I think it is widely accepted that the scriptwriters for the Lion King took some inspiration from Hamlet. The parallels don’t run very deep, but in thinking about this I wondered whether the film provides any new ways of thinking about the play. New ways of thinking about Hamlet are pretty unlikely of course, but then again the world of Shakespearean scholarship traditionally draws little or no inspiration from Disney.
Apologies for the spoilers, but you will recall that in the film, Scar/Claudius kills Muphasa/King Hamlet, and tries, ultimately unsuccessfully, to kill Simba/Prince Hamlet at the same time. The question this suggested to me is why doesn’t Claudius do the same? Granted he tries, eventually successfully, to kill Hamlet, but there is no suggestion in the opening scenes of the play that Hamlet feels his life is under imminent threat, even when he learns of his father’s murder. So why didn’t Claudius move swiftly to eliminate his only serious opponent for the throne of Denmark? Clearly he does not see Hamlet as an immediate threat. Hamlet is away studying in Germany when his father dies, and when he returns to the funeral Claudius has already taken steps to secure the throne. He has had himself crowned and just as importantly married Gertrude, quickly consolidating his position. Hamlet has a natural claim to the throne as the late king’s only son, and although he is still a student he appears in his mid to late twenties, and is certainly old enough to take the crown.
The constitution of 13th Century Denmark is not, surprisingly, discussed in the play, and the audience is pitched into the middle of the action, so there is little time to consider the rights and wrongs of Claudius’ “coup” before the ghost appears. Hamlet’s distress is focused on his mother’s rapid marriage to his uncle, rather than his uncle’s assumption of power. So this question – why is Claudius king not Hamlet, and how long will that last before awkward questions begin to be posed – is not one that occurs to the audience.
Having concluded he represents no immediate threat, Claudius must have considered the risk of Hamlet at some point making a claim for the throne, gathering support at court and waiting for his moment. Claudius takes steps to kill Hamlet, but only once his erratic behaviour makes him fear for his own life (as opposed to his own position) and once the Mousetrap reveals that he is aware of the true cause of the old King’s death. Hamlet is an inconvenience to be disposed of rather than a serious threat, and Claudius can take his time in dealing with him. Scar has no such luxury, which is in fact much closer to the reality of the natural world, where a male lion taking control of a pride will kill the cubs of the previous king of the pride.
Simply cutting Hamlet down where he stands isn’t really an option for Claudius, but once the scale of the threat becomes apparent he acts quickly to dispose of the prince. So perhaps the parallels with scar are closer than they first appear.
One other issue not addressed in the play, nor indeed the film, but are suggested by the turn of events, is whether Gertrude was part of the plot to kill King Hamlet, and/or whether her relationship with Claudius pre-dates the murder. Her marriage to Claudius is unprecedentedly rapid, and suggests some kind of prior arrangement or involvement. She is not as disturbed as Claudius by the scenes in the Mousetrap, and seems genuinely puzzled by Hamlet’s “madness” – the idea to call in Rosencrantz and Guildernstern to try to get to the bottom of Hamlet’s melancholy is presumably hers. There’s no suggestion she is complicit in the plan to kill Prince Hamlet. So she is not a convincing candidate for accomplice to murder. But she wouldn’t be the first queen to stray into a brother in laws bed.
Category Archives: Shakespeare
Meaning
My last post looked in detail at Act 1 scene 1 of Hamlet, the battlements scene. I tried to show how the dramatist conveys a lot of detail about the scene, about the feelings and thoughts of the characters, with an extraordinary economy, and how in particular he builds a feeling of suspense and dread.
But I wanted to make a clear distinction between this kind of analysis, and the futile attempts you often see to decode from text “What the author really means”. This school of thought looks at literature as one big guessing game, where the author hides their intent or meaning within the lines of their book (or play, or poem) and the reader’s job is to work through the various clues to piece together what the author is really saying. Sometimes the codes are “easy” to crack – so Godot = God, simple as that. All Beckett meant to say was we are all going to die, but God doesn’t exist, and that makes him feel a bit sad. Sometimes the interpretation can be more complicated, and can only be done by reference to the author’s other work, personal life, diaries or love affairs.
I am not denying (of course) that authors use symbolism – but these are usually a bit more complex than object A symbolises object or abstract value B. The “find the real meaning” reading of literature is seductive – we all enjoy playing the game, and authors sometimes encourage us to do so. But it is ultimately wrong headed for several reasons:
– It is simplistic, reducing the analysis of literature to a parlour game
– It is boring – once you have worked out that the symbol equals X, what next?
