Classic of the Week: Hamlet

Today’s Classic of the Week is probably my favourite Shakespeare play, and certainly one of the most famous. One of the reasons I love it so much is that David Tennant (the best Doctor ever) performed as the lead character a couple years ago and did an amazing job. Also, I just love the style of play. It’s a revenge tragedy, but instead of having a blind desire for revenge, the hero is a university student who would much rather be studying than trying to kill his uncle. The play is….

Hamlet holding the skull of Yorick, the jester

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Almost everyone will know the basic plot of Hamlet. Two months before the play starts, Hamlet’s Uncle Claudius kills his father and marries his mother, becoming king of Denmark. Hamlet isn’t very happy about this, but when his father’s ghost appears to him and tells him it was murder, he decides to get revenge. The problem is, he’s not sure if the ghost is telling the truth. So he gets some actors to put on a play of the murder to see if Claudius will look guilty. Claudius ends up leaving halfway because he can’t stand to hear it, so Hamlet is sure that Claudius is a murderer. Then, due to some complications that I couldn’t mention earlier, Hamlet ends up getting in a fencing match with another young man at court, and, thanks to a lot of poison, everyone ends up dying.

Hamlet creeps up behind Claudius while he's praying

Hamlet could have been a normal revenge tragedy. Uncle murders father, Hamlet murders uncle, everything works out fine. In fact, this is how it all works out in The Lion King, which is basically just Hamlet re-done with lions. But what Shakespeare does that is so brilliant is create a hero that is very poorly suited to a revenge tragedy. Hamlet is a quiet young man, a university student. At the beginning of the play, his one request is to go back to Wittenberg, a center of learning. Hamlet is saddened by his father’s death but he has no interest in getting revenge, until his father’s ghost appears.

Then it takes a good long while before Hamlet actually decides to kill Claudius. Hamlet has several opportunities to get revenge but he decides to wait for two main reasons. First of all, he’s not sure that Claudius did in fact kill his father and he wants to be sure before he kills someone. Secondly, he chooses not to kill his uncle while he’s praying because he wants the uncle to go to hell, not heaven. This may sound really cruel, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. After all, Hamlet thinks that his father was murdered without time for prayer, sending him to purgatory. If Hamlet kills his uncle only to send him to Heaven, then that’s not revenge at all.

Hamlet and Ophelia

All in all, I would highly recommend Hamlet to anyone. It’s not actually as hard to understand as some of Shakespeare’s other plays, especially if you watch a film along with it. Kenneth Branagh has a wonderful uncut version of the play, making it easy to read along, but I personally prefer the David Tennant version which is absolutely hilarious. Before I watched this I never thought Shakespeare could be that funny, but it certainly is. Shakespeare somehow manages to combine tragedy and hilarious comedy to create Hamlet.

Classic of the Week: King Lear

Ian McKellen as a slightly crazed Lear

Now, to continue my Wednesday Classic series, which for the past couple weeks has been exclusively Shakespeare, I bring you another tragedy. While Hamlet is a role for a young actor and Macbeth for one of almost any age, this role is one to crown the career of an old, established actor (such as Ian McKellen, who did a wonderful version just a couple years ago.) The play is:

King Lear By William Shakespeare

This play is one of Shakespeare’s longer and more complex works. There are actually several different versions of the text, so it can be hard to tell exactly what’s the ‘right’ version. The basic plot of King Lear revolves around two families, the Lear family and the Gloucester family. King Lear is growing old, and so he decides to divide his kingdom up between his three daughters, giving the biggest portion according to who loves him most. The oldest two daughters lavish false praises on their father, while the youngest, Cordelia, tells her father that she loves him as much as she owes him, and gets banished. Lear’s other daughters then take over the kingdom and cruelly throw Lear out into a storm.

Lear at the beginning of the play

Meanwhile, the Earl of Gloucester has two sons. The older, Edgar, is a legitimate son, while the younger, Edmund, is, as he repeats often, a ‘bastard’. Edgar, of course, is due to receive all the inheritance, but Edmund manages to trick Gloucester into believing that Edgar is planning to kill him, so Edgar gets thrown out. Then Edmund throws Gloucester out and takes over.

Edmund, Gloucester's evil,
bastard son

Because of this double plot, it can sometimes be a little difficult to understand King Lear. I personally found it much more difficult than either Macbeth or Othello. The plots do eventually merge and lead to the inevitable conclusion of almost everyone dying, but for awhile it can be difficult to figure out what’s happening to which family.

