Hamlet at the Harold Pinter

Hamlet at the Harold Pinter

Starring Andrew Scott

Directed by Robert Icke

This is a scene by scene review/commentary.

In case you plan to see the play, or have a chance of doing so, please skip the review and head to West End. It is not to be missed. Get thee to the play. Seriously! In case you just cannot catch it, then make do with this. I have tried to capture my experience of the play, it is hardly comparable to being there, but I had to write this long commentary so that I don’t forget what it felt like to watch this amazing performance, and so that I preserve for myself the thoughts and feelings that were evoked through it.

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A spartan set greets the audience, which in addition to the lack of anything royal about it, also has a few unexpected elements. A large sofa to one corner, two-three steel chairs to either side, and what looks like a steam-punk console of some sorts to one corner.

* * * *

Act 1 Scene 1

To the immediate surprise of the spectators, the play opens with large flat TV screens switching on all around them with weird footages playing in them.

Instead of a guard platform we get a CCTV observation room. The guards look flustered and soon, of course, Horatio enters (in some style I must say, much more casual in attire compared to the stiff suited guards).

Marcellus and Barnardo resume their attempts to convince Horatio (one is to assume somehow the CCTVs could not record the supernatural stuff, I guess) of what they have seen when all of a sudden horrific static erupts in the theater and the dead King appears on-screen, ominous and really really spooky. A collective gasp from the audience at this. It was pretty effective – considering the Dane had only come on-screen yet – the audience has not been introduced to the real ghost yet. I wondered if all ghost scenes would be thorough CCTVs… that would be a pity even if it went pretty splendidly this time. After all how would the father-son equation, which is the core of the play, play out through CCTVs? In any case, even as Scholar Horatio tries to hail the Ghost (who is in military attire, as a modern parallel to the armor worn by the original), there is a minor explosion at the console and the Ghost had disappeared from the screens as abruptly as it had appeared.

Before the scene concludes Horatio quickly updates the soldiers about what is happening in the kingdom and why security is so tight these days: The old King killed his rival King of Norway, Fortinbras, and conquered his territories. Now his (Norway’s) son, in revenge, is attempting to take back his territories with a small band of rag-tag outlaws he had gathered. Mark that from this it doesn’t feel like Fortinbras had any chance of defeating Denmark, but then an internal revenge drama will facilitate the external revenge drama. Pretty sweet, right? This is something that is often overlooked I guess, but maybe there was a poetic symmetry to this as well.

The Ghost makes another abrupt appearance, throwing the guards and Horatio into another frenzy. More frantic fiddling of the dials, etc. ensue (to be honesty this time it felt a bit comic, the reactions).

Ghost exits. It faded on the crowing of the cock – the guards quickly trying to explain away the unknown with the presumed known, finding some comfort in their astute understanding of how the supernatural world is supposed to function. We have to make everything conform to rules, absurd though they may be.

They decide that they have to inform Hamlet of what has been happening here.

Scene closes to some stunning music and the stage goes pitch black. Obviously some stage rearrangement was underway in the darkness, though I am unsure how they manage to do so in that darkness. Must take some deft hands.

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Shakespeare: The Obscure & The Elusive (A Biography)

 

Shakespeare: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd

My Rating: ★★★☆☆

 

“Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakespeare. 

So far from Shakespeare’s being the least known, he is the one person in all modern history fully known to us.”

~ Emerson

The Obscure & The Elusive

This ‘biography’ that Ackroyd strings together is mostly tedious, though it has a few really good moments and it has to be admitted that it presents most of the facts that is known of the great Bard. In spite of this, I think it is a mistake to pick up this bio unless one is familiar with ALL the plays of Shakespeare, including the controversially attributed ones – since Ackroyd constructs the bio mostly through the plays and the lines and extrapolating form them, tying together with some skill the fragmentary traces Shakespeare left in the world outside the stage.

