Our “Hamlet” moment continues. In future posts, I plan to discuss the film “Elsinore” (opening Nov. 20), starring Andrew Scott as Ian Charleson playing Hamlet — a role that Scott also famously played; and Scott in the one-man show “Sea Wall,” opening Oct. 16 off-Broadway at Studio Seaview in Manhattan.
For now, however, I want to plumb how “Hamlet” is the not-so-abstract or brief chronicle of our out-of-joint times — with apologies to Shakespeare. It’s fashionable in our snarky digital age to see Hamlet as an antihero at best or even a villain. His cruel treatment of his mother, Gertrude, and intended, Ophelia; his seemingly unnecessary killing of Ophelia’s father, Polonius, and Hamlet’s frenemies Rosencrantz and Gildenstern; even the glorious soliloquys, the quintessence of eloquent consciousness, which can appear to some ineffectual — all suggest a self-centered, even disturbed temperament.
But I would contend that Hamlet is indeed “cruel if only to be kind,” as he tells his mother, because he has been called to a task for which he is not only reluctant but feeling inadequate. And that task is not merely to avenge a father, Old Hamlet, whose life, crown and wife have been usurped by his murderous, adulterous brother, Claudius; but in doing so to set right the corrupted ship of state. In this he is like Sophocles’ and Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, who honors her dead, seemingly traitorous brother, against the wishes of the state. She acts morally and ethically if not legally.
Hamlet, too, is called to swim against a corruptible political current. Yet everywhere he sees “how all occasions do inform against me.” His uncle has been elected king in his stead. (Hamlet even jokes — or does he? — “I lack advancement.”) And while said uncle says he wants to treat Hamlet like a son and heir, he means a son and heir he can control. (Modern interpretations of “Hamlet” tend to emphasize Denmark as a surveillance state. See the 2009 Royal Shakespeare Company production starring David Tennant.)
Critics tend to underscore Hamlet’s Freudian obsession with his mother’s “o’er-hasty” remarriage, to her brother-in-law no less, but I see this as less about sex and more about sexual politics. Like a lot of traditional women today, Gertrude’s go-along-to-get-along sense of self derives from her roles as wife and mother, which are underscored by her royal position. Without her remarriage to newly elected King Claudius — who for some reason, is still unattached in middle age — she is no longer queen, and Hamlet, despite his popularity, could very well be disenfranchised. (Remember that in a pre-DNA age, all you could prove was who your mother was — something Shakespeare was no doubt all too aware of, coming of age as he did in the era of the Tudor dynasty’s tenuous legitimacy.)
Gertrude’s alacrity in remarrying — which could be for any number of reasons, giving wide berth to the actress who performs the role, which could be said for the other characters and players, too —could be construed as calling into question her probity and thus Hamlet’s legitimacy.
Then there’s Polonius, Claudius’ suck-up chief adviser, who’s worried about his daughter, Ophelia, sleeping with Hamlet — a relationship that he tells her is out of her league even as he encourages it with devious passive aggression. He in effect pimps her out to deduce for the king if Hamlet is mad or rather mad in craft as he in turn buys time to figure out whether or not Claudius killed his father. Add to this Rosencrantz and Gildenstern — the sleazy former schoolmates who are only too happy to do Claudius’ bidding, even if it means spying on and ultimately getting rid of their erstwhile schoolchum— and you have the makings of what the late Shakespearean scholar Harold Bloom described in his “Hamlet: Poem Unlimited” (Riverside Books, 2003) as “the Hamlet complex, of which murderousness forms as large a component as does self-conscious theatricality. Or are the two components fused: Should we speak of murderous theatricalism?”
In the fifth and final act of “Hamlet,” the title character finally transcends murderous theatricalism by acknowledging he is more than adequate to the task at hand in his calm centered readiness to face the truth and death. (“The readiness is all.”) He avows his love for Ophelia and bids farewell to his mother; avenges his father by killing Claudius; forgives Laertes, Ophelia’s brother, for mortally wounding him; and charges Horatio with his legacy as he bequeathes Denmark to the Norwegian prince Fortinbras.
But what of us? Should we speak of murderous theatricalism in describing the Trump Administration? A president who suggests Iran could take Los Angeles and San Diego; a secretary of war who talks of televising an upcoming execution; an ICE that shoots allegedly criminal illegal immigrants in broad daylight on crowded city streets and answers questions later — these are but things a man may play at with lethal consequences, performances in a society that is all about communications but lacks communication skills. (Did Trump mean to say let Iran try to take Los Angeles and San Diego rather than let Iran take the cities? Does it matter in an AI-infused country in which people read at a sixth-grade level?)
It’s a reality show with no script, a “Hamlet” with no Hamlet and no Shakespeare, though a Shakespearean hero may be on the horizon. Like Hamlet, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, up for reelection, is not lacking wit or courage, unafraid as he is to confront and even mock monstrous absolute power.
He may be the next Democratic president of the United States. But as Hamlet tells Rosencrantz, “While the grass grows, the steed starves.”
We can’t mull the future forever. The climax, the time to act — to vote — is almost at hand. The readiness is all.