The most terrible thing about King Lear is that it’s set in a universe that is completely random and merciless. Instead of mentioning God and talking about heaven and hell like Shakespeare does frequently in his other plays, the characters all pray to ‘the gods’ who never intervene as the tragedy only worsens. In the middle of the play, Gloucester, blind and wandering about in the middle of a storm, speaks the lines: ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport.’ This idea of the senseless, unfeeling universe dominates King Lear, increasing the sense of tragedy and utter hopelessness.

Keira Knightly is rumored to play Cordelia in an upcoming
big screen version of King Lear.

In short, King Lear is not a play I’d recommend as readily as Macbeth or Othello. Though all three are dark, King Lear is perhaps the worst. Lear makes the smallest mistake of any of these characters, an error that in any other world could have not made any difference. He also repents of it by the end of the first act, but it’s no use. Macbeth and Othello could have stopped the tragedy by changing their minds early on in the play, but Lear is helpless. King Lear is a very good play, but filled with a sense of hopelessness. As my sister said after watching it, “Shakespeare must have been very depressed.”

Classic of the Week: Othello

Today’s classic of the week, once again brought to you courtesy of the Shakespeare course I’m taking, is one of the Bard’s plays that isn’t often taught in high school. In many ways it’s the most contemporary of his plays, dealing with racism, suicide and domestic violence. Perhaps that’s the reason that many people won’t encounter this play until university; some of the racial content could be considered offensive. Despite that, I believe that this play is yet another of Shakespeare’s masterpieces. And the play is:

 Othello by William Shakespeare

Iago 'pours poison' into Othello's ear

The basic story of Othello is this: Othello, a victorious, black, General, marries Desdemona, the daughter of a wealthy, white, Venetian nobleman. Othello then promotes his friend, Cassio, to a position of honour. Unfortunately, the villain, Iago, is angry with Othello for promoting Cassio instead of him, and he thinks that Othello has slept with his wife. So Iago decides that he’s going to completely ruin everything by making Othello think that Desdemona and Cassio are having an affair. To make a long story short, Othello ends up smothering Desdemona and then killing himself when he figures out that she was actually innocent.

You can probably see how this play could be labelled as racist. The basic plot ‘Black Man Kills White Wife’ seems racist right there. Also, the play is full of tiny racial slurs, and Othello is constantly called ‘the Moor,’ which only accents how he’s different. However, I don’t think Othello is a racist play at all. For starters, almost all the racial slurs are spoken either by ignorant characters (such as Roderigo and Brabantio) or by the villain, Iago. Desdemona, the only truly good character in the play, appears to love Othello partly because he is black. It’s also obvious that the true villain is Iago, a white male, not black Othello.

Ian McKellen as Iago

Much like Satan in Paradise Lost, the villain Iago could certainly be labelled the most interesting character. The way he uses words to make innocent Desdemona seem like an adulteress is absolutely fascinating. In a single scene in the middle of the play, he changes Othello’s mind from complete love of Desdemona to saying ‘Why did I ever marry?’ This play is well worth reading just as a lesson in how dangerous words can be.

Othello and Desdemona

In short, Othello is not an easy play to read. Unlike some of his other tragedies, such as Macbeth and King Lear Shakespeare isn’t dealing with ancient matters of kingship and matters involving whole countries. Instead, he focuses in a very personal way on marriage, on friendship, on love and betrayal. The themes in Othello are ones that are extremely applicable today. It is not a dull, out-dated classic by any means. Once you get past the difficult language, you will be astounded by the insight Shakespeare has into human nature. 

Classic of the Week: Macbeth

Patrick Stewart as Macbeth

If you’ve been reading the blog over the past few days, you might have noticed me talking a fair bit about the summer course I’m taking at UPEI: Intro to Shakespeare. I read a couple of his plays while I was homeschooled (Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet) but now I’m learning five new ones for this course. This particular one is a fairly famous tragedy, with a scene that is so well known I was able to use it in my short story, ‘Because You Laughed’ without having ever read the play. This week’s classic is:

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

First off, I’ve got to say that this is not a nice play. It’s very good, but extremely disturbing. It chronicles the life of Macbeth, a Scottish thane who meets three witches and is told that he’ll be King someday. Hearing this, Macbeth decides to kill the King. He then becomes king, but he has to deal with several other predictions by the witches; that his friend’s son would become king (rather than Macbeth’s offspring; he has no children yet) and that he will be killed by one not of woman born. Macbeth’s obsession with stopping these other predictions leads him to murder his best friend and many other people. In the end, it’s Macbeth who ends up dead.

