Here’s a thought that came to me over the weekend. What if the “ghost of Hamlet’s father” really was an evil spirit that was just trying to cause trouble? What if Claudius didn’t really kill Hamlet’s father? How would the play change?
Other than Claudius’ actual words (“a brother’s murder”), how much evidence is there that he admits to his crime? If we snipped that bit out could he just as easily be dealing with guilt over the “crime” of marrying his brother’s wife?
More importantly, what does this do to the character of Hamlet? We go through the entire play assuming that Hamlet is doing the right thing, and Claudius is the bad guy. What if it was reversed? What if we really didn’t know? Or, even better, what if we knew (somehow) that Claudius was innocent, and that Hamlet spends the play chasing the wrong guy?
So you’re putting together the Motion Picture Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony, and you need a big name to host. Why not geek cultural icon, Professor Xavier and Jean Luc Picard himself, Sir Patrick Stewart? A match made in heaven. Sir Patrick, who seems to always be in the mood for such sport, is game for the event.
And what does he do? He brings the Shakespeare.
I love it. It’s a small thing (he ad-libs Puck’s “If we shadows have offended…”) that many people probably saw as a throwaway line. But we know better. We know that over four hundred years ago, before CGI and special effects were a thing, Shakespeare was in the business of putting dreams on stage.
So, I’ve got the chance on Amazon Merch to make hoodies. But before I just jump in and blindly start copying designs from t-shirts and then waiting 90 days of no sales before they get de-listed, I thought I’d do some market research. Let’s design the ultimate Shakespeare hoodie and I’ll see if I can’t make it!
First of all, do you wear hoodies? (I’m going to get tired of saying hoodie in this post, I’m pretty sure.) I’d definitely like to add one to my collection. Unlike t-shirts, where they’re cheap enough that I don’t mind buying half a dozen, I can’t wear t-shirts all year round. Plus I can’t really wear them to work. But a hooded sweatshirt is always something you can layer on top of regular clothes, weather and environment depending.
Do you like stuff on the front, or the back, or both? Something smaller in the front, in the typical “pocket” spot?
What kind of image do you want? A picture of Shakespeare? Which one? Stylized or classic? Some other image, something iconic like a skull, a sword, a quill?
Or would you prefer words? An actual Shakespeare quote, or something more “catch phrasey”?
I’d love to get a discussion going in the comments. What kind of Shakespeare hoodie do you wish existed?
A rehearsal room, dark. Enter JACK through the curtains, directly from outside as we see cars driving past. He rolls a single, lit incandescent lamp to center, and opens the curtains. We see folding tables on which sit copies of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. JACK picks one up and starts swearing.
Enter a younger man, STEPHEN, on the phone and holding a neck brace. He’s clearly been looking for JACK and is relieved to find him.
Thus opens Lear’s Shadow, written and directed by Brian Elerding, which I had the pleasure of watching yesterday at Mr. Elerding’s invitation.
We quickly learn that something bad has happened, though what we do not yet know. Jack is bruised, Stephen is trying to get him back into the neck brace, so those are some obvious clues. More telling, however, is that Jack – our director – seems to have no real idea where or when he is. He doesn’t know what play they’re rehearsing (hence his anger at seeing Romeo and Juliet scripts) or why no one else has shown up for rehearsal.
Stephen’s job is to keep Jack talking until Rachel (who Stephen was speaking with on the phone) can bring the car around. They reminisce about other plays they’ve done together, before landing on King Lear. Jack keeps re-realizing that the scripts are wrong, and doesn’t know the date. Stephen takes it upon himself to walk through the play with Jack.
For the next hour the two debate the finer details of Lear – what scenes and lines can be cut, how to deliver certain lines, where to “start” so you have “somewhere to go”. If you love being a fly on the wall during conversations like this (as I do) you’re going to greatly enjoy this. I do not fancy myself an actor, never have, so I like to watch them work at their craft without trying to put myself in their place.
Of course none of this is random, we’ve got a man who has lost his memory and has clearly had some tragedy befall him doing what amounts to a one man show about a man who has lost his memory upon which many tragedies fall. It’s a reminder that while King Lear may have been written five hundred years ago it could also have happened yesterday.
Though I’m watching this as a movie it reminds me of going to theatre back when I was a younger man. It’s a bare stage two man show, just dialogue, no real plot to speak of other than toward the ultimate answer to the “What happened?” question (which we may or may not receive).
If you believe that Shakespeare makes life better, even when it brings tears rather than laughter, then of course you’re going to like this. It’s very reminiscent of when Slings & Arrows did Lear, a connection the director and I already spoke of. “There’s no way I wasn’t influenced by Slings & Arrows,” he wrote. That’s intended as high praise. I’m not saying “This is trying to be Slings & Arrows,” I’m saying, “I’d watch an entire season of this like I’d watch a season of Slings & Arrows.”
Maybe I should sit behind my computer 12 hours a day?
The New York Times this week has an interesting (?) story about a possible new source that Shakespeare may have consulted while writing. Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter, who of course have a book coming out, used plagiarism detection software to spot similarities between Shakespeare’s work and “A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels” by George North.
I guess my first reaction is….ok, yes? And? Perhaps that’s a bit on the defensive. You see the words “plagiarism” and “new source” and you immediately think that it’s going to be yet another authorship issue. That’s not the case here. They’re simply saying that they’ve uncovered (so they believe) another publication that Shakespeare would have used as reference material.
If it turns out to be true, examples can be found in Richard III, Henry VI 2 and King Lear, among others. Neat.
I think the authors’ case was severely undercut by the Times, however, with the inclusion of this paragraph:
Mr. McCarthy, 53, works behind three computer monitors on the dining room table of his home. Supported financially by his wife, a biotechnology executive, he spends 12 hours a day or more at his computer.
That makes him sound like a conspiracy theorist, doesn’t it? Pounding away at mysterious algorithms, looking for patterns, until they eventually uncover a world-shattering secret that will, of course, make him fabulously wealthy?
Assuming this is an accurate discovery, is it a big deal? Shakespeare already had his sources – Holinshed, Ovid, etc… – so what would change if we added a source to that list?
Here’s a thought that came to me over the weekend. What if the “ghost of Hamlet’s father” really was an evil spirit that was just trying to cause trouble? What if Claudius didn’t really kill Hamlet’s father? How would the play change?
