carpe decorum

Who's There?

A friend and I saw Hamlet the other night [at the Shakespeare Free-for-All]. It was a most enjoyable evening. We both were tickled by Hamlet's occasional limp, perhaps a tick left over from the actor's previous role as Richard III. Hamlet was excellent, Polonius very funny, indeed. My friend wondered about having Ophelia be manic as a madwoman, rather than depressed. It would still be stage madness, but a new interpretation would be pleasantly surprising at least.

Although I've read the play, and she had re-read just beforehand, we both appreciated the program notes for setting the play in a context. (I'll have to go back and find out who should be credited.) [Dr. Susan Willis, Professor of English, Auburn University.] Evidently, Elizabethans were fond of revenge plays (Thomas Kidd's The Spanish Tragedy, for example), and audiences expected the play to contain some standard elements: a character going mad, a ghost, lots of bodies, the death of the revenger at the close, car chase with explosion (check, check, check, check, whoops, wrong genre). Hamlet's distinctiveness lies in the characters questioning their bloody deeds, not in the doing of them. This version closed with Horatio' saying Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Francis Bacon Of Revenge