The busyness of Hamlet

NOT a tragedy of inactivity

The Shakespeare bookclub meets again on Sunday 8th September 19.00 UK time to discuss Twelfth Night and Hamlet. Schedule here.

The next Western Canon salon is about Emma by Jane Austen on September 12th. Tickets here.

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I have no idea how many times I read Hamlet as a teenager. Fifty? I helped direct a school production in which I played Rosencrantz. Later on I played Polonius. So there was a time when I knew the play inside out. Though I love to read it and to hear it, I rarely go to watch it. It inspires too much high-falutin psuedo-profound acting. All that swooning and unbearable heavy intonation. Ghastly. Haven’t they read Shakespeare’s Advice to the Players?

Because, while Hamlet’s appeal certainly does lie in the nature of its ideas (and what could be more appealing to a teenager than a play quite so dramatically stuffed with philosophical statements?), its immense popularity surely owes more to the action. It has often people said that Hamlet is a relatively inactive play. Hamlet is a ditherer, forever failing to take revenge.

But Hamlet is a grab-bag of excitement. A ghost appears on the castle battlements and tell his son the prince to avenge his bloody death. It turns out that the old king was murdered by his brother Claudius. If that’s not exciting enough, Claudius then married his sister-in-law and took the throne. Prince Hamlet is now vexed by dilemmas. He hates Claudius (the throne is won by election and he feels he was robbed). And he has pretty ambivalent notions of his mother Gertrude. Oh, and he’s a middle-aged man whose academic career has stalled. So he hates a lot of things…

He seems to have adored his father, but, it’s complicated. And so Hamlet does what a lot of men do when their father dies. He has a breakdown.