Month: June 2010

Ophelia’s Imaginary Flowers

~ duane ~ 15 Comments


I like when I have questions about a particular scene in Shakespeare, and it turns out that there is no answer. That means I didn’t miss something :).  In this case the question was, “Does Ophelia hand out real flowers corresponding to what she says, does she hand out something like sticks or other generic thing that she’s only imagining are flowers, or is she holding nothing at all?”

I posted on the question and got two answers – “I’ve seen both” and “It depends on the director.”  The second came from … ahem … Stanley Wells.  Why he’s following me on Twitter I have no idea, but it gave me a thrill.

So, let’s talk about it, since it’s not a simple answer.  I think that most folks agree that the flowers she describes are not a random assortment.  Each has a meaning, and thus a message.  If it is staged that she gives out the actual flowers, I personally think that would ruin it. She still had enough wits about her to find the flowers and then deliver them like secret messages to their targets, like some sort of fish wrapped in newspaper ala the Godfather?  I don’t think so. 

At the other end is the idea that she’s got nothing – that she’s delusional, and imagining that she’s holding the flowers. This makes far more sense. She wants to speak her mind to the queen and king, but she’s unable to do that. So she imagines herself picking these flowers and being bold enough to walk up and hand them out. She’s not, of course.  That’s the point.  Hamlet can handle it, she can’t.

Know what I just noticed? Maybe I’m stupid for never seeing this before, but …

  • Hamlet’s dad?  Dead.  Killed by someone he would have thought to be a trusted friend/family member. The person he’d naturally turn to, his girlfriend, has basically dumped him. 
  • Ophelia’s dad? Dead.  Killed by someone she would have thought to be a trusted friend/family member. The person she’d naturally turn to, her boyfriend, is essentially stolen from her given that he’s the one that killed her dad.

However:

  • Hamlet probably had no strong relationship with his uncle Claudius before this. So while it is a shock to be sure, as any murder would be, it’s not that “my whole world has been shattered by this news” order of magnitude that, say, Ophelia experiences.
  • Hamlet has at least one friend, Horatio. Ophelia has nobody.
  • Hamlet, the prince, has got the whole castle wondering what’s wrong with him and how they can fix it.  Ophelia’s own father thinks he knows everything about his daughter, and thus pays attention to nothing.

Is it really any wonder that she lost it?

He…he…he….*wrecked* it? BURN HIM!

~ duane ~ Leave a comment
We’ve done many stories about certified lunatic Raymond Scott who stole a First Folio, then waltzed back into the Folger Library and said “I found this, can you tell me if it’s authentic?”  “Why don’t you have a seat over there,” said Folger in their best Chris Matthews impression.

Well the idiot’s getting his day in court yet again, and now we learn that he actually mutilated the book in a moronic attempt to somehow disguise it:

Raymond Scott, 53, ripped the binding, boards and pages from the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio before claiming to have discovered it in Cuba, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

So much about this story makes me angry.  To steal anything is bad enough. To steal a nearly one-of-a-kind item, that much worse.  To then deface it, because you’re too stupid to realize that every smudge on every page of the book has been micro-catalogued, and changing page 1 does not mean that pages 200-300 are not exactly the same?  That’s criminal. On top of that the guy has totally make a mockery of the whole system, showing up to court in various silly costumes, usually climbing out of a horse and carriage or some other ridiculous means of transportation.

Send him to jail, fix the book as best we can, and let’s move on.

Behold The Theatre Truck!

~ duane ~ Leave a comment
Taking a cue from Elizabethan times, a troupe of actors is wandering around Cambridge, MA putting on plays anywhere they can find the space and the audience.  Only they’re wandering in a truck.

The Momentum Theatre Company are my new heroes for their Theatre Truck which does literally what I just said, they’ve built a portable “actors’ jungle gym” that reminds everybody of a Transformers robot.  And their first show?  “A very physical interpretation of The Tempest.”  Awesome.

[ Found via Facebook, courtesy Jim W.  Thanks Jim! ]

Nazi Shakespeare

~ duane ~ 8 Comments
This topic came up in our discussion of foreign languages last week, and I thought it reduced down nicely to a topic that anybody could weigh in on. Allow me to snip from Wikipedia for a moment:

Weeks after Hitler took power in 1933 an official party publication
appeared entitled Shakespeare – a Germanic Writer, a counter to
those who wanted to ban all foreign influences. At the Propaganda Ministry,
Rainer Schlosser, given charge of German theatre by Goebbels, mused
that Shakespeare was more German than English. After the outbreak of the
war the performance of Shakespeare was banned, though it was quickly
lifted by Hitler in person, a favour extended to no other.

While the Nazis were banning all “foreign influences”, Hitler himself gave Shakespeare a pass, something they did for no one else.

My question is this – how do you feel about that?  Does it say more about Shakespeare, or about the Nazis? Is it possible that there is a germ of something in Shakespeare’s work that reinforces what the Nazis believed in?  Or is the other way around, is there something so universal in Shakespeare’s work that it still managed to touch whatever shred of humanity might still be buried inside them?

I suppose there is a third option, which seems the most likely the more I think about it — that the Nazis were just very, very good at corrupting whatever they wanted to say whatever they needed.  Just because they found idea that they liked in Hamlet does not in any way suggest that Shakespeare meant for them to be there.  Or is that just hindsight, protecting our literary idol?

Thoughts?  Is it even possible to have a rational discussion about Nazis?

Off-topic : Bye-bye, Day Job.

~ duane ~ 1 Comment
Sorry for the interruption, folks.  Some of you may have seen me note on Twitter that I was laid off from my day job on Friday.

On the one hand this can be a good thing. There’s plenty of Shakespeare-related stuff that I want to do and just never have time for, so maybe in the coming days I’ll actually get to some of that.

On the other, let’s be realistic – there’s nothing I can do with this site, even under the most generous of circumstances, that would pay my mortgage and health insurance. So I need a day job.

Thus my interruption and temporary plea.  If you happen to know of anybody in the Massachusetts / New Hampshire area, your company or otherwise, hiring folks in the “software architect” space, particularly the Java/Rails flavor, please hook a geek up and send me details.  I’ve got 20 years of experience as a professional software engineer, web and otherwise, and have touched more modern technologies than I could name (it would be shorter and more accurate to just say “all of them”).  Please do not just send links to your friend-who-is-a-recruiter, I have plenty of recruiters on the case already. What I need now are the leads that are more often filled by word-of-mouth that never make it out to the agencies.

Thanks very much! 

On a related note, just because the site isn’t my main source of income doesn’t mean that your generosity goes unappreciated.  My sincere thanks to the people that have been hitting that Tip Jar button and those buying merchandise! I shall do my best to invest it all back into improving the site’s quality and adding new features.

Ok, back to Shakespeare.  Have I said thanks?  Thanks!