The fact that whatever is pieced together from outside plays is from the patchy legal records of Shakespeare’s land dealings, taxes paid, borrowings/lendings, cases filed, and so on, should give an idea of the tedium involved. The saving grace is when Shakespeare’s contemporary critics step in to spice it up by naive statements that posterity was destined to have hearty laughs at.

Also, Ackroyd tries to do it both ways – understand the life through the plays and then understand the plays through the life. Which makes a bit of a mess in figuring out where the circle closes. Also, Ackroyd seems to lean towards reading the life into the work when the life can be read out of the work.

Maybe, much of Shakespeare’s existence was the very construction of his plays, and these in turn might tell us more about him than can the set of random anecdotes that have escaped the distortions of history and Shakespeare’s own efforts to maintain a private life, that Ackroyd tires so hard to dig out. If Ackroyd had stuck to a consistent plan either way, we might have had a much more coherent work.

In the end, the ‘bio’ is definitely useful in understanding Shakespeare’s London (which included the audiences, stage, limitations of the stage, audience expectations), what is known of his life (with shadings of childhood influences, dramatic/poetic progress, worldly progress, family troubles/tragedies/ambitions), and the London Stage itself (including economic conditions and preoccupations, major rivals, the dramatic scene of the time, the actors, the interaction b/w actors and characters).

This is all very admirable, but the question is how much of all this information is needed for understanding his plays – especially when his greatest genius was apparently in being conspicuous by his absence in his works! Ackroyd asserts this himself and thus nullifies his entire effort, in one fell swoop. (if you detect a contradiction in the review here, it is intended to show the same contradiction apparent in the book)

In addition Ackroyd is known to present speculation as concluded fact and reader has to keep his guard up throughout the book, which is very tiring to be honest, and not quite worth the effort.

View all my reviews

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Killing Time

.

Once upon a midnight dreary,

I ambled upon those sands dreamy,

An hour behind the fleeting breath,

I rushed to catch Her fading truth …

The last slender strands of Time slips,

Through my fingers, through this hourglass slim …

 .

Time, such a shadowy being is She,

To be glimpsed only when least desired:

Passion’s startling antipode is She —

By whom when led She droops,

When leading, ascends …

 .

A good writer possesses not just his,

But also the spirit of all men’s thoughts —

Time is his commerce, Time his grave,

Time is what he will for always crave.

The slips and the streams, they drain, and they drain,

He is left alone, possessing not even his own;

With it the stream of words cease to flow,

With it all voices of melody turns mute …

… I do not wish to make me a laughing-stock,

Before these throngs of idle listeners.

 .

… Let not sloth dim my horrors new-begot,

Let me discover anew silence wherever I turn.

Help me find that silent thief,

Who steals from me my most precious treasure —

Procrastination, that thief of Time,

Let me collar him and hammer the stake!

 .

I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat,

And sneak in with my silent words …

“And form your noose around that neck,”

Said She, in the same hurried passionate whisper,

“And hang him till the fleeting breath flits no more”.

..

.

.

Composed on: Google Docs Demo: Masters Edition, in collaboration with Edgar Alan Poe, William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare. So a few quotes from these writers make up some lines here and there, all the better parts actually.

PS. Do share your own collaborations below if you find them interesting.

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How to Read and Why

How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom

My Rating: ★★★★★

This book has come by some harsh criticism, especially by eminent reviewers like Terry Eagleton and fellow goodreaders. In spite of the bad reviews by goodreaders I usually take at their word, I decided to give the book a chance. With Bloom’s combination of ideas such as Shakespeare being the progenitor of all modern fiction and poetry, and of the bard also being the inventor of ‘Human” in literature and his audacious theory on all literary works being nothing more than a sort of plagiarism or a creative misreading of earlier efforts, I was sure that at the very least I would get some interesting things to read about the thirty odd literary masterpieces (and forty odd authors) that he endeavors to discuss in the book.

