WTF Hamlet

ACT ONE

The Soldiers: Hey, did you hear about the ghost?
Horatio: I am a university man. I don't believe in ghosts.
Ghost appears.
Horatio: WTF?
Marcellus: Look, cannon!
Horatio: I can tell you all about that. [Horatio explains for forty lines all about Fortinbras, who is obviously going to be a major character in this narrative.]
Ghost reappears
Horatio: WTF?
Marcellus: I hear ghosts don't walk at Advent. Just sayin'.

Claudius: Hi, everyone. I've just married my sister-in-law. I'm sure you'll all agree that under the circumstances, it was a perfectly obvious thing to do. Also, I took care of the Fortinbras problem. So much for him.
The Danish Court: WTF?
All exit. Hamlet is left alone.
Hamlet: I can't believe Mom married that jerk. WTF?
Enter Horatio.
Hamlet: Hey, what are you doing here?
Horatio: I came for the funeral.
Hamlet: You're a little late, but luckily you're just in time for the wedding. Hey, I think I see my Dad.
Horatio: WTF?!?!?
Hamlet: In my mind's eye.
Horatio: Oh. Speaking of your dad, his ghost has been walking the ramparts.
Hamlet: WTF?

Polonius: Ophelia, you need to break up with Hamlet.
Ophelia: OK, Dad.

Ghost: Your uncle murdered me and married your mother. You need to avenge me.
Hamlet: OK. I shall run around and pretend to be crazy!
Horatio, Marcellus, and the Ghost: WTF?


ACT TWO

Polonius: Reynaldo, go to Paris and spy on my son. I shall explain how at great length, just so everyone will know what a good spymaster I am.
Ophelia: I'm very frightened. Prince Hamlet is acting weird. I think he's gone crazy.
Polonius: Have you given him any hard words of late?
Ophelia: No, I only broke up with him.
Polonius: Well, WTF did you do that for?

Claudius: I talked Fortinbras into invading Poland instead. This is an excellent plan, because people who invade Poland always stop with Poland. They never go on to invade Denmark later.
Gertrude: Hamlet is acting pretty weird lately.
Polonius: I know why! He's in love with my daughter.
Gertrude: It may be, very like.
Hamlet: Hi there, Mr. Fishmonger!
Polonius: WTF?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Let's explain all about the war of the theaters, since nobody goes to see plays any more if they don't have any stuff about the war of the theaters in them.
Enter Actors
Hamlet: Why don't you recite a speech? Maybe a really long one about Hecuba! On second thought, maybe I will recite a really long speech about Hecuba. On third thought ... you do it.
Actors: WTF?


ACT THREE

Polonius: Ophelia, go and spy on Hamlet. Pretend you're reading this book.
Hamlet: Get thee to a nunnery!
Ophelia: WTF?
Hamlet: Did you hear me? To a nunnery! GO!

Hamlet: Sorry about this afternoon, Ophelia. Can I put my head in my lap and talk dirty to you?
Ophelia: OK.
Players perform an extremely suggestive dumb show.
Ophelia: WTF? What was that all about?
Hamlet: Never mind.
First Player is murdered by his nephew.
Claudius: WTF!!!!!

Gertrude: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet: Oh yeah? What about YOU?
Polonius: Help!
Hamlet: Aha! A Rodent Of Unusual Size! A talking one!
Hamlet stabs Polonius through the arras
Gertrude: WTF? That wasn't a R.O.U.S., that was Polonius. You killed him!
Hamlet: Oh, crap. Well, I had a pretty good lecture all thought out, so I'm going to pretend this didn't happen and deliver it to you anyway.
Ghost enters
Gertrude: WTF? Why are you talking to empty air?
Hamlet: By the way, I'm not really crazy.
Gertrude: Yeah, right.
Hamlet: Sorry about Polonius. Now I shall drag him off and dissect him.
Gertrude: WTF?

