Men Behaving Madly Performing - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Men Behaving Madly

Performing

H

amlet’s Seven SoliloquiesSlide2

What is a soliloquy?

soliloquy, n.

Pronunciation: /

səˈlɪləkwɪ

/

Etymology: < Latin

sōliloquium

(introduced by St. Augustine), <

sōli

-,

sōlus

alone +

loqui

to speak.

1a.

An instance of talking to or conversing with oneself, or of uttering

one’s

thoughts aloud without addressing any person

.

(

Oxford English Dictionary

)Slide3

Soliloquy in Doctor Faustus

FAUSTUS.

Settle thy studies, Faustus, and

begin

To

sound the depth of that thou wilt

profess

.

[...] Is

to dispute

well logic’s

chiefest

end?

Affords

this art no greater

miracle?

Then

read no more; thou hast

attained the end

.

A

greater subject

fitteth

Faustus’ wit

.

[...]

These metaphysics of

magicians

And

necromantic books are

heavenly,

Lines

, circles,

signs,

letters, and

characters –

Ay

, these are those that Faustus most

desires.

O

, what a world of profit and

delight,

Of

power, of honour, of

omnipotence

Is promised

to the studious

artisan!

All

things that move between the quiet

poles

Shall

be at my

command. (A-text, 1.1.1-59)Slide4

Psychomachia in Doctor Faustus

Enter the Good Angel and the Evil Angel

GOOD

ANGEL.

O

Faustus, lay that damned book

aside

And

gaze not on it, lest it tempt thy

soul

And

heap

God’s

heavy wrath upon thy

head!

Read

, read the

Scriptures. That

is blasphemy.

EVIL

ANGEL.

Go forward, Faustus, in that famous

art

Wherein

all n

ature’s treasury

is

contained.

Be

thou on earth as

Jove

is in the

sky,

Lord

and commander of these

elements.

Exeunt [Angels]

FAUSTUS

.

How am I glutted with conceit of this

!

(A-text, 1.1.72-80)Slide5

Direct address in Hamlet

A disclaimer: the

text is not a coded set of instructions so much as the basis for creative

response.

T

here’s

no single “right” way to perform

it.

Peter Brook:

‘The

Deadly Theatre approaches the classics from the viewpoint that somewhere, someone has found out and defined how the play should be done

.’ (1968

: 14

)

Some critics, however, express a clear preference one way or the other…Slide6

Direct address in Hamlet

Bert O. States:

‘In

fact, the only characters in tragedy who “work” with the audience seem to be clowns and villains.

[…] It

would be unthinkable for a character like Lear or Macbeth

– or even

Hamlet, who is brother to the clown

– to peer

familiarly into the pit because there is something in the abridgement of aesthetic distance that gives the lie to tragic character and pathos. A character who addresses the audience immediately takes on some of the audience’s objectivity and superiority to the play’s world

.’ (1983: 366

)

Andrew

Gurr

:

‘…the

explanatory soliloquy or aside to the audience was a relic of the less sophisticated days which developed into a useful and more naturalistic convention of thinking aloud, but never entirely ceased to be a convention

.’ (1992: 103)Slide7

Direct address in Hamlet

Bridget

Escolme

, on the other hand,

critiques

Gurr’s

‘post-nineteenth

century assumption about theatrical progress’ (2005: 7), and points out that States’ description of an actor ‘peering’ into the pit assumes modern rather than Elizabethan theatrical conditions: ‘audience in darkness, actor with bright lights shining into his/her eyes’ (2005: 70

).

When David Warner played Hamlet for the RSC in 1965, one critic noted:

‘This

is a Hamlet desperately in need of counsel, help, experience, and he actually seeks it from the audience in his soliloquies. That is probably the greatest triumph of the production: using the Elizabethan convention with total literalness. Hamlet communes not with himself but with you. For the first time in my experience, the rhetoric spoken as it was intended to be, comes brilliantly to life

.’

(Ronald

Bryden

,

New Statesman

, 27 August 1965)Slide8

Direct address in Hamlet

David Warner as Hamlet, RSC, 1965Slide9

Direct address in Hamlet

Mary Z. Maher concludes:

‘

Generally speaking, direct-address soliloquies temper or even negate madness in a Hamlet. Direct-address soliloquies are perceived as more persuasive and objective, cooler and more rational than internalized soliloquies

–

Hamlet stepping outside the play and commenting upon it. … The converse is also generally true: an actor can move toward communicating full-blown insanity if he keeps his soliloquies inward

.’ (1992: xxvi)Slide10

Hamlet’s first lines

Hamlet’s first line is often played as

an aside, but

is not necessarily.

Hamlet

has no speeches marked ‘aside

’, in fact.

Alan C.

Dessen

points out that ‘Shakespeare apparently did not use the term as part of his working vocabulary’ (1995: 52).

First Folio, 1623Slide11

Hamlet’s first soliloquy

Actor and director Michael

Pennington

argues that in the first soliloquy, Hamlet speaks ‘with a shocking candour new to the play’ (1996: 40

).

