The last of my BBC Shakespeare reviews from 2006. This one is a super-long one so I’ll be splitting it over three blogs/days in order to leave so room for the rest of my life. Note: My opinions on ranking Shakespeare’s plays have changed since, so I should blog an updated list at some point.
HAMLET
Star Trek
episode titles coined: The Conscience of a King, The Undiscovered Country,
Thine Own Self, Mortal Coil
Frasier
episode titles coined: Roz's Krantz and Guildenstein are Dead
Sitcom
titles coined: To The Manor Born, The Prince of Denmark
Philip K Dick novel
titles coined: Time Out of Joint
Hitchcock movie
titles coined: North by North West
Band names
coined: The Kings of Infinite Space
Famous quotes: oh,
far, far too many to list. I'll pick out the important
ones during the synopsis.
And so
my Shakespearewatch comes to an end. 37 plays, 100-plus hours, at least 100000
words of Jonny criticism. I've done them all. Every single one. Bring on the
pub quiz!
And
what have I learned? Well, not a great deal, to be honest. The main surprise has
been how easy most of the plays are to understand. The language barrier is not
a particularly high hurdle; there are only about 100 words which have significantly
changed in meaning, and their meaning in the play can usually be ascertained by
the context or by association. The plots are generally easy to follow, the
characters distinct and memorable, and the plays are frequently moving,
exciting, and genuinely funny. Human nature hasn't changed a great
deal since those days, and so their relevance hasn't changed a
great deal either. There is very little of the dull incomprehensibility that
people associated with the Bard – Love’s Labour’s Lost excepted.
I
suppose what is most incredible about the plays is their cultural
significance. They are like the songs of The Beatles, or the speeches of
Churchill, but embedded deeper into the mass consciousness or woven into the
cultural fabric of the national carpet. So deep that they are often taken for
granted, or not noticed. Because not only are so many of our words,
phrases and idioms taken from Shakespeare, but the works inform our collective
concepts of nationhood, leadership, honour, romance, comedy, courage,
fate, family, hope, fear, death. These stories and characters have
tunnelled deep into our psychological make-up, into how we see ourselves and
our place in the world and in history. Plus the language, of course,
continues, with people quoting Shakespeare without even realising they are
quoting anything at all, because the phrases seem an organic and fluid and
obvious part of our everyday speech, and are such tremendously accurate
and concise nail-on-the-head expressions of universal concepts that
it is often hard to imagine those ideas being expressed as evocatively,
economically and precisely in any other way. He had a knack
for giving the definitive last word or expression on every possible
subject.
As an
example of Shakespeare's total cultural prevalence, think of how
unquestioningly people accept the idea of Oyster cards. Now, of course, a
lot of this is due to people being very unquestioning and being accepting
of things being given silly names for the sake of them being given silly
names. But, of course, they are called Oyster cards after the expression
'The world is your oyster'*. Which is one of Shakespeare's least effective
phrases (if you think about it, it doesn't bear any sort of scrutiny as a
metaphor), and is from one of his least accomplished plays. But that's how big
an impact he has when he's not even trying very hard. [* 2014
note – this may not actually be true]
So,
the main response for me was one of familiarity - the sensation of 'I've heard
this before, I didn't know it was from Shakespeare'. My other feelings are hard
to summarize. It has occasionally been a slog, but what doesn't kill you makes
you stronger, and more appreciative of the good bits - you need some fibre in
your diet. Occasionally it has been very forgettable - I know I watched All's
Well That End's Well, but it doesn't seem to have touched the sides on the
way down. But on the whole it has been an incredibly rich experience. So much
good stuff, such detail, such scope. The sequence of history plays - if taken
together, probably Shakespeare's greatest achievement, even bearing in
mind that I'm not completely keen on Dicky Two. The comedies, full of
romance and stupidity and magic and silliness and rudeness and misbehaving
spaniels and dancing fat men but also, every single one, containing moments of heartbreak
and anguish. The tragedies - some of them intentionally more comic than
the comedies - full of extraordinary characters and unimaginably huge, operatic
dramatic dilemmas, the human condition writ large yet never losing its reality
or humanity. The romances and problem plays, that fourth stream of
experimental, fashion-following projects and half-formed collaborations
and doctor-jobs that, if not showing us Shakespeare at his best, give the
greatest insight into his working methods and place him in the context of the
general standard of playwriting at the time and demonstrate how far above and
ahead of the game Shakespeare was.
