Hamlet: Selected Key Passages Jenkins Arden Shakespeare
Enfolded Hamlet, through line numbers First Soliloquy (Too Solid Flesh). I. ii. 129-159 -- 312-345
312 Flourish, exeunt all but Hamlet
313 Ham O that this too too solid[1] flesh would melt, 314 Thaw and resolve itself into a dew, 315 Or that the Everlasting had not fixed 316 His canon 'gainst self-slaughter.[2] O God, God! 317 How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable 318 Seem to me all the uses of this world. 319 Fie on't, ah fie, 'tis an unweeded garden 320 That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature 321 Possess it merely.[3] That it should come to this! 322 But two months dead, nay not so much, not two -- 323 So excellent a king, that was to this 324 Hyperion to a satyr,[4] so loving to my mother 325 That he might not beteem[5] the winds of heaven 326 Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth, 327 Must I remember! Why she would hang on him 328 As if increase of appetite had grown 329 By what it fed on -- and yet within a month[6] -- 330 Let me not think on it. Frailty, thy name is woman! 331 A little month -- or ere those shoes[7] were old 332 With which she followed my poor father's body 333 Like Niobe,[8] all tears, why she, even she -- 334 O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason 335 Would have mourned longer -- married with my uncle, 336 My father's brother, but no more like my father 337 Than I to Hercules. Within a month -- 338 Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears 339 Had left the flushing of her galled[9] eyes --, 340 She married. O most wicked speed; to post[10] 341 With such dexterity to incestuous[11] sheets! 342 It is not, nor it cannot come to good -- 343 But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue. [1] The First Folio says solid, the 1st and 2nd Quartos say sallied, and follow-the-leader in academia says sullied. DH Lawrence has some choice words on Hamlet's flesh. [2] His dogma against suicide. [3] Coarse, ugly plants have taken it over entirely. Eden corrupted. [4] the sun god compared to a goaty semi-human beast [5] permit [6] As Hamlet's anguish grows over the course of the speech, the interval between his father's death and his mother's marriage contracts from two months, to less than two months, to a little month. His grief leads to hyperbole and distortion. Whether this puts the audience on his side or makes it distrust him depends on how it's played. [7] Or ere means "even before" her mourning shoes were old, she had remarried. And shoes? Shoes can stand for the whole condition of someone, as "I wouldn't want to be in his shoes." [8] bereaved, perpetually weeping mother of fourteen sons and daughters slain by Apollo [9] red, sore, swollen [10] ride rapidly horseback, as a courier [11] ". . .our sometime sister. . . ." TLN 186 [12] Perfect timing: the entrance of the three witnesses to the Ghost's appearance. This coincidence lends the action a sense of destiny: It is fated, it is written. (In the whole play the Ghost is never visible to any but these three, and Hamlet.) ENDNOTES Act 1, Scene 2 It's hard to play this right -- but there are many ways to get it wrong: It's quite possible to hate Hamlet. His lines as written can make him seem like a whiny little boy (cf Kevin Kline). If he's too bitter and bombastic (Mel Gibson) or unfair (Branagh), he alienates the audience and sides them with Claudius. How to be princely without arrogance, how to be heroic without silliness? But Shakespeare has written into the character Hamlet sufficient intelligence, insight, irony -- and heart -- to make this a very interior performance. The characterization is so multilayered that an actor of genius can shape this soliloquy from the inside and make it work (Burton, Hawke, Olivier). And as Jude Law points out, the play also shapes the actor. 313-330 Hamlet is sick of his life and wishes he could evaporate, wishes suicide were not a sin. Eden is no paradise now but a garden of filthy weeds. And why? His mother's hasty marriage, less than two month after King Hamlet's death. In Olivier's film, this soliloquy -- first of the seven that Shakespeare gives Hamlet -- is shot with his face in tight close up, the speech in voice-over, with an occasional spoken outburst -- nay not so much, not two! Very effective. Sometimes Hamlet talks inside his own head, sometimes he exclaims out loud. Frailty, thy name is woman! And sometimes he just mutters. Richard Burton (directed by one of the great Hamlets, John Gielgud) makes his character desperate, fascinating. Mel Gibson borrows well from his predecessors without seeming derivative. Ethan Hawke makes his character vulnerable but strong, an astonishing Hamlet. And Kevin Kline's Hamlet is so weepy that you have trouble seeing him as royal. 