Adventuring with Shakespeare with a grand survey of his works, we’ve recently studied Shakespeare’s background, sonnets, Julius Caesar, and Henry V.
Today’s adventures took us through a whirlwind tour of the tortured personalities in Richard III and Hamlet.
One at a time we annotated our books with literary details, then deep-dived into the madness of the famed Shakespearean characters.
RICHARD III
I explained this is technically part of a historical sequence of Shakespeare’s history plays about the succession of English kings…Richard II, Henry IV part I and II, Henry V, Henry VI part I and II, and then Richard III.
Continually muddled by all the random kings of France and England named Henry, Richard, and Edward, I gladly saw that Shakespeare helped untangle the confusion!
Inside the Folger’s edition of Richard III is a family tree, more expanded from what Henry V had.
We could see how they were distantly related and thus in contention and at odds, at least along family lines.
Shakespeare purposely wrote Richard III to his audience, who knew the history of their monarch.
Queen Elizabeth, of the house of Tudor, had rights to the throne after the War of the Roses when her grandfather, Henry VII, defeated Richard III.
The distinctive of Richard III is the pattern of soliloquies of the devious tyrant.
Repeatedly, Richard III soliloquizes about his murderous plots, commits the crime, then again soliloquizes about how the murder succeeded.
RICHARD III ANALYSIS
As a result, this psychological thriller invites the audience to view the inner workings of the murderous tyrant’s mind.
Because Richard III detailed the techniques of tyrants, he’s forever linked to Machiavelli.
Richard III is also characterized as a flat character, based on Vice from Medieval Morality plays, which we learned about a few months ago.
Written around 1592, more complex psychology was forthcoming with Hamlet, written around 1600 and Macbeth written in 1606.
HAMLET
Annotating key literary aspects of our next play, Hamlet, we learned the key theme: to be or not to be.
Is Hamlet insane or simply acting insane considering the situation?
Despite Folger Shakespeare Library commentary of the various avenues actors take in portraying Hamlet, I fully expected the usual dark, gloomy, depressing, brooding as I’ve seen with other productions.
That evening we watched Mel Gibson’s performance on DVD, as Hamlet.
Since previous Hamlet movies portrayed Hamlet as darkly melancholic, I expected the same with this movie, that I bought inexpensively at the used bookstore.
WOW! This was great!
This version of Hamlet had life, intrigue, deceit, poignancy, drama! Juxtapositions of light and dark…love and lost…humor and grief.
Mel Gibson made Hamlet likeable, warm, clever, and fascinating.
HAMLET PRODUCTION NOTES
After the movie, we watched the behind-the-scenes footage and saw two interviews with Gibson on the making of the movie.
Answering many of our questions, Gibson explained the producers cut Shakespeare’s longest play in half to make a manageable two-hour movie for modern audiences.
Preferring Shakespeare on the stage, Gibson detailed the craziness of shooting scenes out of sequence, especially when he acted soliloquies in reverse parts.
After shooting the last third of a certain soliloquy, he later performed the first part.
IAMBIC PENTAMETER TRAINING
Gibson also explained how a coach improved his speech pattern in iambic pentameter, to make him sound rhythmically natural.
Since the movie worked the iambic pentameter so smoothly, we were easily became caught up and engaged, entwined in the characters’ lives and enjoying the lovely Shakespearean language roll off their lips.
