Download Hamlet, the Prince of Melancholy (Hamlet, Printul melancoliei by

Hamlet, the Prince of Melancholy
(Hamlet, Printul melancoliei by Florin Mihaescu)
Translated by: Mihalea Roibu – 4B Classico
Myth and Theatre as Memory
Why does the company of actors arriving at Helsinore give Hamlet impetus and a new kind of hope,
bringing him out from inertia? Because Shakespeare himself was an actor, we may think. Because
actors are people's mirror, says Hamlet:
Hamlet: Do you hear, let them be well
used, for they are the abstract
and brief chronicles of the time.
(II, 2-530)
Because they identify themselves with their part, with their mission, something that the Prince
hasn't managed yet. For him idea and act are still separate:
Hamlet: Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a function, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit...
...Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing
(II, 2-556)
But the unusual attention that Hamlet gives to them is because actors are theatre, and theatre is an
imago mundi. Shakespeare's dearest idea comes out here better than anywhere: the idea of the world
as a theatre. A symbol in which the actor is the go-between the author and the audience, God and
the world; and Hamlet himself is an actor who has to play a role in this world gone out of hinge.
Also Hamlet wants to be, even just a little, the author of a play played at the court of Denmark, in
front of king Claudius. His secret intention, that he confesses only to Horatio, is to force the king to
admit his crime, by playing an act similar to his father's murder as described by the Ghost, whose
words would become in this way a certainty. The play becomes the repetition of a human act kept
hidden, the repetition of a crime who repeats itself humanity's original crime: Abel's murder by
Cain. The play becomes in this way a ritual which actualizes the myth. Theatre becomes, through a
myth, the revelation of truth, a Divine instrument in humanity's hands for the discover of reality.
Almost every work by Shakespeare has this meaning of theatre within the theatre, the image of the
world within the world. Theatre is a secondary game, purer, more real, more true in the panopticon
game of this world. From the first play, The Taming of the Shrew, which is a representation of
theatre within the theatre, to Hamlet, and especially going through A Midsummer Night's Dream and
Love's Labour's Lost, all the Shakespearean works are symbols of the world as a theatre, of theatre
as the scene of the destruction of the illusion of existence, in which nothing is real despite the words
of the author, despite the words of God, which is Truth.
In the play organized by Hamlet, who becomes in this way the first director, we see the reflection as in parallel mirrors - of a triple representation : the tale of Priam, Pyrrhus and Hecuba, which took
place earlier; a pantomime; and finally the theatre play: the murder of Gonzague. In other words: a
myth, a silent parable and a realistic drama; these are quite the most important parts in humanity's
evolution, and in theatre's evolution from ritual to profane play.
All the play is the actualization of a primordial event, hidden in the deepest memory, which brings
out an actual event. It is a play of masks which makes Claudius' mask fall to show on his face his
internal, obscure look. It is the climax of that game of oblivion and memory which leads to the
fixation of truth through Hamlet's madness.
On the other side, this play trains the whole audience. By attending the play and judging at the same
time their own existences, the spectators - the King, the Queen, Polonius, Ophelia etc.- become
actors. This is what happens to us, the audience of this play, which makes the author, the actors and
the audience all one. It is actually a total play. Maybe the only objective witness, not involved in the
play, is Horatio. He remains till the end the unique element of stability and unity of all the work.
The theatre play becomes in this way the central point of the tragedy, the point of intersection and
irradiation of meanings, its blazon, in whose “abyss”, in whose heart the whole following downfall
concentrates. Nothing will be the same after this moment. The play is the “fortune” of the tragedy
Hamlet.
Going back to the elements of this play, we can see that they hold almost the whole central part of
the play, from the beginning of the second act to the half of the third one, that shows their
importance for the evolution of the play, not only for its meaning. We talked about or we will talk in
another part about the advice given by Hamlet to the actors or about other aspects of the group of
actors. Now we will stop to explain the meaning of the three scenes of the play.
The first act is kind of a rehearsal before the actual play. Hamlet himself asks the actors to play a
part of the tragic death of Priam, king of Troy; he even plays a fragment, becoming a real part of
this tragedy, so similar to his father's one. The reason of Shakespeare's interest in the War of Troy
and its presence, with the exception of Troilus and Cressida, in many other plays even as a hint, is
known. This war is the basis of the European civilization which for the author stands on the ruins of
a traditional civilization that has been destroyed by the murder of a king, Priam, the king of Troy, by
Pyrrhus, Achille's son, in front of Hecuba, paralysed by the horror. It is an event that, by being at the
origins, becomes the prototype for all the following events in the history of European civilization.
