1 00:00:25,138 --> 00:00:28,130 Here in Stratford upon Avon, the home of William Shakespeare... 2 00:00:28,475 --> 00:00:31,467 it is very difficult to escape hearing the name of Hamlet. 3 00:00:32,145 --> 00:00:34,807 Hamlet mugs and tee-shirts are best sellers in the gift shops... 4 00:00:35,148 --> 00:00:37,378 quotations from the play adorn tea-towels... 5 00:00:37,484 --> 00:00:39,816 diaries, pens, shop signs, books. 6 00:00:40,153 --> 00:00:43,486 The focus on this play by the tourist trade, isjust one indication... 7 00:00:43,824 --> 00:00:47,817 of how important Hamlet has traditionally been, to western culture. 8 00:00:48,161 --> 00:00:50,823 Apart from the Bible, Hamlet is the most quoted work... 9 00:00:50,997 --> 00:00:52,658 in the English language. 10 00:00:53,333 --> 00:00:55,563 Hamlet is a young prince, driven to despair... 11 00:00:55,669 --> 00:00:59,332 by his mother's hasty marriage to Claudius, his uncle. 12 00:00:59,506 --> 00:01:01,770 Hamlet subsequently learns, from his father's ghost... 13 00:01:02,109 --> 00:01:04,771 that Claudius is the man who murdered his father. 14 00:01:05,112 --> 00:01:07,103 The story of the play deals with Hamlets vow for revenge... 15 00:01:07,447 --> 00:01:09,779 and the complexities of his relationships with others... 16 00:01:10,117 --> 00:01:11,448 because of this vow. 17 00:01:11,785 --> 00:01:14,777 The exact date at which Hamlet was written is open to conjecture. 18 00:01:15,122 --> 00:01:18,114 It was entered into the stationers register in 1602. 19 00:01:18,458 --> 00:01:20,790 But it is known to have been acted in one form or another... 20 00:01:21,128 --> 00:01:23,460 as early as 1599. 21 00:01:23,797 --> 00:01:25,788 The uncertainty surrounding the earliest performances... 22 00:01:26,133 --> 00:01:28,124 is mirrored in the choice of text. 23 00:01:28,468 --> 00:01:31,369 There are three versions of Hamlet available to us from the period... 24 00:01:31,471 --> 00:01:34,463 as a matter of fact the first quarter was probably published by an actor... 25 00:01:34,808 --> 00:01:37,800 who had wrongly remembered the lines of Shakespeare's play. 26 00:01:38,478 --> 00:01:40,810 We're on much firmer ground with the two other versions. 27 00:01:41,148 --> 00:01:44,481 The second published quarto, billed as a true and perfect copy... 28 00:01:44,818 --> 00:01:46,718 is almost twice as long as the first... 29 00:01:46,820 --> 00:01:49,152 with clearly Shakespearean poetry. 30 00:01:49,489 --> 00:01:52,049 And then there is the first folio of 1623. 31 00:01:52,159 --> 00:01:56,493 This doesn't include 225 lines which are present in the second quarto... 32 00:01:56,830 --> 00:01:58,821 but it adds another seventy. 33 00:01:59,166 --> 00:02:01,999 The play is regularly performed here at the Royal Shakespeare company... 34 00:02:02,102 --> 00:02:04,093 and countless academic papers on Hamlet are researched... 35 00:02:04,438 --> 00:02:06,998 written and discussed, at Stratford's Shakespeare center... 36 00:02:07,107 --> 00:02:08,665 and Shakespeare Institute. 37 00:02:08,775 --> 00:02:11,005 Dr. Russell Jackson has worked as textural advisor... 38 00:02:11,111 --> 00:02:15,445 on several Shakespearean films, including Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. 39 00:02:15,782 --> 00:02:19,684 Prof. Wells has been director of the Shakespeare Institute for many years... 40 00:02:19,786 --> 00:02:22,778 and has written countless books and articles on Shakespeare. 41 00:02:23,123 --> 00:02:25,785 Who better than these experts to attempt to define for us... 42 00:02:26,126 --> 00:02:29,789 why Hamlet has become one of the most influential pieces of world literature. 43 00:02:29,963 --> 00:02:34,297 Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio. 44 00:02:34,968 --> 00:02:37,960 A fellow of infinitejest, of most excellent fancy. 45 00:02:38,305 --> 00:02:41,297 He hath boor me on his back a thousand times... 46 00:02:42,976 --> 00:02:46,207 and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! 47 00:02:46,313 --> 00:02:48,645 My gorge rises at it. 48 00:02:48,982 --> 00:02:52,315 Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. 49 00:02:52,652 --> 00:02:55,644 Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs... 50 00:02:55,822 --> 00:02:59,383 your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? 51 00:02:59,493 --> 00:03:01,757 It is amazing how influential Hamlet has become. 52 00:03:02,095 --> 00:03:07,431 It has been widely used by other artists and is so popular in so many countries. 53 00:03:08,435 --> 00:03:11,996 It is a very complex matter of what has caused that... 54 00:03:12,105 --> 00:03:14,437 but I think fundamentally... 55 00:03:14,774 --> 00:03:18,107 it has the capacity to acquire mythic status... 56 00:03:18,445 --> 00:03:21,778 it has become one of the myths of the Western world... 57 00:03:22,449 --> 00:03:25,782 and I think the most important reason for that is... 58 00:03:26,119 --> 00:03:28,349 the preoccupation with death quite simply. 