331-343 In Tudor times, weeks might elapse between a sovereign's death and the state funeral -- and quite sometime later, the coronation. The procession in which Gertrude followed King Hamlet's body, was it to the lying in state, was it to the interment, or was it to the funeral? Were they all part of one ceremony happening over a shorter time -- or were they parts of an extended state function and separated from each other by lesser or greater amounts of time? Or did Hamlet perhaps get details of these events second-hand after his return, and if so, from whom? This unclarity is what Harold Bloom calls the "wonderful carelessness" of Shakespeare's timing. When did Hamlet arrive at Elsinore? Clearly, he came back after his father's death -- but was he actually present at the interment in the marble selpucher he speaks of (TLN 635-6) or visit it later? And we know the wedding came after the state funeral because of Hamlet's joke about leftovers. But how long could it have taken for the news of the king's death to travel from Denmark to Wittenberg (less than 400 miles, as the crow flies) -- and even if Polonius engineered a delay, how could Hamlet's return take such time as to allow Claudius to court and marry Gertrude? Given Hamlet's behavior when we first meet him, it's hard to imagine that events so important as the courtship, Polonius's lobbying the nobility in Claudius's behalf, and the betrothal all could have happened unprotested right under his nose. It doesn't feel like Hamlet was at the wedding. He doesn't mention it so he may have arrived in Elsinore after much of this was fait accompli -- but how much? Note on the text: The primary source here is the Enfolded Hamlet of Bernice W. Kliman, ©1996, a conflation of the 1604/05 Second Quarto and the First Folio of 1623. (at www.leoyan.com/global-language.com/ENFOLDED/) Through Line Numbers (TLNs) are based on the Folio. Depending on what readings seem most sensible and accessible to the modern ear, textual choices have been made on a line-by-line, within-line, and word-by-word basis from the melded version. The First Quarto of 1603 has been consulted where possible in an attempt to resolve conflicts in meaning between the Folio and Second Quarto. Spelling is updated to US English, and each line has been repunctuated in accordance with my understanding of the text. -- J Groves | 313 Ham. O that this too too {sallied} <solid> flesh would melt, {but Hamlet}
314 Thaw and resolue it selfe into a dewe, 315 Or that the euerlasting had not fixt 316 His cannon gainst {seale} <Selfe->slaughter, ô God, <O> God, 317 How {wary} <weary>, stale, flat, and vnprofitable 318 {Seeme} <Seemes> to me all the vses of this world? 319 Fie on't, {ah fie,} <Oh fie, fie,> tis an vnweeded garden 320 That growes to seede, things rancke and grose in nature, 321 Possesse it {meerely that} <meerely. That> it should come {thus} <to this:> 322 {C1v} But two months dead, nay not so much, not two, 323 So excellent a King, that was to this 324 Hiperion to a satire, so louing to my mother, 325 That he might not {beteeme} <beteene> the winds of heauen 326 Visite her face too roughly, heauen and earth 327 Must I remember, why she {should} <would> hang on him 328 As if increase of appetite had growne 329 By what it fed on, and yet within a month, 330 Let me not thinke on't; frailty thy name is woman 331 A little month or ere those shooes were old 332 With which she followed my poore fathers bodie 333 Like Niobe all teares, why she <euen she.> 334 O {God,} <Heauen!> a beast that wants discourse of reason 335 Would haue mourn'd longer, married with {my} <mine> Vncle, 336 My fathers brother, but no more like my father 337 Then I to Hercules, within a {month,} <Moneth?> 338 Ere yet the salt of most vnrighteous teares, 339 Had left the flushing {in} <of> her gauled eyes 340 She married, ô most wicked speede; to post 341 With such dexteritie to incestious sheets, 342 It is not, nor it cannot come to good, 343 But breake my hart, for I must hold my tongue. The King Often Claudius is played as a drunkard, but it is a mistake to overdo this. He is good with words, persuasive, charming, holding forth in the elevated register of courtly discourse. How Claudius manages people is clear in his handling of Polonius and Laertes. We don't have to squint to see how Claudius works his statecraft. (Branagh's film renders this beautifully as an occasion like the opening of parliament.) Claudius deftly outflanks young Fortinbras, the immediate threat to Denmark, and Norway's heir apparent, and then handily contains Hamlet. Claudius has rationalized their hasty marriage as a necessity of impending war, a patriotic act, a necessary show of unity upon the sudden death of his brother. And he has made the whole court of Denmark party to the transfer of power. He has leapt over young Hamlet in the succession by means of the "better wisdoms" of the Court and by his marriage to Queen Gertrude. The Queen The hasty