ACT FOUR

Claudius: Hamlet, I think you had better go to England. Denmark is getting a little hot to hold you.
Hamlet: 'Bye, Mom!
Claudius: WTF?

Fortinbras: Hi! Remember me? I'm invading Poland, but for some reason I'm doing it in Denmark.

Ophelia: I have gone mad. They say the owl was a baker's daughter.
Claudius and Gertrude: WTF?

Pirates: We are the Plot Device Pirates! Arrr!!!
Hamlet: Pirates! Just what I was looking for! Please abduct me and take me aboard your ship!
Pirates: WTF?

Gertrude: I'm sorry about your sister, Laertes, but she drowned. At least it was very poetical.
Claudius: I'm sure you can see this is all Hamlet's fault. Go and kill him.

ACT FIVE

Hamlet: Hey, here's a skull! Let me talk to it for a while.
Gravedigger: WTF?
Funeral procession enters
Laertes: I wanted my sister to have a really nice funeral, but the mean priest wouldn't let me. Well, at least I can give her a memorable funeral.
Leaps into the grave.
Hamlet: I loved her more than you did!
Leaps into the grave.
Mourners: WTF?
Hamlet: Oh, and just in case you happened to be thinking of eating a crocodile, I'll do that, too.

Laertes: Let's have a fencing-match, bro. I totally don't hate you any more.
Hamlet: OK. Sorry about what happened at the funeral, man. I guess I got a little carried away.
The foils are poisoned. So is the wine. Everybody dies, except Horatio and Osric.
Fortinbras: Hi, I'm back from invading Poland. WTF? Why is everyone dead?
Horatio: It's a long story.
The English Ambassadors: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, too. Remember them?
Horatio: Sorry, no one's going to thank you for that.
Fortinbras: I guess I might as well be king, since I'm the only person with royal blood left alive.
Horatio: Sigh. I guess you might as well. Hamlet would have wanted it, anyway.
The entire court: WTF?

Shakesblogging: Henry VI, Part 2

What I love about this play: Pirates! Witches! Popular rebellion! More severed heads than any other play in Shakespeare, including Titus! What’s not to love?

This is probably the cheeriest installment of the first tetralogy, although that isn’t necessarily saying much; Shakespeare’s first cycle of history plays is a story about a world spiraling farther and farther into chaos, and conflicts that are growing more and more insular. The international war of Part 1 has been replaced by feuding factions of English nobles; later, the focus will narrow to a single family torn apart by treason and violence; and finally, at the very end of Richard III, to Richard’s inward war with himself. The bitterest moments are in the future, though; there’s trouble enough in Part 2, but there’s also time, as yet, for the carnival mood of the Jack Cade scenes, and a few moments of slapstick as Gloucester exposes the con man Simpcox, and the combat between Peter and Horner, in which there is lots of drinking and a victorious underdog. (This is also the one installment of the first tetralogy in which the commoners play a major role; like Shakespeare’s later histories, it feels like it’s about England instead of about the nobility.)

And then there’s Suffolk and the pirates! This is the first appearance in Shakespeare of the Plot Device Pirates – that convenient band of buccaneers that shows up whenever the playwright has written himself into a corner. (See also Hamlet and Pericles.) Poor Suffolk just can’t get over the fact that he’s about to “die by vile bezonians,” although in fact the pirates are surprisingly erudite, and socially conscious enough to blame the ambitious nobleman for most of the kingdom’s ills.

Favorite memory: Seeing this live in Stratford, Ontario. They did all three parts (condensed into two plays, but I’m counting it as three on my life list). What I remember most about that production are the Cade scenes – all that riot and energy, and rebels tossing loaves of bread at each other, and you get that the rebellion is a holiday for people who haven’t had many chances at liberty in their lives.

more about pirates and Shakespeare

Avast, me hearties! This be Talk Like A Pirate Day!