There
have also been all the characters, too many memorable ones to mention, the
moments of evocative poetry. But one great thing has been following, in my not-remotely-chronological
way, Shakespeare’s development as a writer. He starts out as rather derivative
– well, his ‘borrowing’ is at its most heavy during the beginning of his
career, reworking plays by Seneca and Robert Greene and basing his comedies on
well-known poems, or Italian farces. And then you see the confidence and the
artistry building, with Dicky Three combining both history, tragedy and
revenge plays, Romeo And Juliet with its masterful shift from romantic
comedy to romantic tragedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the first
all-original play, Julius Caesar and Coriolanus bookending the
great classical tragedies, and Macbeth and Measure For Measure
indicating a shift in style as theatre suddenly became very Jacobean and indoorsy
overnight. And finally there’s everything after Coriolanus – a bottom
drawer collection of experiments, collaborations, court masques, pageants and
Welsh people living in the caves of Milford Haven.
The
greatest testament I can give to how much I have enjoyed the experience is that
I want to watch all the plays again. Yes, even Love’s Labour’s Lost – I
might actually understand some of it the second time round, the significance of
all those old men in the library talking bollocks was completely lost on me.
When I do it again, though, I’ll make sure to watch the history plays in order
(i.e. starting from Dicky Two) and the tragedies in composition order,
and the comedies, oh, I can watch them in any order I like, it doesn’t matter a
great deal anyway.
And,
well, on the back of this, I'm now reading plays by Middleton, Webster, Johnson
and Marlow. For fun. It's like Doctor Who,
a bottomless pit of things-to-find-out.
It’s a
hard thing to summarize, but, well, it’s been fun. The BBC adaptations on the
most part have been, well, consistent would be the best word I suppose. Okay,
so a couple have been awful - Othello springs to mind - and a couple
have been magnificent - Macbeth - but on the whole they have done
a good job of presenting the plays straight without getting in the way. And
it’s Shakespeare as it was supposed to be seen – in a BBC TV studio, with a
cast of actors better known for appearing in Doctor Who, I Claudius, Porridge and Allo Allo. I very much recommend the box set, and even though it's extremely
expensive it’s still extremely good value for money.
Anyway,
before I do my one last run-through with Hamlet, here’s the ranking
you’ve been waiting for. Yes, it’s
JONNY’S MOST PUKKA SHAKESPEARE LIST
Least Pukka. For completists only:
37:
Henry VIII
36:
The Merry Wives of Windsor
35:
Pericles
34:
All's Well That Ends Well
33:
Love's Labour's Lost
32:
Troilus and Cressida
31:
Richard II
And now the ones in the middle, all well worth
checking out:
30:
The Taming of the Shrew
29:
The Winter's Tale
28:
Henry VI Part I
27:
Henry VI Part III
26:
Titus Andronicus
25:
King John
24:
Antony and Cleopatra
23:
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
22:
Henry V
21:
Timon of Athens
20:
Measure for Measure
19:
Cymbeline
18:
The Comedy of Errors
And finally the ones that are, to be frank,
absolutely essential:
17:
Henry VI Part II
16: As
You Like It
15:
King Lear
14:
Henry IV Part II
13:
Othello
12:
Twelfth Night
11: Henry IV Part I
11: Henry IV Part I
With the TOP TEN MOST PUKKA SHAKESPEAREs being:
10:
Romeo and Juliet
9: The
Merchant of Venice
8: The Tempest
8: The Tempest
7:
Coriolanus
6:
Much Ado About Nothing
5: (New
entry!) Hamlet
4: Richard III
4: Richard III
3: A
Midsummer Night's Dream
2:
Julius Caesar
and in
pole position, no surprises, it's
1: Macbeth
And
now for Hamlet. And because it’s the
last one, and because there are so many famous bits, and because it’s so bloody
long, I’ll be taking a different approach and combining the ‘synopsis’ and
‘analysis’ and ‘famous quotes’ into one long stream of nonsense. But this time with telesnaps!
1.1
You come most carefully upon the hour...
Ooh,
it's all gone terribly Philip Hinchcliffe. Mist. Darkness. Castles. Dudley
Simpson music. A couple of soldiers are standing guard at Ellsinore castle,
Denmark. The Norwegians, led by Fortinbras, have been up to no good
recently. And, when the soldiers have finished explaining the back-story to
each other, Horatio turns up... and they all have a ghostly encounter. And the
ghost looks oddly like the King who has just died, who has been replaced
by his brother who has now married his widow and adopted his moody,
introspective adolescent son, Hamlet.
Okay,
it's more Trisha than Philip Hinchcliffe.
1.2
Cut to
the inside of the castle, with the King Claudius, his wife Queen Gertrude, and
their grumpy, son, Hamlet. Hamlet's annoyed because it's only a few months
since his dad pegged it, in which time his mum has remarried which, quite frankly,
seems a bit on the soonish side.
Another
young chap of the court, Laertes, is requesting leave to go to France. His dad,
a funny, doddery, circumlocutory old man, lobbies the King on his behalf,
and the King agrees.
Meanwhile
Gertie asks her son's what's up. 'You seem a bit down,' she says.
'Seems', madam? Nay, it is, I know not 'seems'.