– It is limiting – why should the author have sole authority over what his or her text means? Why can’t meaning change over time and with context. What Othello or The Merchant of Venice “meant” in 1600 is unlikely to be immutable. What I think of the opening lines of Act 1 Scene 1 of Hamlet has as much or as little validity as what anyone else thinks, so long as I can justify my reading.
Books aren’t simple machines for the conveyance of information. They don’t just provide the conduit for thought from the author to the reader. Once written they are free and live or die independently from the authorial intent, whatever that was. A simple example to illustrate the point – the word “fire” changes its meaning depending on its context – the word said as an instruction to a execution squad will have a completely different impact to the word said in alarm when smoke is spotted. Is it always that simple to spot the difference? – of course not.
Can you take this too far? Can an apparently straightforward text such as Animal Farm, with an ostensibly clear set of symbolic meanings, come to be about something other than the Russian Revolution? Well that’s completely up to us, the readers. If we find it interesting and useful to read this as a morality tale about, say, the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia or the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, why not? Drama in particular has the room to breathe that novels sometimes lack – staging, editing and production can turn a 17th century play about ancient Rome into a 21st Century political thriller.
So if the purpose of literary criticism or analysis is not to play “find the real meaning”, what is it for? Well, just because we abandon as pointless an attempt to understand what the author meant, doesn’t mean all texts are meaningless, or all readings are equally valid. Some are simply more interesting and worthwhile than others. We search for meaning, but we understand that the process is not a simple exchange from brain of author to brain of reader. The exchange is informed and changed by context and interpretation. Meaning changes. The first cave paintings might mean to us “Ancient man understood and valued his environment” but who knows, 10,000 years ago they might have been instruction manuals!
I understand and acknowledge that I am only scratching the surface of a highly complex set of issues here, and whether I return to the subject to tease a bit more understanding from it depends on how the mood takes me.
Hamlet – Act 1 Scene 1
I wrote a few weeks back that I would try my hand at some detailed analysis. Here it is – Act 1 scene 1 of Hamlet. Not all of it just the opening few lines. I don’t pretend that what I am doing here is original, but I enjoyed it, and that after all is the point of the blog.
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SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle.
FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO
FRANCISCO
BERNARDO
FRANCISCO
BERNARDO
BERNARDO
FRANCISCO
BERNARDO
FRANCISCO
BERNARDO
Well, good night.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste. Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS
Exit
BERNARDO
HORATIO
BERNARDO
MARCELLUS
BERNARDO
MARCELLUS
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Note the stage direction does not say “Night”. Staging a scene as happening at night would be hard in any event, so the fact it is dark – and cold – has to be conveyed by the actors’ lines. Of course they could just say “Isn’t it dark tonight?” but the method Shakespeare chose to convey this scene does much more. He builds the suspense through the sentries’ nervousness. As these are military men they do not reveal their anxiety directly, but it nevertheless emerges through the staccato dialogue.
Bernardo asks “Who’s there?”He is entering the castle ramparts looking for Francisco, to relieve him from his watch, ergo he is not the sentry, yet he is so jumpy that he challenges him – rather than the other way round as you would expect (ie “Who goes there?”). He has a particular reason to be nervous.
The person he is approaching is known to him (as we find out in a few lines) so he cannot see him clearly, or at all. So it is dark.
Equally Francisco, who is due to be relieved by Bernardo, and should be expecting him, doesn’t say “It’s me” but challenges his challenger – “Answer me”. He appears to be able to see B because he tells him to “stand and unfold”; ie “stand still, and reveal who you are”. This is an instruction, not a question. Again, it must be dark to cause all this ambiguity about identity, a theme which repeats very quickly when the ghost of the old king appears, and then often thereafter throughout the play. An alternative, simpler reading is that F is simply doing his job – as the sentry it is for him to challenge B, not the other way round. But it is clear from subsequent lines that F does not immediately recognise B – it is a genuine challenge, not just for the sake of form.
F’s reply is a line of blank verse, leaving the “Who’s there?” a truncated section of verse, suggesting a pause between the question and the answer – building the suspense.
As a way of identifying oneself this is a curious method – just about anyone could say this, it’s not a password, and doesn’t tell the person addressed who you are. But of course it is ironic – the King just deceased did not live long, nor will his successor.
F still can’t see B clearly – have they been approaching one another, or has B kept still as instructed, and F approached? But he appears to recognise him either by his emerging form, or perhaps his voice. This is the first use of B’s name – previously he has been (to the audience) soldier/watchman “A”.