The Ian McKellen Macbeth

Since this is a play with so many deaths, it’s obviously going to be very bloody. Many of the murders actually happen offstage, but the characters still end up covered in blood. While this is all very symbolic, it means that this is not a play for children.

What hurts me the most about this story is Macbeth’s decent into darkness. At the beginning of the play he is a genuinely nice guy. He’s a war hero, fighting for his country against a traitor. Throughout the play, he grows worse and worse. He stops questioning the morality of his actions and instead plunges into them wholeheartedly. All he seems to be worried about is the possibility of getting caught. Shakespeare is an expert at crafting a drama that begins with a likeable protagonist, but then progresses until we have lost all sympathy for Macbeth.

Macbeth and his wife, deciding to kill the King

So far I’ve seen one film version of this play, the 2010 Patrick Stuart version. It’s set in modern day but the dialogue is unchanged (they did cut some lines, but every version does that.) I thought this version portrayed the feeling of the play extremely well. It was so intense that while I was watching it I had to stop myself every so often and go on Facebook or Twitter… anything to take my mind off the story. That’s one thing about Macbeth; it’s not very funny. Hamlet, for instance, is hilarious. There is virtually no ‘comic relief’ in Macbeth.

(Please note, there are bloody images in this trailer. Nothing too graphic, but not for younger viewers)

Would I recommend that you read this play? Yes, I most certainly would. If you don’t study this in school, then take the time to read it yourself. Immerse yourself in it. Perhaps read a synopsis first, so you have some idea of what’s going on, and then read the play. Make sure to watch a film version, as well. The Patrick Stuart version is excellent, and Ian McKellen (Gandalf from Lord of the Rings) also played Macbeth back in the 70s. Nothing by Shakespeare is an easy read, but he has invaluable insights into human nature. This is a chilling story, not just because of all the violence, but because it feels so true.

Classic of the Week: Gulliver's Travels

The Classic of the Week is one that most of you will have heard of, but probably not read in the original unless you’ve studied it in school. This writer was from the 18^th century (so a fair bit later than Shakespeare) and he wrote satire, which was a fairly common genre at the time. He was also the author of one of the earliest novels, which is evident by the fact that some of the paragraphs go on for three pages! What is this book? It’s:

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

You’ve probably all heard of this book, especially with the Jack Black movie just out. I’ve known of it for about as long as I can remember, since we had a little children’s book telling the story of Gulliver with the little people (the Lilliputians). When I was about twelve we drove to Ontario as a family (about 18 hours) and we listened to it on tape. That wasn’t the most fun drive in the world, but even Gulliver’s Travels was better than bickering with my siblings.

Gulliver’s Travels is a fairly famous book that isn’t really read that much anymore. It’s composed of four parts. The first is where Gulliver visits the Lilliputians. The second has Gulliver in the land of the Giants. The third takes him to the world of the philosophers/university professors who live in the clouds, and in the fourth he journeys to a land where the horses rule the humans (who are very ape-like and called yahoos). Each of these four parts tries to make fun of something, and the satire becomes more evident as the story goes along.

That’s probably why the first few parts are so much more famous. The idea of the big man held prisoner by the tiny people is quite fascinating, especially to children. Also interesting, but slightly scarier, is the idea of us being dwarfed by some immense race of people. While there certainly is satire here, mainly to do with either how small and insignificant, or how large and oaf-like, humans are, it’s less obvious and the actual plot is more fun.

 

The later books are almost exclusively satire. The third book, featuring Gulliver on the floating ship with the philosophers, makes little sense unless you understand what he’s trying to make fun of. As a child, I was just bored. And as for the last section, where the humans are virtually apes, I hated it, and I still do now. It’s such a low, disgusting picture of humanity. Since I believe that humans were created by God and in His image, not evolved from apes, this last part just felt so wrong. It was such a depressing way to end the story.