One of the major criticism leveled at the book by most of the reviewers I found on goodreads was about how most of his discussions on various books, especially of short stories and poems, were just recapitulations of the plots and the verses and then some banal commentary on how good they were or how moving they were. This is well captured by Terry Eagleton when he says that Bloom has no fallen into the “quote-and-dote” school of criticism. In one of his most stinging passages he remarks:

“Why does Bloom need to augment the self? ‘We read,’ he suggests, ‘not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies and all the sorrows of familial and passional life.’ It sounds as though Harold is a bit short of mates and reads to make up for it. Perhaps he alienates them by his repeated chanting of excessively long poems.”

Turns out that the fundamental problem with the book is that it is not an essay on how to read or on why to read but it is a book about books, a book by a passionate reader about the books he loves the most – the best sort there is. It does not teach you how to read books but it is an exercise on how to talk about books you have read, how to love them, how to re-read them and how to reminisce about those old companions in the most intelligent and enamored fashion. That is what bloom demonstrates.

This book is an exercise in love – a reader talking about what he loves to read and why, converted forcefully into a book on how and why another should read – and this I feel was the reason the book got all its bad reviews. It built up the wrong expectations. Readers came to it hoping for good advice on how to read meaningfully but was treated to a long monologue on how bloom reads and why he loves it. With a better title and an explanatory subtitle, the same readers might have loved the same book that they criticized so much. Luckily for me, I did not go into it hoping for someone to teach me how to read or wondering why I should read, I am getting by well enough on those fronts; I went in hoping to discuss some of these great books and I got exactly that – a nice conversation with someone who loves books, the very best of pleasures that a reading life offers.

Ultimately, my biggest complaint is about how short the book is, how perfunctory it is – glossing over Blake and Chekov and others in the space of a few pages and treating only the smallest possible sample of their works (one). I have a strong feeling that the title of the book was fixed around midway through its writing, because from then on, probably following his editor’s orders, Bloom takes to ending each chapter with the questions of the book title, the “how” an the “why” of reading, and mostly the answers he provides are platitudes that only serve to irritate the serious reader who wants only to talk on about his favorite books and not wait for the author to come back to the discussion after giving a small meaningless speech to the public like an advertisement that intrudes on it. It feels like a sell-out and cheapens the experience.

I did not mind the many shortcomings of the book, it reminded me of old friends and gave me a few good insights from the texts quoted and many more from my own memories of reading and most valuably, it made me think of why I read them, what I experienced then and how I was changed by each of the readings. That was the great pleasure Bloom gave to me while I put up with his “teenage groupie” sticky sentimentality about Shakespeare and repeated admonitions to read poems aloud or to read to ‘expand one’s consciousness’. The “how” to read part of the book is stifling and pedantic and the “why” part of the title does not get much attention but Stuart Jeffries captures it brilliantly when he says: “Ultimately the intellectual and the sensual are married in Bloom’s notion of reading as a difficult pleasure. He calls this “the reader’s Sublime”. It is the closest to secular transcendence that we may achieve in this life – it helps us get beyond despair, loss and death. The cultivation of that difficult pleasure, finally, is why we should read.”

You don’t have to agree with Bloom’s views to enjoy the book because the book is just a shared exercise in enjoying other books – you just need to have a love for the same books that Bloom discusses and the patience to put up with some commercial asides and the rest will take care of itself.

If you have read and enjoyed most of the books discussed, pick up the book and read it to reminisce with a fellow reader and you are bound to enjoy most parts of it. Bloom’s love of great literature being so contagious, it might even send you anew to Proust, to Ibsen, to Borges, to Italo Calvino, to Pynchon, to Emily Dickenson and most importantly to Shakespeare. But, if you have read very few of the works discussed and pick up the book to find a reason why you should read them, you will probably hate this book and also stay away from the wonderful classics discussed, and there could be no greater tragedy. With that caveat, take my five-star rating and my complete recommendation for reading this book.