59 00:03:28,455 --> 00:03:31,788 Hamlet has stayed popular and Hamlet has been... 60 00:03:32,292 --> 00:03:37,286 so much performed, so much read and so much debated and so much filmed. 61 00:03:37,631 --> 00:03:40,964 Because the raw material of Hamlet has in it... 62 00:03:41,301 --> 00:03:44,293 something to appeal to everybody. 63 00:03:44,638 --> 00:03:48,631 The story is exciting, the fact that it deals with... 64 00:03:48,975 --> 00:03:53,639 what you could call a personal problem in the context of the family... 65 00:03:53,980 --> 00:03:57,313 and beyond that in the context of politics and the kingdom... 66 00:03:57,651 --> 00:04:00,916 means that it has lots of ways of appealing to people... 67 00:04:01,421 --> 00:04:04,413 from different backgrounds for different purposes. 68 00:04:04,758 --> 00:04:07,750 Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with... 69 00:04:08,094 --> 00:04:12,087 and that your grace hath screened and stood between much heat and him. 70 00:04:13,266 --> 00:04:15,257 I'll silence me even here. 71 00:04:15,936 --> 00:04:18,166 I pray you, be round with him. 72 00:04:18,271 --> 00:04:22,173 If I had to say what Hamlet is about in a single phrase... 73 00:04:22,275 --> 00:04:24,175 which is a foolish thing to do... 74 00:04:24,277 --> 00:04:28,839 nevertheless, if I had to do it I would say it is about reactions to death. 75 00:04:28,949 --> 00:04:31,611 It has the great symbol of the ghost to start with... 76 00:04:31,952 --> 00:04:35,183 the ghost is the great question mark hanging over all human existence... 77 00:04:35,288 --> 00:04:40,282 the idea of another world, where were things started, where things go to. 78 00:04:40,627 --> 00:04:45,530 The ghost is ever present in Hamlet's mind and in the audiences' minds... 79 00:04:45,632 --> 00:04:49,625 and the play is constantly concerned with what we do about death... 80 00:04:49,970 --> 00:04:53,531 what Hamlet does about death, the way the ghost died... 81 00:04:53,640 --> 00:04:56,973 the way that Hamlet inflicts death on Polonius... 82 00:04:57,310 --> 00:05:00,575 but also contingent deaths like... 83 00:05:00,914 --> 00:05:05,578 the death of Ophelia in her madness for example... 84 00:05:05,919 --> 00:05:09,150 and I think that the constant preoccupation of the play... 85 00:05:09,255 --> 00:05:11,917 with the way that people react to death... 86 00:05:12,425 --> 00:05:14,655 is to me the most fundamental reason why it has been... 87 00:05:14,761 --> 00:05:17,093 such an influential work of art. 88 00:05:21,935 --> 00:05:23,266 To be... 89 00:05:25,271 --> 00:05:29,264 or not to be... 90 00:05:30,944 --> 00:05:32,935 that is the question: 91 00:05:33,613 --> 00:05:35,342 whether 'tis nobler in the mind... 92 00:05:35,448 --> 00:05:39,111 to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. 93 00:05:40,286 --> 00:05:43,278 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles... 94 00:05:43,623 --> 00:05:45,614 and by opposing... 95 00:05:47,293 --> 00:05:49,284 end them. 96 00:05:51,297 --> 00:05:52,958 To die... 97 00:05:54,300 --> 00:05:57,292 to sleep. No more: 98 00:05:57,637 --> 00:06:00,572 and by a sleep to say we end the heartache... 99 00:06:00,740 --> 00:06:03,732 and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. 100 00:06:05,412 --> 00:06:08,745 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. 101 00:06:10,417 --> 00:06:14,080 To die, to sleep. 102 00:06:14,921 --> 00:06:17,913 To sleep, perchance to dream. 103 00:06:18,258 --> 00:06:22,251 Ay, there's the rub. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come... 104 00:06:22,429 --> 00:06:24,761 When we have shuffled off this mortal coil... 105 00:06:25,598 --> 00:06:27,930 Must give us pause. 106 00:06:30,937 --> 00:06:34,930 There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life. 107 00:06:36,943 --> 00:06:42,176 For who would bear the whips and scorns of time... 108 00:06:42,282 --> 00:06:45,615 The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely... 109 00:06:45,952 --> 00:06:48,614 The pangs of despised love... 110 00:06:49,289 --> 00:06:51,951 the law's delay, the insolence of office... 111 00:06:52,292 --> 00:06:56,194 and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes... 112 00:06:56,296 --> 00:06:59,288 when he himself might his quietus make... 113 00:07:01,901 --> 00:07:05,234 with a bare bodkin? 114 00:07:06,740 --> 00:07:12,076 Who would these fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life... 115 00:07:13,079 --> 00:07:17,413 but that the dread of something after death... 116 00:07:18,752 --> 00:07:21,414 the undiscovered country... 117 00:07:21,755 --> 00:07:25,088 from whose bourn no traveler returns... 118 00:07:26,426 --> 00:07:28,758 puzzles the will... 119 00:07:29,095 --> 00:07:31,996 and makes us rather bear those ills we have... 120 00:07:32,098 --> 00:07:36,762 than fly to others that we know not of? 121 00:07:38,772 --> 00:07:42,435 Thus conscience... 