All in all, Gulliver’s Travels does certainly have its moments of brilliance. There is one scene in particular, in the first book, where the little people are searching through Gulliver’s pockets and describing the contents, that I absolutely love. Like most classics, this is not something you just read for an entertaining story. This is a book to be read for the satire, and for Swift’s dry wit. If you can get past the slightly difficult prose, Gulliver’s Travels is incredibly funny. 

Classic of the Week: 1984

For my second Classic post I decided to write on a book I just recently finished. I had been planning to read this book forever, and then once I started reading it took me forever (almost a month) and I just finished now. The book is:

1948 –by George Orwell

Years ago I read Animal Farm and hated it because I was too young to understand the political satire and I still wanted happy endings. Going into 1984 I knew it wasn’t going to be a happy book, and especially with the big dystopia trend on now I’m more used to books on totalitarian societies. In that way, 1984 didn’t disappoint.

Set in a futuristic world where Oceania (America and England) is at war with either Eurasia or Eastasia and history is being constantly written, it follows the life of an ordinary worker named Winston who hates The Party yet has little interest in actually leading a rebellion or doing anything major against the party. For him, rebellion means having an affair with one of his beautiful young co-workers.

I was surprised by the level of sexual content in this book. Prostitution is mentioned and Winston writes in his diary about a time when he visits a prostitute. Winston and Julia do have sex many times, and it’s described the first time or two. Before they get together, Winston fantasizes about Julia’s body and when they do finally have sex it’s more of an act of rebellion than of love: he tells her that the more men she has slept with before, the more he loves her. And yet, he constantly says he loves her and he would rather do all sorts of horrible things rather than leave her. So, on the whole, the romance aspect was a little confusing to me and extremely chilling at the end.

The plot was slower than I expected. For the first third of the book very little happens. The set-up is really interesting, but there’s no real action until part two, where Winston and Julia finally get together. When that finally gets boring something really dramatic happens, and the rest of the book basically turns into a physiological treatise. In short, this is not something you read if you want a gripping story and compelling characters. I didn’t like the characters. This wasn’t because they were poorly written characters. They were perfectly written, showing how helpless and dark humans can be.

1984 is filled with many great insights. It’s scary, perhaps a little exaggerated, but still very true. It’s not a fast read, and certainly not happy. At times it can be slightly confusing and at others it can drag. This is not something you read for entertainment. I wouldn’t recommend it for readers under about 15/16 because it deals with a lot of tough political content. For anyone older, this should be required reading. It makes you see society in a whole new light. 

Classic of the Week: Roverandom

Since I’ve been reading a lot of classic books/poems/short stories/plays for literature classes, I decided I’d like to share some of them with you. I’ve also decided to try and read a lot of older stories over the summer, rather than just reading YA. I’m not sure exactly what my definition of ‘Classic’ will be, but it will range from Homer up to Tolkien and other 20^th century writers.

Speaking of Tolkien… I’ve decided that my first post is going to be on one of Tolkien’s little known works:

Roverandom

This is a delightful little story, short enough to be read in an hour or two (my version was only 92 pages). Tolkein wrote it after his son lost a little toy dog at the beach during a family vacation. According to Tolkien, the toy dog was actually a real dog that was enchanted by a wizard and became a toy. He then came to Tolkien’s son, was lost, got turned back into a real dog and had all sorts of adventures before he came back home.

Since this was composed and then written down for children its idea is fairly simple and reminiscent of a fairy tale. Roverandom is simply trying to return home rather than saving the universe or anything like that. It’s also not terribly fast paced; despite it’s shortness I read it over about a week. It’s certainly not like anything you’d find in the YA section of a bookstore.

And that’s okay. I absolutely loved Tolkien’s whimsical style, so different then commercial fiction. It was so relaxing to read about Roverandom’s strange adventures, fighting spiders on the moon or swimming at the bottom of the sea. Maybe it’s a kid’s book, but I certainly enjoyed it.

One thing I did love was that Tolkien puts in references to many other works. There were many allusions to Norse Mythology (I didn’t really catch those… I need to take a mythology course) and at one point Roverandom sees the shores of Faery land, also known as Valinor, the land of the Elves mentioned in The Silmarilion. As a die-hard Tolkien fan, I loved these references.

In short, Roverandom is a classic that is a really quick, fun read. It’s the perfect thing to read to little siblings or kids you’re babysitting, but also to enjoy yourself. I’d recommend it to anyone seeking an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.