Don't Send in the Clowns

OK, class, it’s time for a quiz.

What does this picture have to do with Shakespeare’s Hamlet?

You in the back playing with your cell phone—what do you have to say?

Oh, er, that looks like a clown—a woman clown. I don’t think that that has anything to do with Hamlet. I mean, he was a prince, right? And a guy. Not a clown, and not a woman, right?

Well now, take a look at this second picture. I ask the same question: What does this picture have to do with Shakespeare’s Hamlet?

You there, spooning yogurt into your mouth—what do you have to say?

Well [gulp], what he said. That’s a lady clown, not a prince of Denmark.

You two are half right; the first picture is from a magazine advertisement advertising magazine advertisements. It’s from 1970. The second picture is from the front cover of a DVD recording of a 2018 production of Hamlet at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. 

But maybe, on second thought, both your answers are correct. While the recording is allegedly of Shakespeare’s tragedy, one must wonder what in hell it has to do with the play Shakespeare wrote. [I leave aside for now the issue of whether a woman should play the Prince.] Why is Hamlet made up and dressed as a clown? What in the text signals that? Then again, even if there was clear reason for the Prince to be a clown, why is he dressed in white? Hamlet himself (in Act I, Scene 2) refers to his “inky cloak” and “customary suits of solemn black.” Which is a sign of his continuing mourning for his father. Is the wearing of white meant to be a vitiating or elimination of Hamlet’s deep-seated feeling? 

I have no intention of ever watching the Globe’s production to record other abominations.   

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Classic theater and opera are unfortunately hostages to directors who harbor IDEAS. These ideas are put to work overriding the intentions of the original creator—playwright or composer/librettist.  

Simon Brett in his 1997 satirical mystery novel Sicken and So Die has landed his fourth-rate actor-hero, Charles Paris, a part in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Unfortunately, the original director succumbs to food poisoning and is replaced by an avant-garde Romanian director, who has an IDEA: the cast will play the comedy nude. Except for the fact that there’s a murder, the book is wonderfully funny and absurd.

Perhaps the most famous 20th century example of a director imposing his IDEA on a Shakespearean play is the case of Peter Brooks’ production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which appeared in New York in 1971. Brendan Gill, in his New Yorker review, notes that 

And Clive Barnes, who raved about the production in the New York Times [“the greatest production of Shakespeare I have ever seen in my life”], wrote of “an Oberon on a trapeze, a Puck who juggles with plates or dashes across the scene on Tarzan rope or runs on stilts.” [Here is a video of some plate spinning.]  

  

All that was mind-boggling stupidity enough, but perhaps worst of all was having characters on their knees speaking Shakespeare’s great verse affectlessly.

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Gill was “miserable” during the evening and wondered what Brooks’ intention was.

Mr. Gill, staying the course, had a stronger stomach than me; I walked out very early in the evening and went home to a welcome cup of tea. I figured if I wanted a circus, I would buy popcorn and wait for the elephants.

 

"It's Behind You!"

In my previous post, “Reason and Rhyme,” (https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2022/06/reason-and-rhyme.html) I applauded Shakespeare’s use of rhyme in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to lock in the deluded profession of love by Lysander for Helena. 

Today, I wish to go back a little bit earlier in the play. In Act II, Scene 1, Oberon, the King of the Fairies, has spotted Helena pursuing a disdainful Demetrius. He instructs Puck to anoint Demetrius’ eyes with a magic substance that will make him fall in love with Helena:

A sweet Athenian lady is in love

With a disdainful youth: anoint his eyes;

But do it when the next thing he espies

May be the lady: thou shalt know the man

By the Athenian garments he hath on.

Effect it with some care, that he may prove

More fond on her than she upon her love.

Puck, trying to follow his master’s orders, is, however, at a loss:

Through the forest have I gone.

But Athenian found I none,

On whose eyes I might approve

This flower's force in stirring love.

Until he spots an Athenian male (recognized by his clothes) and a young woman (Hermia) sleeping nearby.

This is he, my master said,

Despised the Athenian maid;

And here the maiden, sleeping sound,

On the dank and dirty ground.

Pretty soul! she durst not lie

Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy.

Churl, upon thy eyes I throw

All the power this charm doth owe.

When thou wakest, let love forbid

Sleep his seat on thy eyelid.

(Act II, Scene 2)

Puck is genuinely pleased with himself as he bounds off to report to Oberon of his success.

All well and good? Hardly. For the Athenian who was drugged by Puck was not Demetrius but Lysander. And now along comes Helena.

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All has gone wrong—but Puck doesn’t know this; Lysander doesn’t know this; Helena doesn’t know this (and eventually, neither Hermia nor Demetrius will know this).

But we know! We, the audience, sitting in our seats (or, in Shakespeare’s time, standing in the pit) have witnessed the action. And what is our reaction as we watch poor Puck approach sleeping Lysander—and then Helena tiptoe over to Lysander and nudge him awake?

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One of the classic scenes in British Christmas pantomimes is when a ghost appears behind the main characters and the audience (mainly children) scream out: “It’s behind you!” 

