Hamlet, Day One.

Emily's post will be up by midnight tomorrow night - but since we had class today, I figured it would be a good idea to post something so that you could comment.

As kind of a prompt for these comments - and a prompt ideally that will be continued in Emily's discussion on Friday - I'd like to bring your attention to a passage from Peter Goldman's review of Stephen Greenblatt's book Hamlet in Purgatory.

In Hamlet in Purgatory, Greenblatt argues that the Ghost of Hamlet is not simply a plot device, a generic convention of the Elizabethan revenge tragedy, as sometimes assumed. Its power, both for the audience and for young Hamlet, goes far beyond its function as a plot catalyst. Rather the figure of the Ghost expresses (1) a widespread fear among the living of being forgotten after death and (2) bereavement for those already dead. The Ghost, in brief, inhabits the imaginative space left open by the English Reformation's banishment of Purgatory in 1563. The Ghost returns from Purgatory, and in effect brings Purgatory back with him, albeit in a fictionalized and thereby transformed shape. Shakespeare's Hamlet, as Greenblatt puts it, participates in "a cult of the dead" (203, 257), and we as readers and viewers continue this cult--one with important social functions that he explores at length. Only on this cultic basis can we account for Hamlet's powerful and continued fascination. The primary imperative of the Ghost is to "Remember," not to "Revenge," as commonly thought. In this sense, Greenblatt's interpretation shares common concerns with the readings of René Girard and Eric Gans, for both of whom also revenge is secondary to the refusal or delay of revenge. In Greenblatt's reading, the imperative for memory at the cost of revenge accounts for Hamlet's delay that has so puzzled critics over the centuries, as indeed Hamlet himself (in his soliloquies) is puzzled and frustrated by his lack of ready action. In this reading of the play, the problem is not delay but rather revenge itself: the Ghost does call out for revenge, and Hamlet eventually fulfills that requirement, if not, perhaps, in exactly the way envisioned by King Hamlet. The problem for Greenblatt's interpretation, as he puts it, is that "Sticking a sword into someone's body turns out to be a very tricky way of remembering the dead" (225). If the play is primarily an expression of the "desire to speak with the dead," and the fear, on the part of the living, of being forgotten after death, then how do we account for the elements of revenge at all? We cannot deny that the play, like all revenge tragedies, ends with a bloodbath. And at least part of the aesthetic experience of the play is the conventional anticipation of revenge. As Greenblatt observes, "Purgatory, along with theological language of communion (houseling), deathbed confession (appointment), and anointing (aneling), while compatible with a Christian (and, specifically, a Catholic) call for remembrance, is utterly incompatible with a Senecan call for vengeance" (237). Ghosts from Purgatory typically ask for prayers to hasten their way to Heaven. How, in other words, do we reconcile revenge and remembrance?

A few things to keep in mind about Shakespearean tragedy: although it is influenced by Greek tragedy, its more direct ancestor is found in ancient Rome, specifically in the works of Seneca.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca - a writer of the early Roman empire, contemporary and one-time tutor of Emperor Nero - is the author of 9 surviving plays. His plays, many of which deal with revenge, are the only extent examples of fabula crepidata (Roman adaptations of Greek tragedy). There is only one surviving example of a fabula praetexta (Tragedy set in Rome) - Octavia - and it was long attributed to Seneca, too: unfortunately, Seneca's appearance in the play as a character who is forced to commit suicide, an event that actually happened in Imperial Rome as depicted in the play, makes this authorship decidedly dubious.

Like the Greeks, Seneca had a chorus - although given the size of most Roman theatres, it is likely that the chorus was much smaller than those of Sophocles. The structure of the plays was largely the same, and, at least in the fabula crepidata largely stayed close to the Greek myths that inspired them; although Rome as an empire had Etruscan roots, its appropriation of Greek culture, religion, and literature is extremely important. Unlike in many of the surviving plays by Ancient Greeks, Senecan characters die on stage in extremely gruesome ways; frequently, the characters are used as mouthpieces for debates on Stoic philosophy. It's not unreasonable to say that Seneca is the most bad-ass ancient playwright - and his works are the Tragedies that were held up in the Renaissance (in both Italy and England) as the best of the ancient world, and the template upon which new tragedies should be built.

Although the structure of Hamlet is virtually unrecognizable as a Senecan tragedy (there is no chorus, and as such no Tragic structure featuring parados, stichomythia, and repeated agons), the subject matter and details of the plot - the supernatural element of the ghostly visitation, the desire for revenge at all costs, and the bloodsoaked finale - are all staples of Senecan drama. You won't see much of a linear descent from Oedipus to Hamlet, true - but if this was a year long course and we could read 50 plays, I promise you that a few works by Seneca would fill in the gaps between the Greeks and the English Renaissance.

So yeah, guys; that's all I got. This is the structure upon which Shakespeare was building. Use the Greenblatt quote above as a jumping off point for discussion.