As longtime readers of this blog will recall, there is a growing body of evidence that Shakespeare was a pirate. I propose to add to that body of evidence. But first, a joke:

Q: What has eight ARRRRms, eight legs, and eight eyes?

A: Eight pirates!

Now, consider this recent scholarly discovery. (You can tell that it is scholarly because it involves time-traveling chickens.) Guess who also had eight ARRRRms, hmm?

I rest my case.

post o' random opinions

1) Two-hour freshman comp classes are the worst idea ever. I completely suck at teaching them, but even if I didn't, they would still be a lousy idea. I don't think I have an attention span that long, at least not for freshman comp.

2) Phone interviews after four hours of teaching two-hour freshman comp classes are also a bad idea. And I really wanted that job, too. :(

3) It is April. There should be leaves on the trees already. I COMMAND YOU TO LEAF, DAMMIT.

4) Going to see a Shakespeare play with your students = awesome. Traveling six hours to see a Shakespeare play and assorted other Big City Things with your students = completely exhausting. Grading papers while away for the weekend with your students = SO not happening.

5) It is a really, really good thing that I can teach Henry V from memory. It is also good that I have lots of beer in the house. I think I may start drinking before class by the end of this week. I wish you could get Duck-Rabbit beer in this part of the country, because that would be completely appropriate.

6) If you type "appropirate" by mistake, you have probably already had too much to drink. And an unhealthy fixation on pirates in Renaissance drama.

7) If a student refers to a character named "Mistress Dollhouse" in the proposal for the final Shakespeare paper, or proposes to compare Shakespeare to soap operas, this cannot end well.

wherein I avoid writing my conference paper

A Mathematical Formula, by which the Awesomeness of a piece of Renaissance Literature may be Calculated:

1) Count up the total number of times the following elements appear: cross-dressing, pirates, unusual ways to poison people, bed-tricks, invisibility, sexually ambiguous kings, space travel, unexpected appearances from Roman gods, ghosts, zombies, cannibalism, Robin Hood.

2) Multiply the resulting number by 1 + the number of severed body parts appearing in the work. Severed heads count double if they talk.

3) Add five points if there is a hippogryph. Hippogryphs are inherently awesome. Other fantastic beasts may be worth a point or two, but not if they are named Error.

4) Add two points for every character who sings a totally inappropriate song; e.g., if four men going to the gallows decide to treat the audience to a rousing rendition of "Three Merry Men Be We," you would then add eight points.

Hamlet, for example, has pirates, two appearances of a ghost, and three really weird ways to poison people; it would score 6 + 2 x (however many of Ophelia's songs you deem totally inappropriate). Orlando Furioso would score off the charts, as it rightly should.

Maybe I should just go to this conference, say "Cross-dressing! Pirates! Double bed-trick!" and then sit down.

in which I am a Corrupter of Youth

Today's five-minute in-class writing question: What do you imagine happens after the end of Othello?

Overheard after class:

"We should write Othello II."

"With a cyborg and a robot."

"And a pirate!"

"Yeah, Iago's a pirate, Othello's a robot."

"It could be a sitcom."

(I resisted the urge to tell them about Antonio's Revenge.)

September 19th

Ahem. :: clears throat ::