David Warner ‘did

not use the soliloquy to bond with the

audience […];

he rather assumed their collusion and let off steam. The character established was a rebellious prince who did not respect

authority’ (

Maher 1992:

54).

First Folio, 1623Slide12

Hamlet’s second soliloquy

‘…it

was not unusual for Hamlets who chose the direct-address mode to find that one of the soliloquies was best addressed inwardly even though he performed the other six outward. There was a tendency for most of the Hamlets I interviewed to internalize the second soliloquy, “O all you host of heaven

.”’ (Maher

1992:

xv)

First Folio, 1623Slide13

Hamlet’s third soliloquy

T

he

last of

these questions,

suggests

Pennington

, ‘hangs in the air’ (1996: 75).

Pennington

argues

that Hamlet ‘must surely have got an

answer’

to some of

these questions

at the

Globe,

and ‘even in these restrained days, the responses sit at the front of our mouths’ (1996: 75

).

First Folio, 1623Slide14

Hamlet’s third soliloquy

Mark

Rylance

as Hamlet, Shakespeare’s Globe, 2000

Lars

Eidinger

as Hamlet

,

Schaubühne

Berlin, 2008Slide15

Hamlet’s fourth soliloquy

‘The

Christian inhibition against self-slaughter which Hamlet recognised in his first soliloquy has gone now, replaced by fear, and his typical strengths have deserted

him. […] There

is no personal pronoun at all in its thirty-five lines, so it is in a sense drained of Hamlet himself: although the cap fits, it also stands free of him as pure human analysis

.’

(Pennington 1996: 81)

‘Although

the content of this speech

was

very contemplative and personal, Warner never questioned that it should be given to the audience. Indeed, he felt that this soliloquy was the most direct of all of them. He saw it as sharing his dilemma with them (“after all, he’d shared everything else

!”) and

“debating gently” the very serious options

.’ (

Maher 1992:

56)

Second Quarto, 1604Slide16

Hamlet’s fourth soliloquy

Mark

Rylance

as Hamlet, Shakespeare’s Globe, 2000

Mark

Rylance

:

‘

I found if I came out speaking “to be or not to be” as if it had not been cooked before, but I was cooking it at that very moment, ingredient by ingredient … it provoked a different response from the audience. Shakespeare comes to life when we speak and move with the audience in the present, particularly with famous speeches like that one. … if you actually take it step by step, you know,

“to

be or not to be, that is the

question”;

then imagine the audience saying,

“What

do you mean, that is the question

?”

And go on,

“Whether

‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous

fortune”,

there is a sense of dialogue with the audience who are playing the role of Hamlet’s conscience at that moment.’

(

Rylance

2008: 106-7

)Slide17

Hamlet’s fourth soliloquy

The writer of the ‘bad’ quarto misplaced this soliloquy,

putting both

it, and

the subsequent scene with

Ophelia,

before

the arrival of the players and Hamlet’s decision to use them to ‘catch the conscience of the King

’.

Modern productions (including recent ones by the RSC and the Young Vic) have copied this placing of the speech.

First (‘Bad’) Quarto, 1603Slide18

Hamlet’s fourth soliloquy

The speech is evidently detachable:

Laurence Olivier’s film (1948)

puts it

after

the nunnery scene (itself repositioned

into

the Q1

spot);

Peter Brook’s production (2001) placed it after

Hamlet’s murder of Polonius and subsequent banishment to

England,

making it

Hamlet’s

last soliloquy (sliding in ‘From this time

forth / My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth’

at the end

);

Sarah

Frankcom’s

(2014) did something similar;

Dreamthinkspeak’s

The Rest is Silence

(2012) allowed every single character to deliver the speech!

Charles Lamb, ‘On the Tragedies of William Shakespeare’,

1811:

‘I

confess myself utterly unable to appreciate that celebrated soliloquy in

Hamlet

, beginning “To be or not to be”, or to tell whether it be good, bad, or indifferent, it has been so handled and pawed about by declamatory boys and men, and torn so inhumanly from its living place and principle of continuity in the play, till it is become to me a perfect dead member

.’Slide19

Hamlet’s fifth soliloquy

John Gielgud

described the

fifth

soliloquy (which his production cut) as

‘difficult

to deliver and unrewarding to

play’ (

Maher 1992:

12).

Pennington notes a tendency for Hamlets ‘to

move into this new purposeful phase by making some identification with the Players

– wearing a

multi-coloured Player’s cloak (me), the Player King’s crown (

Dillane

), a Player’s mask (Ralph Fiennes).

[…] face

to face finally with ‘proof and therefore the need for action, Hamlet retreats, making himself an actor whose deeds are only

gestures’ (1996

: 92

).