122 00:07:43,443 --> 00:07:45,775 does make cowards of us all... 123 00:07:48,448 --> 00:07:50,439 and thus the native hue of resolution... 124 00:07:50,784 --> 00:07:53,344 is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought... 125 00:07:53,453 --> 00:07:56,013 and enterprise is of great pitch and moment... 126 00:07:56,122 --> 00:07:59,455 with this regard their currents turn awry... 127 00:07:59,793 --> 00:08:04,059 and lose the name of action. 128 00:08:08,401 --> 00:08:09,959 At one point in the play... 129 00:08:10,069 --> 00:08:12,401 the villainous character that I play, Claudius... 130 00:08:12,739 --> 00:08:15,299 says that revenge should have no bounds. 131 00:08:15,408 --> 00:08:17,399 The issue of revenge comes back again and again... 132 00:08:17,744 --> 00:08:19,974 to plague the tortured soul of Hamlet. 133 00:08:20,079 --> 00:08:22,070 Time and again he hesitates. 134 00:08:22,415 --> 00:08:27,318 Just what are the factors restraining Hamlet from taking his revenge? 135 00:08:27,420 --> 00:08:30,981 If we had to think about what stops him, the most cynical answer to that... 136 00:08:31,090 --> 00:08:35,993 would be that Shakespeare wants to drag out the play, he has five acts to fill. 137 00:08:36,095 --> 00:08:39,656 And that is not an entirely flippant suggestion I think... 138 00:08:39,766 --> 00:08:42,997 because Shakespeare did want to write about a lot of things... 139 00:08:43,102 --> 00:08:45,764 he didn't want the play to end until he had had a chance... 140 00:08:46,105 --> 00:08:48,767 to write about all the things that are in Hamlet... 141 00:08:49,108 --> 00:08:53,670 but I think fundamentally it must come down to scruples, to conscience. 142 00:08:53,780 --> 00:08:59,343 Hamlet refers to conscience. Also I think the fact that... 143 00:08:59,452 --> 00:09:04,048 he only finally acts as by instinct... 144 00:09:04,224 --> 00:09:07,216 he needs to come together all his impulses... 145 00:09:07,727 --> 00:09:11,720 both logical and illogical, emotional and irrational. 146 00:09:11,898 --> 00:09:14,458 They all need to come together within him... 147 00:09:14,567 --> 00:09:18,560 before he can do the killing without feeling that he has betrayed himself... 148 00:09:18,738 --> 00:09:21,400 that he has killed something important within himself. 149 00:09:21,574 --> 00:09:25,567 That is fundamentally why he doesn't kill Claudius until the very end. 150 00:09:25,912 --> 00:09:27,812 One of the things about revenge in Hamlet... 151 00:09:27,914 --> 00:09:30,576 is that a lot of people want to take it... 152 00:09:31,251 --> 00:09:33,811 and there is an extraordinary scene in which Claudius... 153 00:09:33,920 --> 00:09:37,913 who is about to be the victim of Hamlet's quest for vengeance... 154 00:09:38,258 --> 00:09:41,250 is urging someone else to take vengeance on Hamlet. 155 00:09:41,594 --> 00:09:43,585 Revenge should have no bounds. 156 00:09:43,930 --> 00:09:46,262 Well, revenge isn't a simple matter. 157 00:09:46,933 --> 00:09:51,495 If you've got any conscience in the kind of world that Hamlet is in... 158 00:09:51,604 --> 00:09:55,836 if you have any belief in God then you know that God forbids revenge. 159 00:09:55,942 --> 00:09:58,604 'Vengeance is mine' sayeth the Lord 'and I will repay'. 160 00:09:58,945 --> 00:10:02,176 When for example he has the opportunity to kill Claudius in the prayer scene... 161 00:10:02,282 --> 00:10:04,614 'Now might I do it'. He could do it then... 162 00:10:05,118 --> 00:10:08,019 but he doesn't do it then because it hasn't all come together... 163 00:10:08,121 --> 00:10:10,453 he is not all anxious to do it then. 164 00:10:10,623 --> 00:10:12,955 The complete man would knock me behind it... 165 00:10:13,293 --> 00:10:16,285 he would just be doing it in a colder, calculated way. 166 00:10:16,796 --> 00:10:21,460 Now might I do it pat, now he is praying. 167 00:10:21,801 --> 00:10:24,133 And now I'll do't. 168 00:10:49,162 --> 00:10:53,155 And so he goes to heaven. And so am I revenged. 169 00:10:54,834 --> 00:10:56,825 That would be scanned: 170 00:10:58,171 --> 00:11:01,106 A villain kills my father, and for that I, his sole son... 171 00:11:01,441 --> 00:11:03,341 do this same villain send to heaven. 172 00:11:03,443 --> 00:11:06,435 O, this is hire and salary, not revenge. 173 00:11:08,114 --> 00:11:09,775 No. 174 00:11:10,450 --> 00:11:12,441 Up, sword... 175 00:11:13,119 --> 00:11:16,452 and know thou a more horrid hent: 176 00:11:17,457 --> 00:11:21,450 When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage... 177 00:11:21,794 --> 00:11:25,127 or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed, at gaming, swearing... 178 00:11:25,298 --> 00:11:28,631 or about some act that has no relish of salvation in't... 179 00:11:29,302 --> 00:11:32,294 then trip him... 180 00:11:32,805 --> 00:11:35,467 that his heels may kick at heaven... 