The murder of Hamlet-father is similar to Priam's, with the difference that Hecuba was not involved,
which again accuses Gertrude. This mythic episode is the prologue of Denmark's court tragedy and
of the following play.
The second act of the play is a silent scene, a pantomime which tells by gestures the murder of a
king in the garden of the palace after having being poisoned while he was sleeping, so that the
murder can obtain the throne and the favours of the queen. It is a parable which reminds the murder
and the adultery that are part of the tragedy of Denmark's court.
The event that till here has only been symbolized or suggested, incarnates - in a realistic sense - in
the third act of the play, called “The murder of Gonzague”, which tells, with another name, the
murder that took place in Elsinore. During this act we attend a kind of catharsis which by collecting
and concentrating evil and projecting it in the present through the function of the play (like a
mirror), brings it out of its hiding place (be it time or conscience) making it visible and vulnerable.
Hell is forced to confess, and take off its mask, and bear the severity of the light. From here come
Claudius's fear and Hamlet's happiness. When he had the idea of the play, Hamlet had foreseen this;
we could say that he uses the play as a method, as an alchemical revealer.
Hamlet: I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have, by the very cunning of the scene,
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions.
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.
(II, 2-596)
In the plotting of this trap (called “The Mousetrap”), Hamlet makes an allusion to previous ones,
but he does not name them, we only know they draw on mythological prototypes. At the same time
he calls the process “most miraculous organ”. It is implicit that through the play he produces, at
least in a small part, a divine judgement, a kind of ordeal, which guides to the light of the truth,
even if the punishment does not come immediately. Hamlet's madness reveals itself again as a real
“aqua corrosiva” for Denmark's corrupted court.
In reality, all the representation focuses on the revealing function of memory, underlining the
importance of that “Remember me” that the Ghost of Hamlet's father gave him as a “password”.
Summing up as a play the tale of the murder, discovered by him thanks to the Ghost, Hamlet repeats
with human means, but symbolic, the scene of the beginning of the tragedy that at the time had a
superhuman halo. In this sense, the play takes actually a “miraculous” characteristic: from here even
the ritual is holy, because every ritual is a memory. The triple representation of theatre corresponds
to that triple possibility a man has to realize himself spiritually through the doctrine so well
synthesized by R: Guénon: “...échange des principes, des symboles et des offrandes, la triple base
sur laquelle repose le mystère des pacts, des alliances, et des bénédictions”.
During the performance, the King and the Queen of the play discuss about these capital themes of
the Shakespearean works and in particular of Hamlet: oblivion and memory. Our life, these
characters seem to say, is focused on passion: it is the subject of degradation and forgetting, not
only through the passage of time, but even through the effect of passion which devours itself.
Player Queen: And women’s fear and love hold quantity,
In neither aught, or in extremity...
Such love must needs be treason in my breast.
Player King: But what we do determine oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory,
Of violent birth, but poor validity...
...Most necessary ’tis that we forget
To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.
What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
The violence of either grief or joy
Their own enactures with themselves destroy.
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament.
Grief joys, joy grieves on slender accident...
...This world is not for aye, nor ’tis not strange
That even our loves should with our fortunes change.
(III, 2-168)
But if passion is “slave to oblivion”, it results that for its dispassionate element, memory can be a
barrier on the path of oblivion; through memory, not in a nostalgic sense or sentimental, but
intellectual, by bringing back essences, not accidents.
If before this play the Ghost's story could be doubted, after the revelation brought by the scene of
theatre through memory, it becomes a certainty. And here one of the functions of myth, and of the
arts that use it, is to actualize, to rediscover truth. The truth that can make free or damned, through
its corrosive action of destroying evil. This is what Shakespeare does by perpetuating the revealing
function of memory, at the same time dissolving (solve) and fixing (coagula) for the everyday
spectator.
The highest moment of this main scene of the tragedy is marked by the word “light” shouted by the
king (“give me some lights”) and repeated by the audience (“lights, lights, lights”). It is the light
that beats darkness, it is the light of truth, that takes the mask of the King off, and floods Hamlet's
heart with the happiness of certainty.
Hamlet: O good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand pound...
Ah ha! Come, some music! Come, the recorders!
(III, 2-285)
After this explosion of lights, only music, actually, could have exalted Hamlet's hopes. And settle
the truth.