First Folio, 1623Slide20

Hamlet’s sixth soliloquy

First Folio, 1623

Second Quarto, 1604Slide21

Hamlet’s sixth soliloquy

As

Lars

Eidinger’s

Hamlet debated killing Claudius, pre-filmed footage of an audience applauding played behind him. When I saw the production at London’s Barbican theatre in 2011, Hamlet’s speech descended into a torrent of action-movie clichés (‘You killed my father, you’re fucking my mother, and that’s why you’re going to die!’), before

Eidinger

broke off and asked the audience, ‘Is this what you want to see?’.

Lars

Eidinger

as Hamlet

,

Schaubühne

Berlin, 2008Slide22

Hamlet’s seventh soliloquy

This soliloquy appears only in the 1604 Second Quarto.

It gives Hamlet a very different ‘arc’…

CAPTAIN

.

Truly to speak, and with no

addition,

We

go to gain a little patch of

ground

That

hath in it no profit but the name

.

(4.4.8-10)

Second Quarto, 1604Slide23

Hamlet’s seventh soliloquy

‘Gielgud

viewed “How all occasions” as a “very important soliloquy” that showed Hamlet’s state of mind as “clear, noble, and resolved” before he went to England, with a “clear understanding of his destiny and desire.” Here was an assertion of the Victorian notion of the noble prince who valued

honour

above “the death of twenty thousand men.” After World War II and Vietnam, it would become less and less popular to find inspiration in

Fortinbras

, and, in fact, his portrayal on the stage would become more and more brutal and dictatorial

.’ (

Maher 1992:

14)Slide24

Hamlet’s seventh soliloquy

Escolme

describes the change in the character/spectator relationship following Hamlet’s last soliloquy:

‘As

a clown’s skull is replaced in its grave, as Ophelia is newly laid in hers, it seems we must also say goodbye to the complex theatrical subjectivity of Hamlet, as he slips back into a simpler moral frame where there can be no questioning of man’s inevitable fate

.’

In Mark

Rylance’s

performance at the Globe, this shift was, suggests

Escolme

, nothing less than a ‘bereavement of the spectator’ (2005: 73).Slide25

Hamlet’s seventh soliloquy

Bertolt

Brecht described Hamlet’s final

soliloquy as

‘the

turning

point’ at which ‘he

succumbs to

Fortinbras

’ drums of

war’ (1948: 101).

‘After

at first being reluctant to answer one bloody deed by another, and even preparing to go into exile, he meets young

Fortinbras

at the coast as he is marching with his troops to Poland. Overcome by this warrior-like example, he turns back and in a piece of barbaric butchery slaughters his uncle, his mother and himself, leaving Denmark to the Norwegian. These events show the young man… making the most ineffective use of the new approach to Reason which he has picked up at the University of Wittenberg

.’ (1948: 100-1

)Slide26

Hamlet’s seventh soliloquy

Arnold

Kettle puts the same idea more subtly:

‘Hamlet

is not merely a Renaissance prince. Along with Marlowe’s Faustus he is the first modern intellectual in our literature and he is, of course, far more modern as well as much more intelligent than Faustus. And his dilemma is essentially the dilemma of the modern European intellectual: his ideas and values are in a deep way at odds with his

actions. […]

Hamlet

, the prince who has tried to become a man, becomes a prince again and does what a sixteenth-century prince ought to do

– killing

the murderer of his father, forgiving the stupid, clean-limbed Laertes, expressing (for the first time) direct concern about his own claims to the throne but giving his dying voice to young

Fortinbras

… The end then, is, in one sense, almost total defeat for everything Hamlet has stood for. But it is an acceptance of the need to act in the real world, and that is a great human triumph

.’

(

245-6

)Slide27

References

Brecht, B. (1948) ‘A Short

Organum

for the Theatre’ in Cole, T. [ed.] (2001)

Playwrights on Playwriting: from Ibsen to Ionesco,

New York: Cooper Square Press, 72-105.

Brook, P. (1968)

The Empty Space

, London: Penguin.

Dessen

, A. C. (1995)

Recovering Shakespeare’s Theatrical Vocabulary

, Cambridge: C. U. P.

Escolme

, B. (2005)

Talking to the Audience: Shakespeare, Performance, Self

, London & New York: Routledge.

Gurr

, A. (1992)

The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642: Third Edition

, Cambridge:

C. U. P.Slide28

References

Kettle, A. (1964) ‘Hamlet in a Changing World’, in Hoy, C. [ed.] (1992)

Hamlet: A Norton Critical Edition

,

2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 237-46.

Maher, M. Z. (1992)

Modern Hamlets and their Soliloquies

, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Pennington, M. (1996)

Hamlet: A User’s Guide

, London: Nick

Hern

.

Rylance

, M. ‘Research, Materials, Craft: Principles of Performance at Shakespeare’s Globe’, Carson,

C. & Karim-Cooper, F.

[

eds

] (2008)

Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment

, Cambridge: C.U.P., 103-14

States, B. O. (1983) ‘The Actor’s Presence: Three Phenomenal Modes’, Theatre Journal 35: 3, 359-375.