181 00:11:35,641 --> 00:11:39,975 and that his soul may be as damn'd and black as hell, whereto it goes. 182 00:11:43,149 --> 00:11:45,140 My mother stays. 183 00:11:47,153 --> 00:11:51,487 This physic but prolongs thy sickly days. 184 00:11:53,326 --> 00:11:55,556 The dark unspoken undercurrents in the relationship... 185 00:11:55,661 --> 00:11:59,995 between Gertrude and Hamlet, occupy the very heart of this great work. 186 00:12:00,600 --> 00:12:01,828 To an extent Shakespeare might have been thought... 187 00:12:01,934 --> 00:12:04,596 to have prefigured the work of Sigmund Freud. 188 00:12:04,937 --> 00:12:08,270 Freud, in later years, sought to unravel the part played by sexual feelings... 189 00:12:08,608 --> 00:12:11,600 in the complex relationship between any mother and son. 190 00:12:11,944 --> 00:12:15,937 Psycho-analytical critics have argued that such oedipal jealousy... 191 00:12:16,282 --> 00:12:18,512 might be at the root of Hamlet's disturbing description... 192 00:12:18,618 --> 00:12:21,951 of his mothers marriage. But is that really the case? 193 00:12:25,625 --> 00:12:28,185 Now, mother, what's the matter? 194 00:12:28,294 --> 00:12:30,854 Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. 195 00:12:30,963 --> 00:12:33,523 Mother, you have my father much offended. 196 00:12:33,633 --> 00:12:35,533 Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. 197 00:12:35,635 --> 00:12:37,626 Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue. 198 00:12:37,804 --> 00:12:40,136 - Why, how now, Hamlet? - What's the matter now? 199 00:12:41,641 --> 00:12:44,201 - Have you forgot me? - No, by the rood, not so. 200 00:12:44,310 --> 00:12:48,542 You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife... 201 00:12:48,648 --> 00:12:50,980 And, would it were not so, you are my mother. 202 00:12:51,484 --> 00:12:53,475 Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak. 203 00:12:53,820 --> 00:12:55,811 You shall not budge: till I set you up a glass. 204 00:12:56,155 --> 00:12:58,055 Where you may see the inmost part of you. 205 00:12:58,157 --> 00:13:01,422 What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me? Help, help, ho! 206 00:13:01,761 --> 00:13:04,662 How now, a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead! 207 00:13:04,764 --> 00:13:08,427 - O me, what hast thou done? - Nay, I know not. 208 00:13:10,103 --> 00:13:12,094 Is it the king? 209 00:13:13,439 --> 00:13:18,433 When Hamlet gets so upset with his mother in the closet scene... 210 00:13:18,778 --> 00:13:21,110 he is already in a pretty disturbed state. 211 00:13:21,280 --> 00:13:23,271 He has after all just killed... 212 00:13:23,449 --> 00:13:27,112 he has committed the act of killing for the first time in his life. 213 00:13:27,787 --> 00:13:31,780 Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell. I took thee for thy better. 214 00:13:32,458 --> 00:13:34,790 Peace! Leave wringing of your hands. Let me wring your heart. 215 00:13:35,128 --> 00:13:37,119 For so I shall if it be made of penetrable stuff. 216 00:13:37,463 --> 00:13:40,125 If damn'd custom have not brazed it so that it be proof... 217 00:13:40,466 --> 00:13:41,797 and bulwark against sense. 218 00:13:42,135 --> 00:13:45,468 What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue in noise so rude against me? 219 00:13:45,805 --> 00:13:48,706 Such an act that blurs the grace and blush of modesty... 220 00:13:48,808 --> 00:13:52,801 calls virtue hypocrite, makes marriage vows as false as dicers oaths. 221 00:13:53,146 --> 00:13:55,808 Ay me, what act, that roars so loud and thunders in the index? 222 00:13:56,149 --> 00:14:00,142 Look here upon this picture, and on this... 223 00:14:01,754 --> 00:14:04,416 See what a grace was seated on this brow... 224 00:14:04,590 --> 00:14:07,923 Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself... 225 00:14:08,261 --> 00:14:11,594 An eye like Mars, to threaten and command... 226 00:14:11,931 --> 00:14:15,264 This was your husband. 227 00:14:15,601 --> 00:14:18,263 Look you now what follows. Here is your husband... 228 00:14:18,604 --> 00:14:21,596 like a mildewed ear blasting his wholesome brother. 229 00:14:21,941 --> 00:14:25,604 Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed... 230 00:14:25,945 --> 00:14:28,505 and batten on this moor? Have you eyes? 231 00:14:28,614 --> 00:14:33,278 You cannot call it love, for at your age the heyday in the blood is tame... 232 00:14:33,619 --> 00:14:36,179 it's humble, and waits upon thejudgment. 233 00:14:36,289 --> 00:14:40,521 And whatjudgment would step from this to this? 234 00:14:40,626 --> 00:14:43,186 O Shame, where is thy blush? 235 00:14:43,296 --> 00:14:45,856 When Hamlet deals with women... 236 00:14:45,965 --> 00:14:49,298 he to most people's minds deals with them very badly. 237 00:14:49,635 --> 00:14:51,193 He deals badly with Ophelia... 238 00:14:51,304 --> 00:14:54,535 and he certainly deals roughly with his mother. 