Re: Shakespeare
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Fri, 06 Nov 1998 23:40:51 +1100
> Hamlet as "thinking man's revenge tragedy"--perfect. Say Q1, which is
> roughly half the length of the Q2 and F1 versions, is the "stage
> version" of the play ...
Ahh ... now this is my area of expertise. I'm working on a radio show about
this very subject. It's now been agreed that these were actually earlier
drafts. This throws the old `Bad Quarto' theories straight out the window -
there was no such thing as those fantastical `actors remembrances' and
suchlike. It was simply a much earlier version of the play, written around
the time of Titus Andronicus and much under the influence of Thomas Kyd.
There's a book called `The Real Shakespeare' by Eric Sams which details
this and other things which scholars have refused to believe over older and
less logical versions of what may have happened
I think if Shakespeare ever wanted to create a masterpiece, it's Hamlet -
evidenced by the fact that he completely edited it three times over and the
personal connections he had with the name Hamlet (which he changed from
Amlodh or Amleth in all the sources) : his best friend's name was Hamlet,
as was his only son's (*not* Hamnet is as often believed - to the
Elizabethans the two names were interchangeable anyway) and the woman on
which the character of Ophelia was based was named Katherine Hamlet.
If Shakespeare ever wanted a play of his to be considered literature, this,
I concede, was the one. That is not to say it's not populist in its own way
- thus it's for the `thinking man' yet ultimately still a bloody gorefest
`revenge tragedy'
Enough of country matters, say I ... let's talk Salinger! (:
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
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