Learning to Love Hamlet

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 We are reading Hamlet in my Shakespeare class. My first exposure to Hamlet was seeing a production put on by a troupe of travelling players at an inner city school in Chicago. My dad was student teaching at the school and so over the weekend he brought us to see the production that was being put on for the students.

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My second exposure to Hamlet was when my dad was the sixth grade homeroom teacher for my older brother Patrick. My dad directed three adaptations of Shakespeare plays, including Hamlet. Patrick was cast as Hamlet. (For those of you who are worried that my dad was playing favourites, please rest assured than whenever my siblings and I auditioned for production in which our father had directorial influence he always removed himself from the room during our auditions so that he would not be biased.)

My second exposure to Hamlet was when my dad was the sixth grade homeroom teacher for my older brother Patrick. My dad directed three adaptations of Shakespeare plays, including Hamlet. Patrick wasssured than whenever my siblings and I auditioned for production in which our father had directorial influence he always removed himself from the room during our auditions so that he would not be biased.)

Patrick at age 12 was a stunning Hamlet. Yes, he was a foot shorter than Ophelia, but he was brooding and tortured. He delivered his lines with passion and skilled diction. I remember walking up to him after the performance and feeling strange about talking to the man who had played Hamlet. At age 9 I had trouble separating what was my brother and what was the role he was playing. I thought it was odd how from my seat his eyes had looked normal but up close his eye makeup made him look like an Egyptian pharaoh.

On account of Patrick's having to memorise Hamlet's To Be or Not to Be soliloquy my younger brother, Paul Hugh age 6, and I also had the speech pretty much down. We went around exclaiming over the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune".

A couple of weeks ago Sheldon and I went to see Hamlet starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the cinema. The show had been live recorded in London and was then broadcast to cinemas around the world. It was an odd way to experience a play. During the intermission the camera was set on the London audience. Sheldon and I sat in our cinema seats and watch one Londoner who appeared to be entirely unimpressed with the goings on. She was in a fleece jacket and spent the entire intermission texting. Sheldon and I had dressed quite nicely, even just to watch the broadcast from thousands of miles away!

So why am I talking about Hamlet today? I guess it is because I have been relating to him a little bit lately. I feel as though I am trapped in a work situation in which I have very little recourse and therefore must internalise and soliloquise. Hamlet gets to soliloquise to an audience of playgoers while I get to soliloquise to you all here on my blog. I have really felt the catharsis of the play in this week of reading Hamlet. My "slings and arrows" are much less dramatic, in fact they are quite hum-drum, but reading the way that Hamlet processes his afflictions aids me in processing my own. I am currently in love with the line in which he says:

"Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! (1.2.129-130)" 

I know how it feels to wish that you could melt away. How much easier would life be if you were a puddle instead of a human being?!