This comment confirms that F expected B at this time – so why (the audience is invited to ask) was he so uncertain as to who was approaching? Was this just soldierly caution, or something more…? F again speaks in a line of blank verse. So far all the exchanges have been very short – B’s next line is the longest yet.
I confess I am uncertain how to read this line. A castle would have clock towers chiming the hour, so F would know that it is now “struck twelve”. The fact he has not heard the chime of midnight might suggest that the sensory deprivation of the scene is intense. Another simpler reading is that this is just a reply to the previous line – I am here because it is 12. This is another line of verse, with F’s name now confirmed.
The play’s first much quoted line – the first of many of course. As well as being dark – we now know it is just past midnight – and the soldiers being very nervous, we are told much more here. First, it is bitter cold, which piles on the atmosphere, and second that for some reason, as yet unexplained, F is “sick at heart”. The lines are gradually lengthening, and the verse is forming with the second line of this sentence being completed by B’s reply, thus linking the two lines aurally despite the apparent disjunction.
Instead of asking why, what’s up?, B simply asks “Have things been quiet?” This is a strange response – when someone tells you they are sick at heart, a strong expression, you usually ask why. But of course B knows why, and his question goes straight to the cause of F’s distress.
Again the lines lengthen, very gradually. It is noticeable that one watchman/sentry is replaced by three – again a sign that the passing of midnight means they expect something to happen. B urges F to ask H & M to hurry – but we are not told why.
“Who’s there?” Francisco’s turn to ask this, even though he is no longer the sentry on duty. H’s response is less indirect than F’s, and M’s response tells us we are in Denmark. H and M speak in two halves of a line of verse.
F has not introduced or identified himself to H & M; but they can tell he has been relieved from his post. So he must have left it and moved across stage, without saying farewell to B.
F tells H & M that he has been relieved by B, and leaves.
M calls out to B even though they are both on the same stage – by now we can tell how dark it is, notwithstanding any torches.
B calls out to H and once he has replied welcomes both H and M – suggesting he has moved across the stage or they have moved together, and can now see one another.
Why “a piece of him”? Perhaps suggesting he has come with his scepticism but without his belief (in ghosts). A jocular reply.
We move closer to a revelation of what has been making the guards so nervous, and F sick at heart – a thing which appears.
B has seen nothing, but he has only been on watch for a few minutes. But he only says he has seen nothing, not that nothing has been seen.
The mystery slowly unfolds further, and is finally revealed. This thing becomes a “dreaded sight” and finally, an “apparition”. M reveals the thing has been seen “of us” twice before. The longest lines thus far, introducing the ghost to the audience. But H is not there simply as a witness – and therefore shown to be someone with a certain status (It must be true of H has seen it) but also someone who is educated and level headed enough to engage the apparition and speak to it. He immediately demonstrates his scepticism – it will “not appear”. Of course, it does.
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Henry V and George of the Jungle
One of my proudest moments as a parent came, bizarrely, during a viewing of the otherwise excrable George of the Jungle 2 – note George of the Jungle 2, not the Brendan Fraser production, which was bad enough. At the end of GotJ2 nasty developers are planning to bulldoze the jungle, and only our brave hero George stands in their way. He calls together the badly realised animals of the jungle (including if memory serves John Cleese as a talking gorilla – hope the pay cheque made it worth it!), and delivers a monologue that is a distant parody of Henry V’s speech to his troops on the eve of the battle of Agincourt. (If you don’t know this speech, go and read it – now. Better still go and watch it, although last time I checked the 1945 Olivier version was not on YouTube. A few years ago I found a video copy in a charity shop, and I treasure it!). It (the sub-Brendan Fraser speech) is a horridly grotesque parody, but what makes the memory stand out for me is that my son, who could only have been about seven or eight at the time, actually recognised the speech – “Isn’t that from that play you like…?” |
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Yeah, I do like it, a bit, although I didn’t realise I had gone on about it quite so much. It’s an utterly astonishing piece of writing. One small example of how this speech has entered the English psyche is the “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers” line, which Churchill echoed in his reference to the Battle of Britain pilots as “The Few”. He may not have referenced the line deliberately, but he really didn’t need to.One of the things I love about this play, one of my favourites, is that is so multi-faceted. One production can make it a war-loving nationalistic propoganda piece, another with barely any adjustment can make it a devastating critique of man’s rush to war.
Now this blog isn’t going to just repeat the obvious – “Isn’t Shakespeare a good writer? – but he was, and it is worth stepping back sometimes and paying homage.
The Reading Bug 