marriage -- it is probably this, more than anything else, that inclines to the idea of at least emotional adultery between Claudius and Gertrude before the king's death. There is no textual evidence of actual adultery anywhere in the play. If anyone would know for sure, the king's spirit (if it is his ghost) would know, but that is not one of the accusations it makes ("adulterate" means filthy, not adulterous). Perhaps the queen was love-starved from waiting for her warrior husband to come in from the orchard or home from the wars. Gertrude is often played as dim and disloyal. In many productions there is the implication that she committed adultery with Claudius and was an accessory to the late king's murder. But the text is clear in more than one place that -- besotted as she now is with Claudius -- she is innocent of gross wrongs against her late husband in his lifetime. She has a knack for her consort role, smoothing things over, putting the best face on Hamlet's petulance, excusing it all as grief. But it's not just show, she genuinely aches for her son and tries to persuade him that . . .all that lives must die/ Passing through nature to eternity. This is no shallow woman -- but she is baffled by Hamlet's scorn.The State The play is set in medieval times when both Denmark and Norway were electorates, and the court and nobility "elected" a ruler by a consensus-based process not unlike acclamation. While kingly succession was loosely based on primogeniture, there were important exceptions, as when the heir apparent was too young or otherwise unavailable -- or when a surviving queen married laterally within the royalty. History records that Emma, widow of Ethelred II, married Canute, who became King of England in 1016. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark (TLN 678) -- and, indeed, had been in England until around the time of Shakespeare's birth. Elizabeth Tudor -- as biographers (recently David Starkey) are coming to appreciate -- was not only devout but also a brilliant practical theologian, benefiting greatly from her religious training in the Protestant court of her affectionate stepmother, Queen Catherine Parr (Henry VIII's 6th wife). The reign of her predecessor, her half sister, Mary, had reversed Henry's and Edward's move away from Rome and re-established Catholicism with a vengeance (and scores of "heretics" were burnt at the stake). But Queen Elizabeth prevented religious war in England with a brilliant strategy that was in the main her own creation: She retained many of the rituals of the Church of Rome, to the dismay of the puritans. She allowed freedom of conscience within the limits permitted by the active -- and often treasonous -- Counter-Reformation in her realm. And she removed from the Book of Common Prayer those passages that had been most offensive to Catholics. Someone once characterized her religious policy generally as, "Believe what you want -- but use this book!" For Shakespeare's audience, Royal England in the 16th century was about the legitimacy of the crown. The summit of the Tudor succession was the long and peaceable reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603). Because of the lack of male heirs that had plagued the Tudors, the succession was clouded and problematic, and some inconvenient pretenders were beheaded. Elizabethans would know all about Lady Jane Grey and Mary Stuart, Queen of the Scots -- not as legends but as part of the daily consciousness of her subjects. Ironically, early performances of Hamlet just missed another "public entertainment" -- the execution of the Earl of Essex in 1601. But events like these may have enhanced the play's popularity and accelerated publication of the Quarto of 1603, which appears to have been pirated and rushed into print. (The First Quarto, also called the "Bad Quarto," is not bad at all, and it's helpful historically and as a guide for productions.) Elizabeth Tudor was among most intelligent and educated people of her time. She was one of the most capable rulers that England ever had. She was brilliant and immensely popular. Her choice of advisors was almost flawless. She had prevented religious war with her fusion of Catholicism and Protestantism into the Church of England -- and stabilized it by the example of her own personal religious tolerance. She (with Gresham and William Cecil) had purified the coinage of its brass (it had been repeatedly diluted by her father and brother), stabilized the economy, and brought her realm into unrivalled prosperity. Her thrift and dislike of bloodshed (and, fortuitously, her besetting flaw of procrastination) had preserved the country from the fate of the rest of Europe: continual civil and religious wars. But when Elizabeth did go to war, against the Armada, she crushed Spain and became the most respected prince in Europe. (She often referred to herself as "prince.") |