God be thanked one hundred thousand times, this Hamlet is not cut up and sliced down to a caricature. It is worth its nearly four hours and we can finally enjoy all the levels of that play. And first of all its wit. Numerous scenes, even the most dramatic, are adorned with gems of wit and jest, humor and fun. No subject is exempt and even death becomes a joke. At times a nostalgic joke, a joke nostalgic of a joke and a jester, like with the skull of Yorick.
This production of Hamlet sets an important emphasis on the use of folly, craziness, derangement to create the very tragic plot. We never know whether Hamlet, or Ophelia, or even Laertes are really mad or if they are playing mad. The play is very careful to play on both aspects and possibilities and to make the divide between the two nearly impossible to capture.
This production uses very well the potential of the play to make it a real event that can take the dimension of real life. The play in the play is a long episode in which the spectators are playing and the actors are watching and vice versa. Real life becomes the play and the play becomes the mirror of real life. It is so intricate that we wonder if Hamlet is not finding some balance in that juggling game. The play proves he did not find any balance but one supplementary reason to pursue his foolishness.
The main core of the play is of course emphasized by the presence of the full dress and adornments of the drama. The king appears all the more guilty when all the details are given, including his own doubts about what he has done, because he doubts he has been able to do it. That brings behind the play a force that is at work in human life all the time: the desire to conquer new territories, if possible from someone close to you. Man is a conqueror, a thief, a bandit, a highwayman, and especially against his own relatives, parents, ascendants and descendants. It is not so much a fight for power but a fight for control. It is not the survival instinct that is at work here but the instinct of possession that can only come with the dispossession of others who end up possessed by the devil of vengeance and the angel of insanity.
But the play emphasizes tremendously the nearly all male distribution. Only two female characters: the mother and queen who is the willing/unwilling accomplice of a crime, knows it and enjoys it because it keeps her on the throne. She is called all kinds of abusive names that she deserves from beginning to end. Ophelia is the second woman and she is both the center of the play but nothing but a prop used when necessary. The target of insults and verbal aggression from Hamlet. The illustration of female derangement finding its voice in the language of flowers. The dead suicidee in a tomb causing the anger of the clergy, the craze of her brother Laertes and the violent intervention of Hamlet. It is a play that rejects women as being at best the profiteers of what men are doing, and at worst their victims.
But this brings a whole different line of questioning. In that all-male universe what can happen? An all-male universe is a pot full of spiders and they have to kill one another to the last, and there is no survivor in the pot that will be taken over by a spider coming from outside when all the killing is done. Shakespeare adds to that the fact that this chaotic spider war is always started by some gross irregular action of one of these men to conquer the territory he does not control. The disruptive act here is double: the killing of a king by his own brother and the marrying of the widowed queen by this aforesaid brother. The first consequence is that the proper heir is rejected into some kind of death sooner or later to clear the way to the new usurping king.
The last characteristic is that the play is always bringing together men, friends and more friends and among all these friends there are some real friends and the play is quite careful not to introduce any ambiguity on that subject. The only real embrace between Hamlet and Horatio is when Hamlet is dying in Horatio's arms. This production is careful to disarm some of the wit that could be ambiguous with a wink or a small detail or inflection. Even the two traitors known as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are inseparable and are like direct gambling and night time pleasure revelers for Hamlet himself, those two with their obvious Jewish names, predestined names, one to be a death garland and the other nothing but a surface of gold to hide the rest, even them are nicely over-painted as cruel and uncaring people who are ready to take anyone, even their professed friends to the scaffold.
But, one more time, all this could not be if the play were reduced by one third as is the case in mot production. Our modern audiences are supposed to be in a hurry and they do not have four hours to spend for only one play, two maybe but not one.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
This production of Hamlet sets an important emphasis on the use of folly, craziness, derangement to create the very tragic plot. We never know whether Hamlet, or Ophelia, or even Laertes are really mad or if they are playing mad. The play is very careful to play on both aspects and possibilities and to make the divide between the two nearly impossible to capture.
This production uses very well the potential of the play to make it a real event that can take the dimension of real life. The play in the play is a long episode in which the spectators are playing and the actors are watching and vice versa. Real life becomes the play and the play becomes the mirror of real life. It is so intricate that we wonder if Hamlet is not finding some balance in that juggling game. The play proves he did not find any balance but one supplementary reason to pursue his foolishness.
The main core of the play is of course emphasized by the presence of the full dress and adornments of the drama. The king appears all the more guilty when all the details are given, including his own doubts about what he has done, because he doubts he has been able to do it. That brings behind the play a force that is at work in human life all the time: the desire to conquer new territories, if possible from someone close to you. Man is a conqueror, a thief, a bandit, a highwayman, and especially against his own relatives, parents, ascendants and descendants. It is not so much a fight for power but a fight for control. It is not the survival instinct that is at work here but the instinct of possession that can only come with the dispossession of others who end up possessed by the devil of vengeance and the angel of insanity.
But the play emphasizes tremendously the nearly all male distribution. Only two female characters: the mother and queen who is the willing/unwilling accomplice of a crime, knows it and enjoys it because it keeps her on the throne. She is called all kinds of abusive names that she deserves from beginning to end. Ophelia is the second woman and she is both the center of the play but nothing but a prop used when necessary. The target of insults and verbal aggression from Hamlet. The illustration of female derangement finding its voice in the language of flowers. The dead suicidee in a tomb causing the anger of the clergy, the craze of her brother Laertes and the violent intervention of Hamlet. It is a play that rejects women as being at best the profiteers of what men are doing, and at worst their victims.
But this brings a whole different line of questioning. In that all-male universe what can happen? An all-male universe is a pot full of spiders and they have to kill one another to the last, and there is no survivor in the pot that will be taken over by a spider coming from outside when all the killing is done. Shakespeare adds to that the fact that this chaotic spider war is always started by some gross irregular action of one of these men to conquer the territory he does not control. The disruptive act here is double: the killing of a king by his own brother and the marrying of the widowed queen by this aforesaid brother. The first consequence is that the proper heir is rejected into some kind of death sooner or later to clear the way to the new usurping king.
The last characteristic is that the play is always bringing together men, friends and more friends and among all these friends there are some real friends and the play is quite careful not to introduce any ambiguity on that subject. The only real embrace between Hamlet and Horatio is when Hamlet is dying in Horatio's arms. This production is careful to disarm some of the wit that could be ambiguous with a wink or a small detail or inflection. Even the two traitors known as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are inseparable and are like direct gambling and night time pleasure revelers for Hamlet himself, those two with their obvious Jewish names, predestined names, one to be a death garland and the other nothing but a surface of gold to hide the rest, even them are nicely over-painted as cruel and uncaring people who are ready to take anyone, even their professed friends to the scaffold.
But, one more time, all this could not be if the play were reduced by one third as is the case in mot production. Our modern audiences are supposed to be in a hurry and they do not have four hours to spend for only one play, two maybe but not one.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID