Shakespearefest performance: Seasonal dichotomy

One thing that I really enjoyed about the performance of The Winter's Tale we saw was the seasonal dichotomy represented in the set. The first half of the play used panels that looked like frost-covered windows that gave the impression of being inside on a chilly day. That, coupled with the conservative, dull, colorless attire of the characters--multiple layered suits with jackets that made me feel like I was watching an old black and white film--gave the impression of both physical and emotional coldness. 

Once we departed from drab Sicilia to rustic Bohemia, the panels lifted to reveal an onstage forest that was previously hidden behind the opaque glass windows, starkly contrasting the sterility that the panels imposed. Then, once we began the second half of the play, the forest was covered with flowers hanging from the ceiling and green grass was laid down on the stage to accentuate the difference. Compared to the first half with space limited by panels which kept the back half of the stage out of view, everything was so open and free. The costumes, unlike at the beginning of the play, were very light, playful, and colorful, and many of the characters were in short-sleeves. 

Then when we returned to Bohemia, everything became dark and drab again, all in muted, winter colors except for Perdita and Hermione, who are in lovely light colors throughout the play. Then the group ended the play with the powerful image of Leontes, standing in front of the forest, between two panels, with snow falling behind him. That was my favorite part of the whole play simply because of the way that it really played off of the dichotomy of the seasons, illustrating one of the most overt themes in the whole play.

The Pygmalion myth--Hermione as the ideal woman

Possibly my favorite Greek myth was that of Pygmalion, the sculptor. Due to a previous mythological adventure, all the women in Pygmalion's hometown were turned into promiscuous sex fiends. Yet, seemingly against all male instinct, Pygmalion felt only contempt for the sluts by which he found himself surrounded. So in order to live out his (ironically) virtuous fantasies, he sculpted a statue of the most beautiful woman he could devise. He made her perfect in every way and soon found himself falling into a strange obsession with his creation. He would dress her every morning, speak to her as if she could hear, sleep with her in his bed, even go so far as to make out with his statue and imagined that she would kiss him back. Well, one day he prayed to Aphrodite to give his statue life, and, as he laid her into bed, the cold, dead ivory of her flesh began to turn warm and soft. She began to breathe and live. So Pygmalion and his creation--later named Galatea--ended up getting married and having an enjoyable life together. To Pygmallion, Galatea is perfect, faithful and true to her love.

At the end of The Winter's Tale, when the Hermione "statue" returns to life, Shakespeare is characterizing his heroine through the use of classical mythology. The statue of her is so life-like, that Leontes wants to kiss it, but it isn't until magic is pronounced over it that Hermione begins to move and speak. 

Through his use of mythology, Shakespeare further characterizes Hermione as the ideal woman that we hear of so often. She is not only pure and faithful to Leontes, but is also exactly what Leontes has desired for so many years, surrounded by so many women that fall short of his desires and expectations. Despite her perceived passing, he can think only of her until Paulina animates her statue.

Pratchett's Perdita

So for today's blog post, I decided I would do another name comparison. This week's post is brought to you by the name Perdita and the author Terry Pratchett, British satirist. In his book, Maskerade, he adopts a similar plot to The Phantom of the Opera while expressing his disgust for Christine, the super girly opera star who is only really good for teenage girls to vicariously live out their dreams through.

Sound familiar?

But instead of the beautiful and ditzy Christine becoming the local voice talent, a country girl by the name of Agnes Nitt (who, through some strange manifestation of magical ability, can sing in thirds with herself) sings all the major arias over Christine, essentially becoming Christine's voice actress. Unfortunately for Agnes, she is just not star material (meaning she just isn't pretty enough). Yet throughout the novel, Agnes fancies herself a beautiful gothic princess, the kind of girl that goes around wearing lacy gloves and fancy corsets. She adopts a whole different alter-ego for herself that she calls Perdita X Dream, the kind of name you'll only find in bad romance novels. 

It is only after adopting the new persona of Perdita that she goes to join the opera house and become her new self. Pratchett's utilization of the name, however, suggests that Agnes is only really fooling herself and doesn't truly belong in the big city. She is a stranger to fame and show-business, lost from her homeland, much like Perdita is a stranger to Bohemia, lost from Sicily. It isn't until Agnes is brought back home and again becomes Agnes that she finds where she belongs. She may not like it there, but nevertheless, it is her home.

Hermione, meet Hermione

You guessed it, I'm making the obvious comparison: Hermione as Hermione, Ron as Leontes, and Harry as Polixenes. But unlike Shakespeare, J.K. Rowling gives us the opportunity to see the friendship grow from the very beginning in childhood. The three meet when they are only eleven and grow up together, Ron becoming Harry's loyal sidekick and Hermione becoming Ron's admirer and object of affection.

The three become best friends and eventually end up spending every waking moment together on their quest to destroy Voldemort's source of power: the horcruxes. Although by this point it is obvious to everyone reading that Ron and Hermione like each other, the two still haven't managed to actually come out and become an item, but Hermione's obvious connection and friendship with Harry drives Ron to betray the two and leave the group. Hermione is deeply hurt by his assumptions and implied accusations, much like Shakespeare's Hermione, and, despite Hermione's and Harry's reassurances, Ron will not be convinced.. Leontes is jealous over Hermione, Ron is jealous over Hermione, beginning to see the connections yet?

This is what Leontes sees.

This is what Ron sees. Poor, poor Ron.

Then when Ron returns and tries to destroy the locket horcrux, he is tortured with the image of Harry and Hermione kissing passionately--a sight both disturbing and unnatural--coupled with the suggestion that he kill Harry to regain Hermione's affections. For a moment, Ron hesitates and we come to the moment of truth where the friendship between the two heroes is tested. In the end, Ron turns his sights back onto the horcrux and destroys the freaky thing before it can get into the realm of awful fanfiction pairings.

Then after all the carnage, death, and destruction is over (see, even more parallels with The Winter's Tale!), we encounter a time gap that takes us 19 years into the future, a number oddly similar to the number 16. We rejoin our heroes after they have all grown up and are now sending their children off to Hogwarts to undergo their own wizard training. Ron and Hermione are sending off their daughter, Harry and his wife (Ron's sister) are sending off their son, who, at the sight of Ron and Hermione's daughter gets nervous and stops to tie his shoe. It's rather adorable actually, and although the two children don't end up married before the end of the movie/book, I'm sure that one day they will both enjoy cute romantic relations together.

J.K. Rowling, makes a fantastic utilization of Hermione's name, drawing upon the archetypal story of The Winter's Tale to deepen and characterize both Ron's jealousy and Hermione's devotion. Despite Ron's fears and doubts, Hermione was never really interested in Harry romantically and truly only has eyes for Ron.

Parallels in Mythology

Let me tell you a sad, bloody story of the kind only the Greeks could write. You probably all know the story of the Trojan war and how Agamemnon sailed away to help his brother, Menelaus, retrieve his wife from Paris. What the movie doesn't tell you, is that in order to get there, Agamemnon had to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, to Artemis in recompense for slaying one of her sacred animals. Well, as you can imagine, Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra, wasn't too happy about this. So while Agamemnon was off to war, Clytemnestra seduced Agamemnon's cousin, Aegisthus, and convinced Aegisthus to kill Agamemnon after Agamemnon's return from Troy. Agamemnon returns home with a prophetess that he has taken to be his concubine and goes up into his palace with her. Shortly after, Aegisthus murders them both. Orestes, Agamemnon's son, returns home after his father's murder, and, with his sister's encouragement, murders his adulterous mother and Aegisthus. But because he killed his own flesh and blood, the furies chase him all over Greece and drive him mad until he finds sanctuary in Athena's temple. He ends up having a happy ending, being pardoned by the newly established legal system. The myth explains how the Greek legal system was set up by the goddess Athena. 

Reading Hamlet again after reading the Oresteia made me realize just how similar these two stories are. Perhaps Shakespeare was setting up his own version of the Oresteia, which would explain why so many things are left ambiguous. Shakespeare wouldn't need to go into so much detail because he was simply retelling an old story, similar to how the play Wicked includes next to no knowledge on Dorothy, the main character of the Wizard of Oz, the story that Wicked was based off of. Because the audience is assumed to already know the old story, there are a lot of details that don't need to be added. I am not implying that all of Shakespeare's audience would know the Oresteia, but certainly some of the wealthier, more educated patrons did. Even if you don't know the original story, you don't feel as if you were missing anything, but your understanding of Hamlet is deepened by the knowledge. 

Orestes was called upon to avenge his father because the gods themselves demanded retribution. In Greek culture, if your close blood relative was murdered, you were bound to take revenge or be punished in the afterlife. Likewise, Hamlet is plagued by unrest and anger until he avenges his father. His father's ghost cries out to him to seek vengeance and he feels obligated to comply. 

Gertrude may have also played a greater role in the murder of the old king, possibly asking Claudius to kill for her. Gertrude as Clytemnestra is somewhat believable through her relationship with Hamlet; Clytemnestra knows that Orestes wants to kill her for his father's sake, yet she will not lay a hand on her child, merely pointing out that she carried, nursed, and raised him. And telling him that the furies would come for him if he hurt her. But over all, she stays in her motherly role and looks upon Orestes as her son and wishes him to be happy and accepting of his new step-dad. 

Claudius is certainly a parallel to Aegisthus, the murderer, the bad guy. But instead of pointing him out, saying that he is truly the villain, Shakespeare delves into his conscience and explores his mind, giving him positive qualities so that the audience doesn't have complete hatred for him. 

It isn't hard to find a trait connecting Ophelia and Electra; Ophelia could easily be said to have an Electra complex, devoted to her father's wishes. 

Although it may not be a perfect match, there certainly are some interesting similarities.

