Criticism as Blood Sport *
Literary criticism is blood sport to Lawrence, he loves invective. But useful negative readings of Hamlet are hard to find (except TS Eliot's calling the play an artistic failure). And "The Theatre" captures the intense emotion Hamlet's narcissism stirs up, perhaps especially in people of like temperament. From the acid opening
I had always felt an aversion from Hamlet: a creeping, unclean thing he seems.... His nasty poking and sniffing at his mother, his setting traps for the King, his conceited perversion with Ophelia make him always intolerable. The character is repulsive in its conception, based on self-dislike and a spirit of disintegration. to the astonishing climax, [M]outhing Hamlet’s sincere words [in the soliloquies, modern man] has still to let go, to know what not-being is, before he can be. Till he has gone through the Christian negation of himself, and has known the Christian consummation, [modern man] is a mere amorphous heap. For the soliloquies of Hamlet are as deep as the soul of man can go, in one direction, and as sincere as the Holy Spirit itself in their essence. Lawrence is good for making you think (if you accept that he's using 'Christian' in its historical sense, not as doctrine). For him, the character Hamlet embodies all that's wrong with modern man -- but one thing that's right. These selections are excerpted somewhat argumentatively from the 1921 Theatre chapter, so read the whole essay to give Lawrence a fair shake. Below are my responses to points he raises. There is, I think, this strain of cold dislike, or self-dislike, through much of the Renaissance art, and through all the later Shakespeare. In Shakespeare it is a kind of corruption in the flesh and a conscious revolt from this. A sense of corruption in the flesh makes Hamlet frenzied, for he will never admit that it is his own flesh.... Except in the ‘great’ speeches...Hamlet suffered the extremity of physical self-loathing, loathing of his own flesh....The whole drama is the tragedy of the convulsed reaction of the mind from the flesh, of the spirit from the self.... This aperçu about Hamlet's aversion from his own flesh supports Freud's initial diagnosis of Hamlet as an hysteric (though later Freud saw him as an obsessional neurotic). If this seems paradoxical, clinicians will on reflection think of patients (eg, self-cutters and anorexics) who, just as Lawrence says, hate their own bodies, deny their own flesh yet become trapped in it. He is the modern [man], suspicious, isolated, self-nauseated, labouring in a sense of physical corruption. But he will not admit it is in himself. He creeps about in self-conceit, transforming his own self-loathing. With what satisfaction did he reveal corruption—corruption in his neighbours he gloated in—letting his mother know he had discovered her incest, her uncleanness, gloated in torturing the incestuous King. Of all the unclean ones, Hamlet was the uncleanest. But he accused only the others. His scorn is confusing because you can't tell whether he's talking about Hamlet and sometimes Shakespeare -- or modern man and sometimes Hamlet as exemplar -- or the actor playing Hamlet in the rude Italian touring-company that is the subject of these musings. But does Shakespeare (or later Shakespeare) have a cold dislike for the flesh and a bias toward the intellectual? The point is arguable for Hamlet, but what do we know about the real Shakespeare? Almost nobody doubts that, of all his characters, Hamlet is the one on whom Shakespeare bestowed more love than any other. From this, many jump to the conclusion that he endows Hamlet with a similarity to his creator, an identification. Professor Bradley pointed out that, of all the characters of Shakespeare, Hamlet is the only one with the gifts necessary to have written the plays of Shakespeare. But does this prove similarity? Certainly Lawrence is dead wrong in other particulars. | Hamlet’s father, the King, is, like Agamemnon, a warrior-king. But, unlike Agamemnon, he is blameless with regard to Gertrude. Yet Gertrude, like Clytemnestra, is the potential murderer of her husband, as Lady Macbeth is murderess, as the daughters of Lear. The women murder the supreme male, the ideal Self, the King and Father. ... The woman rejects, repudiates the ideal Self which the male represents to her. The supreme representative, King and Father, is murdered by the Wife and the Daughters. ... Hamlet goes mad in a revulsion of rage and nausea. Yet the women-murderers only represent some ultimate judgment in his own soul. Again, is this Hamlet or Shakespeare -- or Lawrence? Actually it seems more like Lawrence, since we know that Shakespeare loved women and drew his female characters better than any man before or after, whereas Lawrence's men are better characters and his women often projections of his own anxiety. It's by no means certain that King Hamlet was blameless toward Gertrude, he comes across as a controlling fish. And Lady Macbeth we can counter with Juliet, Rosalind, and Cleopatra. Besides, Lear had a third daughter. Hamlet has decided that the Self in its supremacy, Father and King, must die. It is a suicidal decision .... Yet it is inevitable. The great religious, philosophic tide, which has been swelling all through the Middle Ages, had brought him there. The question, to be or not to be, which Hamlet puts himself, does not mean, to live or not to live .... it is the supreme I, King and Father. To be or not to be King, Father, in the Self supreme? And the decision is, not to be. It is the inevitable philosophic conclusion of all the Renaissance. Lawrence's personal philosophy is somewhat idiosyncratic. He seems to be using 'Christian' in a global sense to encompass an attitude of selfless action, the spirit of self-sacrifice. What is really Absolute is the mystic Reason which connects both Infinites, the Holy Ghost that relates both natures of God. ... This Absolute of the Holy Ghost we may call Truth or Justice or Right. These are partial names, indefinite and unsatisfactory unless there be kept the knowledge of the two Infinites, pagan and Christian, which they go between. When both are there, they are like a superb bridge, on which one can stand and know the whole world. ... To be or not to be was the question for Hamlet to settle. It is no longer our question, at least, not in the same sense. When it is a question of death, the fashionable young suicide declares that his self-destruction is the final proof of his own incontrovertible being.... It is a question of knowing how to be, and how not to be, for we must fulfil both. [Modern man] has still to let go, to know what not-being is, before he can be. Till he has gone through the Christian negation of himself, and has known the Christian consummation, [modern man] is a mere amorphous heap. For the soliloquies of Hamlet are as deep as the soul of man can go, in one direction, and as sincere as the Holy Spirit itself in their essence. No one before him seems to have said it quite this way. However else Lawrence was wrong, this he got just right. -- groves.james@mgh.harvard.edu * 'The Theatre.' In Twilight in Italy, Chapter 3. New York, Thomas Seltzer 1921. Internet capture pp 1-23, 10/02/2009. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/Lawrence/dh/l41tw/index.html |