239 00:14:54,640 --> 00:14:57,871 In what he says about his mother's second marriage... 240 00:14:57,977 --> 00:15:01,469 her relationship with Claudius, there is something so vividly... 241 00:15:01,581 --> 00:15:05,244 graphically sexual that a lot of people have found that... 242 00:15:05,585 --> 00:15:10,249 so disturbing they need to find psychological explanations for it. 243 00:15:10,423 --> 00:15:12,084 Good night: 244 00:15:12,425 --> 00:15:14,757 but go not to my uncle's bed. 245 00:15:15,094 --> 00:15:17,756 Assume a virtue if you have it not. Refrain tonight... 246 00:15:18,764 --> 00:15:22,097 and that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence. 247 00:15:22,435 --> 00:15:24,096 What shall I do? 248 00:15:24,437 --> 00:15:26,428 Not this, by no means, that I bid you do: 249 00:15:26,772 --> 00:15:28,672 Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed... 250 00:15:28,774 --> 00:15:31,004 Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse... 251 00:15:31,110 --> 00:15:34,011 or for a pair of reechy kisses or paddling in your neck... 252 00:15:34,113 --> 00:15:37,446 with his damned fingers... Make you to ravel all this matter out... 253 00:15:38,451 --> 00:15:42,114 that I essentially am not in madness... 254 00:15:42,288 --> 00:15:44,950 but mad in craft. 255 00:15:51,797 --> 00:15:53,458 Be thou assured... 256 00:15:53,799 --> 00:15:57,030 if words be made of breath and breath of life... 257 00:15:57,136 --> 00:16:01,072 I have no life to breathe what thou hast said to me. 258 00:16:14,587 --> 00:16:16,578 I must to England; you know that? 259 00:16:17,590 --> 00:16:21,253 Alack, I had forgot. 'Tis so concluded on. 260 00:16:24,263 --> 00:16:26,254 This fellow set me packing. 261 00:16:26,432 --> 00:16:31,426 Some actors make him violent physically with his mother and... 262 00:16:31,771 --> 00:16:35,002 that isn'tjust some kind of generalized misogyny or what have you... 263 00:16:35,107 --> 00:16:39,441 it seems to me to be something in Hamlet that he is brought face to face with. 264 00:16:39,945 --> 00:16:43,506 I think Shakespeare shows us that his own reactions to that killing... 265 00:16:43,616 --> 00:16:46,608 are to throw him into emotional turmoil. 266 00:16:46,786 --> 00:16:50,017 I don't myself think it drives him mad... 267 00:16:50,122 --> 00:16:52,682 but it drives him perilously close to madness. 268 00:16:52,792 --> 00:16:55,784 He certainly is in a very pent up state... 269 00:16:56,295 --> 00:16:58,195 when he gets to his mother's closet... 270 00:16:58,297 --> 00:17:02,563 and of course it is exacerbated by the appearance of the ghost... 271 00:17:02,902 --> 00:17:05,234 so I think when he is talking to his mother... 272 00:17:05,404 --> 00:17:07,736 all his pent up feelings come to the surface. 273 00:17:07,907 --> 00:17:11,240 It is a most brilliantly written scene the way that Shakespeare... 274 00:17:12,411 --> 00:17:14,971 contrives language to give the impression... 275 00:17:15,081 --> 00:17:17,982 that we are actually in the mind of a man... 276 00:17:18,084 --> 00:17:21,076 is a brilliant technical feat. 277 00:17:22,755 --> 00:17:25,747 Save me and hover o'er me with your wings. You heavenly guards! 278 00:17:26,092 --> 00:17:28,083 What would your gracious figure? 279 00:17:33,265 --> 00:17:34,596 Alas, he's mad! 280 00:17:34,767 --> 00:17:36,758 Do you not come your tardy son to chide... 281 00:17:36,936 --> 00:17:39,166 that, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by... 282 00:17:39,271 --> 00:17:41,603 Th' important acting of your dread command? 283 00:17:42,441 --> 00:17:45,774 - O, say! - Do not forget. 284 00:17:46,612 --> 00:17:50,946 This visitation is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. 285 00:17:51,951 --> 00:17:55,182 But look, amazement on thy mother sits. 286 00:17:55,287 --> 00:17:58,620 O, step between her and her fighting soul. 287 00:17:58,958 --> 00:18:03,224 Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. 288 00:18:04,230 --> 00:18:06,130 Speak to her. 289 00:18:06,232 --> 00:18:09,793 - Ho is't with you, Lady? - How is't with you... 290 00:18:09,902 --> 00:18:12,234 That you do bend your eye on vacancy... 291 00:18:12,738 --> 00:18:15,639 And with th' incorporal air do hold discourse? 292 00:18:15,741 --> 00:18:19,404 - Whereon do you look? - On him, on him. 293 00:18:19,745 --> 00:18:23,738 Look you how pale he glares. His form and cause conjoined... 294 00:18:24,083 --> 00:18:25,983 preaching to stones, would make them capable. 295 00:18:26,085 --> 00:18:29,077 Do not look at me, lest with this piteous action you convert... 296 00:18:29,422 --> 00:18:32,414 My stern effects; then what I have to do will want true colour... 297 00:18:32,758 --> 00:18:37,422 - tears perchance for blood. - o whom do you speak this? 298 00:18:38,431 --> 00:18:43,334 - Do you see nothing there? - Nothing at all; yet all that I see. 299 00:18:43,436 --> 00:18:47,770 - Nor did you nothing hear? - No, nothing but ourselves. 