View all my reviews

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Satanic Verses: A Composition

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

He had just finished his thirty-fourth reading of the play. The unsaid hate, the unseen events, the half-imagined wrongs; they tormented him. What could cause such evil to manifest, he just could not figure. He loved him too much to believe the simple explanation.

And then the idea starts growing on him – to explore the growth of evil just as Shakespeare showed, explored the tragic culmination of it. And because you show the growth, it can no longer be a tragedy, no, no it has to be a comedy. A tragi-comedy. Yes. And he set to it. He painted Othello as an Indian actor, worshiped and adored and off on a mad canter to get his Ice Queen, his Desdemona. On his way he meets him – the poor man trying to forget his own roots and desperately reinventing himself, his Iago.

Yes Iago too was once a man. What twists of fate made him evil incarnate? He sets out his prime motif: The question that’s asked here remains as large as ever it was: which is, the nature of evil, how it’s born, why it grows, how it takes unilateral possession of a many-sided human soul.

Wait a minute, he blinks at his notes, if Iago is evil incarnate, does that not also mean that he is Satan incarnate? Chamcha then is Satan incarnate? Then Othello has to be God? A little bit more corruptible maybe? Let us make him the angel Gibreel, he decided. As an aside, as the angel, he can slip into that reality in his dreams and reenact the story (history?) of Prophet Mohammad in inflammatory fashion, maybe talk about the ‘Satanic Verses’ since his Satan can’t help but gloat over his little jokes. Why not call the novel so too, except that it would mean something else – the verses that the real Satan of the story, Iago, sings in Othello’s ear. He knows that this might be cause for misunderstanding, might ruffle a few feathers, but it is just a digression, the real story is beyond that – it is not the Event Horizon. But he can’t help himself. He never could keep a story simple.

Ah, now something beyond mere Othello is taking shape is it not? If Iago is Satan, then surely it is in character to enjoy with consummate pleasure the sight of his own jealousy consuming himself – the green-eyed monster that feeds on itself. So Satan decides to narrate the story of one of his incarnations? Or rather, possessions? The questions that are to run his plot are flowing freely now. How an ordinary man when in contact with an angel inevitably had to transform into Lucifer himself. How can one exist without the other. They meet and the spiral ensues and Iago mutates and agitates and like a cancerous growth his strange fate builds until he turns his wrath square on his angel, his Othello. And how can he then not try to destroy what he is not, what he can not be. There is the moment before evil, then the moment of, then the time after; and each subsequent stride becomes progressively easier. But what about before and after the madness? It surely must be an ordinary life, with ordinary joys and pains. It is a cosmic drama, he concludes.

In the process, every insinuated implication in the play is to be played out in this story – Cassio does sleep with Iago’s wife, Iago is madly lustful of Desdemona, Othello is a deserving victim of directed revenge for very real ills and Iago needs no invented or unbelievable reasons for his actions. He is justified. It was inevitable.

Salman Rushdie sets down his pen.

He has vindicated Iago, many a literature lover’s favorite character.

And for that, I am eternally thankful.

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One down, Bard.

Othello by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I decided to start my mission to read all 38 of The Complete Plays of Shakespeare with Othello. It turned out to be a good decision to start with the New Cambridge edition.

I was considering this reading as an academic reading of the bard and it generally took me almost 3 hours of constant reading to get through one average sized (10-15 pages) scene! Even after reading every scene three times – once aloud and twice normally – I still never felt I had enough of it, and moved on to the next only due to the suspense. What genius, what lovely wordplays and what sense of drama and malice. I can’t believe I never had this joy in shakespeare till now.

All in all, it took much longer than originally planned… But then that is the drawback of reading annotated works – had to read every scene three times… But these New Cambridge Editions are gold mines of information, will stick with them for the other plays also. I hope my mission will not take years to complete at this rate…

One closing statement: Iago is my favorite literary character after Don Quixote.

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