragedy.

"This was once part of a tree."

in actuality though, I'll probably go with the jester hat. I mean hey, I wrote a musical which also happened to be a tragedy, and the hat is a symbol in it. so that works!

also, the whole thing was sort of a...failure in an already dark downward (thankfully self-contained) spiral in my life. and really, who doesn't love layering in their symbolism?

Ogres love layered symbolism, onions love layered symbolism - you get the point.

so the above statements may need some background. As I said, I wrote a musical, and for the better part of last year I tried to produce a low-key workshop production of it. However, this soon proved to be a more challenging than I thought it would be. but first some more background on the background (read: layers)

the musical was a sort of semi-autobiographical uber-cathartic piece that focused on an immature crown-prince who finds himself simultaneously struck by the enormity of the looming responsibility implied by his uncle (the king)'s severe illness and very strong feelings for a court jester. I'll give you a moment to navigate that sentence before I continue.

The jester, with a sort of (retrospectively) psychotic obsession with truth and perception and truth in action and society and things of that nature (sort of a medieval Diogenes of Synope, but with singing and dancing and...bisexuality, but we'll get to that later) basically leads the prince on for a while before ultimately running off with his sister (who has issues of her own of course, being a lesbian and a princess in the 1600's...obviously my sense of anachronism wasn't fully developed)...

This man, if he sang and danced, would have broken reality.

So that's why it was sort of a tragedy. The play ends with the prince set to become king (because his uncle died and that was sad) and the jester and his sister run away to leave him completely alone to the task.

but on the bright side the token villain (a nefarious taxman named Quinn) is ultimately thwarted and his henchman, the inventor of a beverage known as 'Orange Juice', takes his place in the new regime.

as I said, its an anachronistic, often silly piece. but its got nearly 30 pieces of original music in it.

30 pieces of music. along with many, many spoken scenes that often had the characters waxing painfully verbose on issues of philosophy (in the guise of trying to justify homosexuality to medieval sensibilities, usually...) it was a long play, and a hard one to produce. But another problem was that I was dealing with a small cast of students who weren't really able to commit themselves to the project as much as I (regrettably) expected of them. Even still, I (ironically) tried to take the brunt of the responsibility on myself in that I was directing as I was scoring music as I was putting together sets and light designs and costumes and props and all manner of THING while (parenthetically) forgetting to gauge how I was acting towards those involved.

What basically resulted was three actresses in lead roles (namely the jester, the princess and the other princess I forgot to mention) withdrew in quick succession. At first I was able to keep it up by bringing in a last minute replacement for the jester, but the scheduling of the single performance was in line with AP testing that year, and the show was shortly after killed off.

I tried to play off maturely (mostly to make up for my conduct as everything was in the process of falling apart) with a cast-wide email explaining that although we were done I had no regrets because we all learned a lot and a whole bunch of other hippie crap I was having trouble convincing myself I believed.

However, only a couple weeks later my irrational anger began surfacing through really immature, vicious pranks directed at those I managed to convince myself were at least partly to blame. the consequences were less than pleasant, and I spent my 18th birthday at home - on a fairly hilariously timed one-day suspension.

'The Jester' has since become a symbol in my mind for another kind of tragedy, in that it sort of exposed me in quick succession to a lot of my flaws and weaknesses, and then became the arena in which I failed to overcome them in addition to the more palpable failure of the canceled production.

So there's the verbose blog post on that. Catharsis through writing still appears to be my style...some things never change.