300 00:18:48,441 --> 00:18:52,775 Look how it steals away. My father, in his habit as he lived. 301 00:18:53,279 --> 00:18:56,271 Look, even now as the leaves out the portal. 302 00:18:57,616 --> 00:19:00,551 This is the very coinage of your brain. 303 00:19:01,053 --> 00:19:04,386 This bodiless creation ecstasy is very cunning in. 304 00:19:07,059 --> 00:19:10,392 Hamlet as we have seen treats his mother harshly... 305 00:19:10,729 --> 00:19:14,062 he's equally harsh to Ophellia, the young lady he supposedly loves. 306 00:19:14,400 --> 00:19:17,392 And this contributes to her eventual madness and suicide. 307 00:19:18,070 --> 00:19:20,732 Can his treatment of her in any way bejustifiable? 308 00:19:23,242 --> 00:19:26,803 Soft you now, the fair Ophelia! 309 00:19:26,912 --> 00:19:29,244 Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered. 310 00:19:29,582 --> 00:19:32,483 Good my lord, how does your honour for this many a day? 311 00:19:32,585 --> 00:19:34,917 I humbly thank you, well... 312 00:19:35,254 --> 00:19:37,916 I don't think Hamlet's behavior towards Ophelia can bejustified... 313 00:19:38,257 --> 00:19:41,920 but hardly anything Hamlet does is capable of a simplejustification. 314 00:19:42,261 --> 00:19:45,924 He is never completely right, I don't think in anything that he does. 315 00:19:46,265 --> 00:19:49,928 Towards Ophelia he behaves quite brutally... 316 00:19:50,603 --> 00:19:53,265 but on the other hand he thinks he has been betrayed... 317 00:19:53,606 --> 00:19:55,836 and as far as she is concerned in the course of the scene... 318 00:19:55,941 --> 00:19:59,274 he seems to betray and reject her conclusively. 319 00:20:00,446 --> 00:20:02,437 I never gave you aught. 320 00:20:02,781 --> 00:20:05,113 My honoured lord you know right well you did... 321 00:20:05,784 --> 00:20:07,775 And with them words of so sweet breath composed... 322 00:20:08,120 --> 00:20:10,782 As made these things more rich. 323 00:20:12,625 --> 00:20:15,287 Their perfume lost. Take these again: 324 00:20:15,628 --> 00:20:20,964 for to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 325 00:20:21,967 --> 00:20:24,299 - Are you honest? - My lord? 326 00:20:24,637 --> 00:20:26,537 - Are you fair? - What means your lordship? 327 00:20:26,639 --> 00:20:28,869 That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit... 328 00:20:28,974 --> 00:20:30,532 no discourse to your beauty. 329 00:20:30,643 --> 00:20:32,873 Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty? 330 00:20:32,978 --> 00:20:36,209 Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform... 331 00:20:36,315 --> 00:20:38,306 honesty from what it is to bawd... 332 00:20:38,651 --> 00:20:41,882 than the force of honesty can translate beauty to his likeness. 333 00:20:41,987 --> 00:20:43,978 This was sometime a paradox... 334 00:20:44,156 --> 00:20:46,488 but now the time gives it proof. 335 00:20:49,995 --> 00:20:51,986 I did love you once. 336 00:20:52,665 --> 00:20:56,328 Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. 337 00:20:57,002 --> 00:21:00,597 I think one may say that Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia... 338 00:21:00,940 --> 00:21:05,502 is understandable given his own condition, given his state of mind... 339 00:21:05,611 --> 00:21:09,513 the state of mind of somebody who has recently, very recently... 340 00:21:09,615 --> 00:21:13,517 experienced the murder of his father in mysterious circumstances... 341 00:21:13,619 --> 00:21:16,611 which he is desperately trying to unravel combined... 342 00:21:16,956 --> 00:21:20,289 with the recent remarriage of his mother... 343 00:21:20,626 --> 00:21:24,528 to the person that we know at least is the murderer of his father. 344 00:21:24,630 --> 00:21:26,621 He is in a terrible state of mind. 345 00:21:27,633 --> 00:21:30,625 Go thee to a nunnery and quickly too. 346 00:21:30,970 --> 00:21:34,963 Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool... 347 00:21:35,307 --> 00:21:38,970 for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. 348 00:21:40,646 --> 00:21:43,547 To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell. 349 00:21:43,649 --> 00:21:45,207 O heavenly powers, restore him! 350 00:21:45,317 --> 00:21:47,547 I have heard of your paintings too, well enough... 351 00:21:47,653 --> 00:21:50,884 God gives you one face, and you make yourselves another: 352 00:21:50,990 --> 00:21:54,653 you jig, you amble, you lisp, you nick-name God's creatures... 353 00:21:54,994 --> 00:21:56,985 you call your wantonness your ignorance. 354 00:21:57,830 --> 00:22:00,765 I'll have no more on't; it made me mad. 355 00:22:01,266 --> 00:22:04,258 I say, we shall have no more marriages: 356 00:22:04,770 --> 00:22:08,433 those that are married, all but one... 357 00:22:09,108 --> 00:22:13,772 shall live; the rest shall stay as they are. 358 00:22:15,114 --> 00:22:17,446 To a nunnery, go. 359 00:22:19,451 --> 00:22:22,352 I think another facet of Ophelia though... 