Pool! Sir Pool! lord!
Ay, kennel, puddle, sink; whose filth and dirt
Troubles the silver spring where England drinks.
Now will I dam up this thy yawning mouth
For swallowing the treasure of the realm:
Thy lips that kiss'd the queen shall sweep the ground;
And thou that smiledst at good Duke Humphrey's death,
Against the senseless winds shalt grin in vain,
Who in contempt shall hiss at thee again:
And wedded be thou to the hags of hell,
For daring to affy a mighty lord
Unto the daughter of a worthless king,
Having neither subject, wealth, nor diadem.
By devilish policy art thou grown great,
And, like ambitious Sylla, overgorged
With gobbets of thy mother's bleeding heart.
By thee Anjou and Maine were sold to France,
The false revolting Normans thorough thee
Disdain to call us lord, and Picardy
Hath slain their governors, surprised our forts,
And sent the ragged soldiers wounded home.
The princely Warwick, and the Nevils all,
Whose dreadful swords were never drawn in vain,
As hating thee, are rising up in arms:
And now the house of York, thrust from the crown
By shameful murder of a guiltless king
And lofty proud encroaching tyranny,
Burns with revenging fire; whose hopeful colours
Advance our half-faced sun, striving to shine,
Under the which is writ 'Invitis nubibus.'
The commons here in Kent are up in arms:
And, to conclude, reproach and beggary
Is crept into the palace of our king.
And all by thee. Away! convey him hence.

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day, y'all!

Shakespearrrr!

As a result of this discussion, I have been wondering whether it is in fact possible to construct a plausible theory that Shakespeare was a pirate. I think it is.

Disclaimer: What follows is an exercise in intentional biographical fallacy, and the only claim I make for the merit of this theory is that it is not, in fact, any sillier than some of the stuff I've seen seriously argued about Shakespeare. In other words, kids, rip this off for your term paper at your own peril.

1) What was Shakespeare doing between 1585 and 1592? This is a mysterious gap in what is, otherwise, a remarkably well-documented life. The natural conclusion is that he was out of England, or doing something illegal that he didn't want people to know about, or both.

2) Shakespeare clearly knows a lot about the sea and sailing. This is evident not only in the naturalistic dialogue in The Tempest, where you'd pretty much expect to see it, but in any number of incidental but surprisingly vivid references. Consider, for example, this passage from 2 Henry IV:

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them
With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?

What has the ship-boy on the high and giddy mast got to do with Henry IV? Well, not so much, really -- certainly not enough to warrant a digression this long. Clearly, this passage is the work of a poet so fascinated by the sea that he just can't keep it out of his writing, one who has evidently spent some time at sea and observed such a scene.

3) Even so, why does this make Shakespeare a PIRATE? Well, consider what he has to say about pirates. Searching the Shakespeare Concordance turns up about fifteen scenes with the word "pirate" or "pirates." Many of these references are brief. Some are not very complimentary: Shylock, for example, refers to "land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves, I mean pirates," and Lucio in Measure for Measure mentions "the sanctimonious pirate, that went to sea with the Ten Commandments, but scraped one out of the table." But consider the source: Shylock is a villain, and Lucio is full of shit.

Looking closely at what pirates actually do in Shakespeare gives us quite a different picture. Antonio in Twelfth Night gets accused of being a pirate, but he's really a nice, generous guy. Hamlet talks about being rescued by pirates, who, he says, "have dealt with me like thieves of mercy." Likewise, the pirates in Pericles rescue Marina ... well, OK, then they sell her into white slavery, but that's better than killing her, like all the fine upstanding citizens in the play want to do. Finally, there's good old Walter Whitmore and his captain in 2 Henry VI. These guys are learned ("And, like ambitious Sylla, overgorged / With gobbets of thy mother's bleeding heart"), honorable ("Never yet did base dishonour blur our name, / But with our sword we wiped away the blot; / Therefore, when merchant-like I sell revenge, / Broke be my sword, my arms torn and defaced, / And I proclaim'd a coward through the world!"), and even eloquent. Moreover, they perform the inestimable public service of ridding the world of the Duke of Suffolk, and make it clear that they are doing so for the good of the kingdom ("Now will I dam up this thy yawning mouth / For swallowing the treasure of the realm"). Shakespeare's plays, in short, are the work of a man who had considerable sympathy for pirates, and who takes pains to depict them as something other than bloodthirsty thieves. Indeed, we might almost imagine that he had a compulsion to rehabilitate pirates in the eyes of the world, because why the hell else would there be completely random pirates in Hamlet?

4) Check out the portrait. I rest my case.