Hamlet Didn’t Have A Tragic Flaw, He Just Had Bad Luck

At any point during a Shakespeare tragedy should we just kind of look at it and think, “Dang, you know, that was just really unlucky”?  How about Polonius being behind the arras in the first place? Sure, it was pretty impulsive of Hamlet to just go all stabby all of a sudden, if he’d done that literally any other time when somebody wasn’t back there, the play would go totally differently.
The article linked above asks why we feel obliged to pretend luck doesn’t play a factor.  Luck suggests that even if you don’t do the right things, you can still come out ahead (people like to cite Bill Gates, college drop out, as a great example here). Or, that you can do everything right and still one day tragedy strikes and you lose everything. It’s hard to accept that sort of randomness, because it acknowledges a complete lack of control.  If I choose a certain path, I want to expect that certain things will happen. If an unexpected thing happens, my brain wants to go back and create a new path that I must have taken to get myself to that spot.
Personally I believe in the theory that says, “At any given time, you are the sum total of your experiences and decisions up to that point.”  I always take issue when people say something like, “I’m happy with my life, I just wish that X had been different.”  You can’t have it that way, because if X had been different, then everything that came after X would also be different.
Luck, therefore, is part of the definition — a thing happened at a certain time because of conditions that all your previous decisions got you into. Luck is basically the uncontrollable bit.  Sure, Hamlet decided to go to his mother’s room, get all upset, and murder the tapestry.  But nothing he did was responsible for putting Polonius back there. Sure, sure, you could argue that the whole play-within-a-play, which deliberately pissed off Claudius, set Polonius into action, but ultimately Polonius has free will as well that Hamlet does not control.
I guess the whole point is, does the tragic flaw exist? Or is it just a construct we put in place after the fact, to rationalize what is ultimately just a series of uncontrollable events, making your choices like waltzing through a mine field and hoping your next one doesn’t blow up in your face. 

Idea : This Day in Shakespeare History

After noticing that Merchant of Venice was entered into the Stationers Register on July 22, I wondered (not for the first time) about what other days of significance there are for Shakespeare geeks?  Granted this isn’t a particularly significant one, but it’s fun for context (and makes you wonder about the dates of all the other plays).

Has anybody ever attempted to compile something like this?  Should we?  Lord knows that whenever you walk into a bookstore around Christmas time there’s table upon table of calendars for every possible bit of trivia. Why not something for the Shakespeareans?

How Well Do You Know Your Shakespeare?

The other day I tweeted, but did not blog, an amusing little Shakespeare “translator” that takes select quotes from the various plays, and then offers up a modern interpretation in one of several United Kingdom dialects. It’s called What Do You Shakesp’hear? and it’s amusing enough, I suppose, but being on the wrong side of the pond I guess I have no point of reference for most of it 🙂

But!  The creators of this tool, Leicester Square Box Office, emailed me to talk about it.  My first thought was, “If these guys are interested in dialects they should talk to Ben Crystal.”  Well, they already had:

“… every modern spoken English accent is a descendant of Shakespeare’s London accent, so when people go and hear it they tend to say ‘oh, that sounds a bit like where we come from’. They’re hearing the echo or the glimmer of their own accent’s decedent or ancestor. That means that it’s relatable…”

They’ve also got a classic “words and phrases that came from Shakespeare” quiz that, I’m ashamed to say, I found pretty difficult. The “which phrase came from Shakespeare” bit is easy, but half the questions are archaic Shakespeare-only words that you have to define. Which is really somewhat contrary to their mission, if you think about it? What’s the point of saying “look at all the words we use today that came from Shakespeare” alongside “look at all the words Shakespeare used that we don’t use anymore”?

Anyway, here’s a link to the quiz. See you how do.  I only got 10/15.

Sir Patrick Stewart To Play White Othello

How’d I miss this?

Sir Patrick Stewart wants to do Othello again (he’s performed the role before, in 1997).  This time, though, he wants to do it white:

‘In the big picture, everyone should be able to play anything and I am against embargoes on actors playing roles that differ from their own ethnicity or gender…I am in favour of as much diversity as possible because it’s art — it’s not politics, it’s not government, it’s creativity.’

What I don’t understand, however, is that Stewart played Othello white in 1997 as well, didn’t he? I remember that story, because they did a “mirror image” version with a white Othello and, I’m assuming, a black supporting cast.

Then again, I think the article is just weak on this point. I see here where Stewart clearly says, “I want to play a white Othello again.”  Note the again.


Maybe this time it won’t be a “mirror image” gimmick, and it’ll just be … what’s the term for it?  Race blind?  Race agnostic?  I wonder, then, how they’d deal with all of Iago’s racist language at the beginning.  Interesting.

As You Like It Needs More Battle Scenes

First spotted on Reddit with the title “Pupils at Howell’s Girls’ School in Denbigh, north Wales, perform Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’ during the 1930s”, apparently from this January 2013 news story.  But I only have one question.

What scene is this?
Since they are all dressed identically it’s impossible to identify individual characters. I just can’t figure out when during the play there is any sort of military clash of opposing forces at all?