Hamlet Complaint - Again

So, I watched Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet" last night, and I have to complain somewhere, so you're going to hear it.

I loved the setting, I loved the actors, I loved the costumes, I loved the fact that they made it four hours long and used original language. Those things I like and expect from a Shakespeare play.

But what I didn't like was that bloody Hamlet soliliquy.

It actually makes or breaks this whole play for me. Just as the "St. Crispin's" speech from Henry V does for that play, if that speech isn't done right (cough *Hiddleston* cough), it makes that version of the play not worth rewatching (hell, that's the whole reason Henry's guys go and fight with him. They're outnumbered and a thousand miles from home in France, it's muddy out in the fields, and Henry gives them a ramping good speech to get them to fight (it works. They beat the French.)

I've watched a few versions of this speech-Olivier did his standing on a cliff (kudos) and Jacobi did his sitting down, looking at the floor (getting there.) Burton just sort of did it (he should have tried harder,) Gibson did his in a crypt (enh) and Branagh, I love you, but doing it in front of the mirror rather jauntily just wrecked the whole thing. No gravity, no misery, no tears. He just sort of...does it.

Here's the speech again, so you may review and ponder Hamlet's misery. Some versions (Tennant's in particular) take some lines out, but the point's still clear.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely, [F: poor]
The pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay, [F: disprized]
The insolence of Office, and the Spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would Fardels bear, [F: these Fardels]
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all,
And thus the Native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o'er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment, [F: pith]
With this regard their Currents turn awry, [F: away]
And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy Orisons
Be all my sins remembered.^[4]

I've just had it up to here with the phoning it in bit. This is one of the major turning points of this play - the moment where Hamlet is deciding whether to continue to go on with the fight or give up and quit. The BEST version of this speech (in my eyes, anyway) was actually David Tennant, who managed to understand what ALL of the other actors so far have not quite caught - this is a suicide speech.

Hamlet wants to die. He's done. He's had it. His dad was murdered by his uncle, his mum married his uncle five minutes later, and he's been told by his dead ghostly dad who's in hell to widow his mother for the second time in five months, and kill his uncle for killing his dad...and he can't do it. (Let's not even go into the fact that his uncle USURPED the throne and took it from Hamlet the Elder and Hamlet the Younger. This kid should rightfully be ruling Denmark right now.) He's told his girlfriend to stuff it, he's pretending to be nuts, and the whole stupid situation has just gotten to him. He wants to off himself, but he knows that God curses those who commit suicide (and murder, for that matter) to eternal hell, so he's stuck. His conscience wracks him badly, so that even when he said he would do what his father asked at the time (in a fit of fear, anger and passion,) now he's not so sure.

This is a guy who's still very much a boy, who is overwhelmed with what he's been asked to do and what he's committed to. He is staring at a sheer cliff face with no crampons or rope and the roaring ocean behind - no way back, no way forward. He's teetering on the brink of oblivion. What will Hamlet do? What can he do? What should he do?

Every answer to his problem sucks. If he doesn't kill his uncle, he's letting his uncle steal his throne and live on as king of the Danes and as a murderer, and Hamlet Sr. doesn't get avenged and is stuck in hell, forever forced to wander the earth with his beaver up. If he does kill his uncle, he avenges his father, widows his mother again, and becomes a murderer himself. Can he live with the weight of the sin of inaction? Can he live with the weight of the sin of action?

I think this is why I relate to Hamlet so much - he's so damn human. I've had decisions that felt like this (some of them in the last couple of months) where you have to (quoting Macbeth here) "screw your courage to the sticking place," suck it up and be brave even though you're afraid of what's coming.

And Tennant GETS it. His version of this speech shows a Hamlet who is appropriately miserable and depressed. He's scared, upset, nearly in tears over the whole mess. He's leaning on a wall because he'd be on the floor without the support. THAT'S the kind of Hamlet soliliquy that keeps me watching and doesn't tick me off. Jaunty with this speech just doesn't WORK.

There, rant over.

:)

Ta,
Bec