360 00:22:22,454 --> 00:22:25,787 is in the overall large design of the play. 361 00:22:26,125 --> 00:22:30,789 The play is partly about reactions to death. 362 00:22:31,797 --> 00:22:33,697 Hamlet reacts to his father's death... 363 00:22:33,799 --> 00:22:36,700 Ophelia reacts to her father's death. 364 00:22:36,802 --> 00:22:40,135 She and Laertes react to her father's death. 365 00:22:40,472 --> 00:22:44,806 Now the death of Polonious causes... 366 00:22:45,144 --> 00:22:47,704 his daughter to go mad... 367 00:22:47,813 --> 00:22:52,375 and it causes his son to seek revenge. 368 00:22:52,484 --> 00:22:55,146 Now in a sense they polarize out... 369 00:22:55,320 --> 00:22:59,882 two aspects of Hamlet's reactions to his father's death. 370 00:22:59,992 --> 00:23:01,926 Hamlet nearly goes mad... 371 00:23:02,261 --> 00:23:05,594 Hamlet certainly wants to take revenge... 372 00:23:05,931 --> 00:23:08,923 but Hamlet is a more complex figure... 373 00:23:09,268 --> 00:23:12,499 so in a sense Laertes and Ophelia... 374 00:23:12,604 --> 00:23:18,270 are simplified portrayals of certain aspects of Hamlet himself I think. 375 00:23:21,280 --> 00:23:24,613 Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state... 376 00:23:25,951 --> 00:23:29,614 The glass of fashion and the mould of form... 377 00:23:30,456 --> 00:23:34,449 Th' observed of all observers, quite, quite down! 378 00:23:36,128 --> 00:23:37,459 And I... 379 00:23:37,796 --> 00:23:42,790 of ladies most deject and wretched, that sucked the honey of his music vows... 380 00:23:43,135 --> 00:23:45,467 Now see that noble and most sovereign reason... 381 00:23:45,804 --> 00:23:49,137 like sweet bellsjangled out of tune and harsh... 382 00:23:51,810 --> 00:23:57,146 That unmatched form and feature of blown youth blasted with ecstasy. 383 00:24:00,586 --> 00:24:02,577 O, woe is me... 384 00:24:03,589 --> 00:24:06,922 T' have seen what I have seen, see what I see! 385 00:24:10,596 --> 00:24:12,154 Although any description of the action of the play... 386 00:24:12,264 --> 00:24:14,494 gives the impression of a series of grim events... 387 00:24:14,600 --> 00:24:17,592 there is actually a great deal of humor contained within it. 388 00:24:17,936 --> 00:24:19,597 There is this tension between the comic touches... 389 00:24:19,938 --> 00:24:24,602 and the obsessions with death account for the plays unusual popularity. 390 00:24:25,277 --> 00:24:29,179 Here's a skull now hath lain you i'th' earth three-and-twenty years. 391 00:24:29,281 --> 00:24:31,841 - Whose was it? - A whoreson mad fellow's it was. 392 00:24:31,950 --> 00:24:34,612 - Whose do you think it was? - Nay, I know not. 393 00:24:35,454 --> 00:24:38,116 A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! 394 00:24:38,457 --> 00:24:41,119 A' poured a flagon of rhenish on my head once. 395 00:24:41,794 --> 00:24:46,026 This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the king'sjester. 396 00:24:46,131 --> 00:24:47,462 - This? - E'en that. 397 00:24:47,633 --> 00:24:48,691 Let me see. 398 00:24:48,801 --> 00:24:54,797 It is remarkable that Hamlet is the funniest of all Shakespeare's tragedies. 399 00:24:55,140 --> 00:24:59,042 The climatic comedy of the play I suppose... 400 00:24:59,144 --> 00:25:03,308 is in the graveyard scene which itself is a paradox, isn't it? 401 00:25:03,415 --> 00:25:06,316 You have a really funny character except that he is digging graves... 402 00:25:06,418 --> 00:25:11,754 for dead people to be buried in, but that is only one aspect of... 403 00:25:12,591 --> 00:25:16,925 a sequence of comedy which runs throughout the play. 404 00:25:17,095 --> 00:25:19,427 Shakespeare is constantly concerned in other words... 405 00:25:19,598 --> 00:25:24,592 to permit a comic perspective on the tragic action he is portraying. 406 00:25:24,937 --> 00:25:28,498 As thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried... 407 00:25:28,607 --> 00:25:31,508 Alexander returneth to dust, the dust is earth... 408 00:25:31,610 --> 00:25:34,511 from earth we make loam, and why from that loam... 409 00:25:34,613 --> 00:25:36,945 to which noble Alexander was converted... 410 00:25:37,282 --> 00:25:40,274 may we not find it stopping a beer-barrel? 411 00:25:40,953 --> 00:25:44,286 lmperous Caesar dead and turned to clay... 412 00:25:44,957 --> 00:25:47,949 might stop a hole to keep the wind away. 413 00:25:48,293 --> 00:25:51,854 O, that earth which kept the world in awe... 414 00:25:51,964 --> 00:25:55,957 might patch a wall t' expel the winter's flaw! 415 00:25:56,468 --> 00:26:00,131 We should also remember that the most comic figure in the play is Hamlet. 416 00:26:00,405 --> 00:26:02,635 Hamlet is a wit. 417 00:26:02,741 --> 00:26:06,302 He is an intensely intelligent figure who is a satirist... 418 00:26:06,411 --> 00:26:08,402 and he satirizes for example Polonius. 