We (the adult audience of A Midsummer Night’s Dream), like the pantomime audience, can be said to be in a state of greater ironic awareness than Puck, Lysander, Helena, etc. 

Irony depends upon two levels of knowledge. The ironist deliberately over- or under-values what he believes in order to entrap his audience (the victim), to make him appear foolish or despicable. One example (rather harmless) of overvaluing would be the following:

Someone enters a room, tripping over his own feet. The ironist says, “Ah, here comes Fred Astaire.”

The word for this is sarcasm.

Most famous for the ironic stance of undervaluing is Socrates, who maintained that he knew nothing, and interrogated those who claimed to know about piety, justice, etc., eventually destroying their arguments.

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Back to our play:

With our greater knowledge of the wrong that Puck is about to do as he approaches Lysander—and the wrongness that will occur when Helena stirs Lysander—we, in our superiority, can first experience an expectation of mischief and then laugh at the results of that mischief. 

Here, the playwright allows us to be in cahoots with him, as we have the same knowledge as him. But it is not always the case that (a) the audience knows more than the characters or (b) the author has given us the information in real time (as it were) about the action that he intends to reveal later. The classic example is the whodunnit. Here the audience is completely in the dark until they can figure out by themselves or have the solution revealed to them at the conclusion by the detective or investigator. We may be on the same lower level of awareness of most of the characters (some of whom may be bumped off along the way); the murderer (and, of course, his creator) are on a superior level of ironic awareness; they know who dunnit.

The reverse of the whodunnit could properly be called the Columbo. In the “Columbo” crime series, we, the audience, know who the criminal is and how the crime was committed, as we are shown the act being performed. So we are on the same level of awareness as the miscreant, but on a superior level to that of the detective, Lieutenant Columbo. However, as Columbo works his way through the evidence, he moves closer to our level of awareness. The criminal, meanwhile, who has been on the same knowledge level as us, falls behind as he does not know that Columbo is inching closer to unveiling him. At the conclusion of the story, we and Columbo are now on the same superior level of ironic awareness. And the criminal is finished.

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There are a number of elements that contribute to the success of a play or a novel. Among them are the artist’s invention and development of interesting characters, the fashioning of a gripping narrative, a delightful command of language, etc. Add to the list his ability to exploit different levels of ironic awareness, so that the audience is in on the joke, an object of the joke, complicit with a criminal, or at one with his pursuer. As the artist deems fit.

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Perhaps the most famous quote emerging from the Nixon Watergate scandal was the line by Senator Howard Baker:

“What did the President know and when did he know it?”  

In many ways, slightly modified, those could be key questions when analyzing a literary work:

“What did the audience know, and when did it know it?”

 

True Believers

So Anne Rice—you know, the writer of those vampire novels—has announced on Facebook(!) that a dozen years after seeing the light and quitting being an atheist and becoming a Christian, she’s renounced being a Christian. Does that mean having presumably been born again, she’s been born again again? Keep going, Annie--a cat has nine lives; you can find out how many a human has. Though you have a way to go to catch the real master change artists, such as Eldridge Cleaver. Cleaver went from being a serial rapist ("rape was an insurrectionary act," he declared at one point) to becoming, in turn, a founder of the Black Panthers, a born-again Christian, a Mormon, a conservative Republican.

What I find particularly interesting about serial born-againers is that each time they change they need to announce it to the world. "Look, everybody, I'm no longer an A, I'm a B!" Presumably, their announcements are to garner admiration from the public (for someone who has found the truth) and to inspire the public to follow in their footsteps (because you want to find the truth too, don't you?). But what I see in serial born-againers are people for whom it is a almost a badge of honor to proclaim: "Look what a stupid ass I was--but you must now follow me as I march off in the direction opposite to which I was heading before--but I'm right this time!"

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In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck has mistakenly drugged the sleeping Lysander, the lover of Hermia, (rather than Demetrius) and he will fall in love with the first person he sees when he awakes. As it happens, that person is the rejected lover of Demetrius, Helena.

HELENA
But who is here? Lysander! on the ground!
Dead? or asleep? I see no blood, no wound.
Lysander if you live, good sir, awake.

LYSANDER
[Awaking] And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake.
Transparent Helena! Nature shows art,
That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart.

Lysander, of course, has no idea that his change of love object was caused by a drug. He proclaims that it was reason that instigated the change; after all, "The will of man is by his reason sway'd;/And reason says you are the worthier maid." And the rational fact that he produces? "Who will not change a raven (dark-compexioned, dark-haired Hermia) for a dove (fair-skinned, blond Helena)?" Thus, even the self-deluded will put in a claim for reason and produce a seemingly-logical explanation for his actions.

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And so I ask with all sincerity those who appear before me hopping from one foot to the other in reverent ecstasy, hoping to convey to me the intelligence, reason, logic, and truth of their latest religious, philosophical, or political discovery: "Why should I believe what you believe today, which you didn't believe yesterday--and will not believe tomorrow?"