(The castle walls, enter Hamlet, Horatio and Marcellus.)
HAMLET Damn it's cold!
HORATIO The air cuts right through to the bone.
HAMLET What hour is it now?
HORATIO Almost midnight.
MARCELLUS It's right around now that it has appeared.
(TRUMPETS and two CANNON SHOTS are heard.)
HORATIO (CONT'D) What's that mean?
HAMLET The king is celebrating. He likes a flourish and a cannon blast to punctuate his toasts.
HORATIO Is it a custom?
HAMLET It's one better broken than observed. We enjoy our drink, but too much spoils a reputation every time. Even if a person is pure of heart and worthy of praise, too much drink drowns it all. Drunkenness will never know mercy in the courts of public opinion.
(Enter Ghost.)
HORATIO My lord!
HAMLET Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Are you heavenly or from hell?! Righteous or wicked you look like my father, King Hamlet! Royal Dane! Speak to me! Tell why you're here! Don't leave me in agony, wondering! What does it mean, you, head to toe in steel?! Don't rattle our minds by the light of the moon, and not tell why? Help us! What should we do?!
I saw some of the comments posted on your last piece. Naysayers be damned.
My thesis in college was an analysis and design for Love's Labour's Lost, one of Shakespeare's more challenging plays. The whole play is a series of word-plays, most of which are lost on a current audience. At the time, very few knew how to read and the English language was being crafted by the masters of wit, giving Shakespeare great freedom. All of the fun and illusion of the story comes crashing to a halt at the end of the play when the reality of war and death sets in upon the nobles who had been lost in their labours of love. In the end, it is realized that love cannot be obtained or conveyed simply by having a smart tongue, but is something much deeper and more important than any such superficial expression.
But alas, this play is rarely ever performed and almost never understood. Would that there were more people, like yourself, willing to bring Shakespeare and his intelligence to our current world, as we are in dire need of it. Our televisions and movie theaters are overflowing with refuse, and yet I see you being criticized for your modest endeavours.
Shakespeare (whoever he was) took his stories from those that came before him, and those writers borrowed from the classics, which were inspired by the tales of old. There is no need to concern ourselves with offending the "great Shakespeare." He is dead, living only as a ghost that haunts our souls from time to time, but he is nothing more.
Onward through the tragedy, my friend. Plug your nose and hold your breath if the stench of the decaying monstrosity is too overwhelming. But rest assured, the crimes of the wicked will not go unpunished.
by
Ferdinand (16 articles, 4 quicklinks, 21 diaries, 193 comments)
on Friday, May 2, 2008 at 4:51:49 PM
i really do think making the stories accessible is important. i want to offer them to the person i was years ago--to people who would be interested to read the scripts if the elizabethan were not so difficult.
look forward to more my friend.
by
john de herrera (33 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 128 comments)
on Friday, May 2, 2008 at 5:30:44 PM