419 00:26:08,580 --> 00:26:11,811 In the graveyard scene he has more abstract satire of lawyers... 420 00:26:11,917 --> 00:26:17,583 when he is talking there. He is the intelligent character of the play... 421 00:26:17,923 --> 00:26:19,914 and intelligence often takes the form of wit... 422 00:26:20,259 --> 00:26:23,251 in the capacity to send people up quite frankly. 423 00:26:23,428 --> 00:26:26,420 I have heard that guilty creatures... 424 00:26:27,099 --> 00:26:28,657 sitting at a play... 425 00:26:28,767 --> 00:26:31,429 have, by the very cunning of the scene, been struck so to the soul... 426 00:26:31,770 --> 00:26:34,762 that presently they have proclaimed their malefactions. 427 00:26:35,274 --> 00:26:37,504 For murder, though it have no tongue... 428 00:26:37,609 --> 00:26:39,941 will speak with most miraculous organ. 429 00:26:40,279 --> 00:26:43,612 Hamlet we might say in a happier life would have been... 430 00:26:43,949 --> 00:26:46,509 the hero of one of Shakespeare's romantic comedies. 431 00:26:46,618 --> 00:26:48,518 He is the only one of Shakespeare's tragic heroes... 432 00:26:48,620 --> 00:26:53,853 who might have been the hero of comedy, if circumstances had been better to him. 433 00:26:53,959 --> 00:26:56,291 And I think that this is part of the attraction of the play too... 434 00:26:56,628 --> 00:26:59,961 that Hamlet is an intensely attractive man. 435 00:27:00,299 --> 00:27:03,234 I don't mean necessarily physically. He can be so physically... 436 00:27:03,568 --> 00:27:06,469 but he is attractive in the sense that he is... 437 00:27:06,571 --> 00:27:10,564 introspective which has a sympathetic side to it... 438 00:27:10,909 --> 00:27:13,571 but also that he is so articulate, he may be... 439 00:27:13,912 --> 00:27:18,474 feeling himself to be inarticulate, but his inarticulateness itself... 440 00:27:18,583 --> 00:27:23,247 is explored in marvelously articulate language by himself... 441 00:27:23,588 --> 00:27:28,582 and this draws the audience to Hamlet in quite an exceptional way I think... 442 00:27:28,927 --> 00:27:32,260 so that the comedy within Hamlet... 443 00:27:32,597 --> 00:27:38,263 is in itself an important aspect of the comic treatment of Hamlet. 444 00:27:38,770 --> 00:27:42,001 I think Hamlet has got so much variety in it... 445 00:27:42,107 --> 00:27:46,771 and Hamlet the character has so much variety and vitality... 446 00:27:47,446 --> 00:27:52,782 that its appeal is hard to beat. 447 00:27:54,119 --> 00:27:55,780 Now I am alone. 448 00:27:57,456 --> 00:28:01,051 O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! 449 00:28:01,727 --> 00:28:04,287 Is it not monstrous that this player here... 450 00:28:04,396 --> 00:28:07,058 but in a fiction, a dream of passion. 451 00:28:07,399 --> 00:28:10,391 Could force his soul so to his own conceit that from her working... 452 00:28:10,736 --> 00:28:14,968 all this visage wanned. Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect. 453 00:28:15,073 --> 00:28:20,067 A broken voice, and his whole function suiting with forms to his conceit? 454 00:28:20,245 --> 00:28:22,577 And all for nothing! 455 00:28:24,082 --> 00:28:28,746 What would he do? Had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have? 456 00:28:29,087 --> 00:28:31,749 He would drown the stage with tears... 457 00:28:32,090 --> 00:28:34,320 and cleave the general ear with horrid speech... 458 00:28:34,426 --> 00:28:36,326 make mad the guilty, and appal the free... 459 00:28:36,428 --> 00:28:38,658 confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed... 460 00:28:38,764 --> 00:28:43,098 the very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I... 461 00:28:43,435 --> 00:28:45,995 a dull and muddy-mettled rascal... 462 00:28:46,104 --> 00:28:48,334 peak like John-a-dreams... 463 00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:52,774 unrepentant of my cause, and can say nothing... 464 00:28:53,111 --> 00:28:58,105 no, not for a king upon whose property and most dear life... 465 00:28:58,283 --> 00:29:00,877 a damned defeat was made. 466 00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:04,280 Am I a coward? Who calls me villain? 467 00:29:04,389 --> 00:29:06,721 Breaks my pate across? Tweaks me by the nose? 468 00:29:07,059 --> 00:29:09,391 Gives me the lie i' the throat, as deep as to the lungs? 469 00:29:09,728 --> 00:29:10,956 Who does me this? 470 00:29:11,063 --> 00:29:13,395 'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be... 471 00:29:13,565 --> 00:29:18,229 but I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall to make oppression bitter... 472 00:29:18,403 --> 00:29:21,964 or ere this I should have fatted all the region kites... 473 00:29:22,074 --> 00:29:26,408 with this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain! 474 00:29:26,745 --> 00:29:30,738 Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! 475 00:29:31,416 --> 00:29:34,408 O, vengeance!