Ooh,
get him. The King tells him to try and bloody cheer up and stop slouching about
the place. Hamlet sighs, and begins the first of many soliloquies about how
hard done-by he is.
O! That this too solid flesh would melt
And
how his mum has let him down by shacking up with a new bloke who he doesn't
like.
Frailty, thy name is woman!
But
how he will keep it to himself for the moment.
I must hold my tongue!
Even
though he misses his dead dad.
I shall not look upon his like again!
But -
as we shall soon see - he could not be more mistaken! Because no sooner have
those words left his lips than in rushes Horatio, pale and with his hair all
standing on end.
'What's
the matter with you,' says Hamlet. 'You look like you have seen a ghost.'
'I
have,' says Horatio. 'And not only that - but, never guess - it's the
ghost of your dad!'
'No
way,' says Hamlet. ‘Surely you are shitting me?'
'I
shit you not,' says Horatio. 'He had a countenance more in sorrow than anger.'
'Ooh,
that sounds just like him,' says Hamlet. 'When does he appear, this
ghost?'
'At
night, I would say, mainly,' says Horatio. 'Because he's a ghost.'
And
so, with a cry of 'I ain't afraid of no ghost' in a sort of Scooby-Doo voice,
Hamlet leaves.
1.3
Later
that day, Laertes is preparing to leave for France. Not quite sure why he's
going there but if it was anything like my school trips he will return with
several illegal and dangerous fire crackers or 'bangers' as they were known
down our way.
Ophelia
turns up to wish her brother a fond farewell. F*ck a duck - it's
LALLA WARD!!!
Ooh,
isn't she lovely. She filmed this some time between Shada and The Leisure
Hive, at around the same time that Tom Baker was REDACTED on Dean Street, Soho.
She's very good in this. I mean, she's very good in Doctor Who - but she is lovely.
In fact,
this Hamlet is a bit of a Nightmare
Of Eden reunion. There's Lalla Ward. Music by Dudley Simpson. Later on
Geoffrey 'Dymond' Bateman turns up as Guildenstern. Plus there's also, from the
following series, Emrys 'Aukon' James and Geoffrey 'Master' Beevers.
Quality!
Anyway,
Laertes makes some fond and quite lengthy farewells - and then his dad,
Polonius, turns up to give him some father-to-son advice. It's a lovely speech,
and indeed it's so incongruously lovely and so entirely
non-situation-specific I would almost suspect that it was originally
prepared for some other occasion and copy and pasted into this play.
I
mean, does any of this sound oddly familiar to you?
POLONIUS: Neither a borrower nor a lender be. For
loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of
husbandry. This, above all - to thine own self be true. I was once like you are
now, and I know that it's not easy, to be calm, when you've found something
going on. But take your time, think a lot, why think of everything you've got -
for you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.
Oh, we
learn that Ophelia has a new boyfriend - Hamlet. Apparently he's been tendering
his affections towards her left, right and centre - and she's a bit keen on him
too. Polonius is a doubtful - teenage boys will say anything if there's a
chance of them getting a shag.
1.4
Hamlet's
joined Horatio for Denmark's Most Haunted, and while they are standing around
waiting for the ghost to turn up, Hamlet moans about his step-dad once more.
Apparently he's not behaving like a proper King, but spends his time partying
and getting pissed.
But to my mind - though I am native here, and to
the manner born - it is a custom more honoured in the breach than the
observance.
After
Hamlet's had a good long moan, the ghost finally turns up - and Hamlet
recognises it! It is the supernatural doppelganger of his deceased pa. It
beckons to him to follow it into the mist. Horatio is nervous - it might be a
demon, leading Hamlet to his doom. He tries to stop Hamlet following it, but
Hamlet is too strong and runs after it, disappearing into the darkness.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark!
1.5
We cut
to Hamlet and the ghost. The ghost informs his 'son' that he was murdered.
Hamlet is appalled. And not only that - but he was murdered by the bloke
who is now king - Claudius!
O my prophetic soul! My uncle!
The
ghost tells Hamlet that, if he ever loved his father, he should take revenge on
his murderer. But the ghost also tells Hamlet not to blame his mother for remarrying,
as it probably wasn't her idea. And then, with a spooky cry of 'Remember me!',
the ghost fades away to nothing.
Seconds
later Horatio runs in. Hamlet doesn't tell Horatio about the ghost's message,
but orders Horatio to swear an oath to never tell anybody about what ‘s
been going on.
Horatio
remains doubtful - to him, this whole thing is almost as implausible as a
bloke who has turned into a tree using a branch to prevent an American girl
from stepping on a landmine.
'Tch,'
says Hamlet...
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy!
With
the help of a ghostly cry of 'Swear, you bugger!' from the ghost, Horatio
agrees to keep his silence. They head back to the castle - Hamlet observing
that things are really f*cked up.
The time is out of joint!