3rd Dimensional

Although the other characters in Hamlet are less important to the story, Shakespeare still fleshes them out into real people. There is a huge focus on Hamlet throughout the play, but that is to be expected and in no way means that the other characters are any less developed than he is.

Let's start with Ophelia. Not many people really like her; the most of what you see is her submission to her father's will and her longing for Hamlet. But the very fact that she goes crazy and kills herself illustrates how three-dimensional she is. Shakespeare is an expert in human psychology, anchoring Ophelia to reality with her caring father against the raging tempest of Hamlet's mixed messages and insults. But once her anchor has lost his grip and been swept away in the wake of the storm, there is nothing tying Ophelia down. Consumed by both grief and her mixed feelings for Hamlet, she loses it. But really, Ophelia is constantly tempering her inner desires with morality and social customs; she is a prime example of Freud's theory of mind, her id demanding that she satisfy her drive to love Hamlet in conflict with her virtuous superego fueled by her father and brother's warnings to keep her chastity. On the surface, she is frail and weak, letting her father make her decisions for her, but underneath she is the model of inner turmoil.

Next, Polonius. In a lot of ways, Polonius is the comic relief of the play, the bumbling fool. Yet as much as Hamlet would like to simply file him under "idiot" and pay him no more mind, he can be considered fairly deep, possibly even as the wise man in the play. If nothing else, he certainly has an understanding of human behavior, even if he doesn't have all the answers. We see him in the first scene of act two, explaining to his servant how to find news of his son. He counsels to, instead of straight out asking whether Laertes is misbehaving, to speak as if he knows he is misbehaving. Laertes' friends would lie, deny his immorality if questioned directly. However, if the fault is stated as a fact, they will only deny it if it is not true. We also know that Polonius attended a university and played the part of Julius Caesar when he was younger, indicating intelligence and theatrical knowledge. It is more than possible that Polonius behaves like a bumbling old man because that is how he wishes to be perceived.

Then there's Claudius, possibly the easiest character to find depth in. He is, above all, the villain, the antagonist, the man for Hamlet to pit himself against. Yet we don't even quite know why he killed his brother. The obvious answer is for the power. But it is more than possible that Claudius' motivation for murder sprung from his desire for Gertrude. When old king Hamelt tells Hamlet Jr. what really happened, he mentions Gertrude's infidelity before finally telling Hamlet that Claudius was the one that murdered him. Assuming he is going chronologically, this would suggest that Claudius and Gertrude were sleeping together before the old king was even dead. It would certainly explain their hasty marriage. Then in act III scene III, we see him kneeling in penitence, willing himself to beg for forgiveness, yet he himself admits that he does not truly feel remorse but wishes to. He knows that what he did was wrong, but is enjoying the position that the murder put him in.

I could continue on, but this post is already long. It's just so easy to oversimplify the other characters and take them for granted, but they each have their own delicately balanced, complicated psyches; Hamlet isn't the only one. Gertrude certainly has more than one layer to her, and even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can be analyzed to find depth. None of the characters in Hamlet are flat.

First post

My only experiences with Shakespeare thus far consist of what I learned about him in school. It started in seventh grade when we read A Midsummer Nights's Dream, which I absolutely adored. At the time, I was going through the awkward phase of puberty, and it was more than easy to relate to Helena and her desire to be desired. The relatability of Shakespeare's characters coupled with amusement and whimsy captured my literary affections.

It wasn't until freshman year of high school that I read another play: Romeo and Juliet. I did not enjoy it as much as some other plays, but the passion between the two lovers still appealed very much to my pre-teen nature. But more than romeo and Juliet themselves, I adored Mercutio and the amusement he brought to the play.

Then Sophomore year, we read two plays. The first was the dark, foreboding story of Macbeth, filled with guilt, dread, and suspense. Eagerly, I flipped through the pages, exploring and analyzing Lady Macbeth's neurosis that began to consume her. Her obsessive-compulsive behavior intrigued me as she continued to wash her blood-stained hands. The other play we read was my favorite, The Taming of the Shrew, filled with it's hilarious innuendos and the ever-amusing Petruchio on his quest to "kill a wife with kindness." Kate, a once blunt recluse, was made to learn, not absolute obedience, but the illusion of obedience while holding all the true power. Instead of sacrificing her will to Petruchio, she learned to stroke his ego and let him believe that he had tamed her.

Unfortunately, we did not read any Shakespeare in my Junior year, but Senior year we tackled the complexity of Hamlet. It was so easy to wonder at Hamlet's sanity, his affections to Ophelia, and his strange behavior to his mother. Had Hamlet been sane? Did he die sane? Did he truly love Ophelia, or is it a strange, sad parody of love? Perhaps Ophelia never truly appealed to him, but simply served as an outlet for his desires for his mother. Hamlet's depressive and confusing psyche continues to elude and confound me, but I am determined to find the truth.

I really enjoy reading Shakespeare and exploring the depths of his characters. I can't wait to get further into the class!