The Hamlet Radioshow

Jack Hitt writes a story about a group of prisoners at the Missouri Eastern Correctional center who are rehearsing and staging the production of Hamlet, "A man pondering a violet crime and its consequences performed by violet criminals living out those consequences".

The actors of the play relate to the characters they chose, it all comes to the generalizations that Hamlet is a metaphor of a prison. The prison that each character lives inside.

Just as the actor that played Laertes said, "Criminals are cowards". And his character, and pretty much most of Hamlet's characters are. They are insecure, they all try so hard to seem, rather than be and they are perplexed by their own thoughts.  All of Hamlet's characters are criminals, just like the ones that play them.

The prisoners have intimacy with the material, that gives a better insight of the personality of each of the characters. The relation the actors create with the character makes the play believable, and expressing what is difficult to perceive, what is in-between the lines.

Hamlet's Insecurity

I won't blog about August Wilhelm Von Schlegel's essay on Hamlet without contextualizing myself on his views. To understand what he is saying about Hamlet we should first understand what took him to such reasoning. 

If you read the Hyperlink you might understand what I am talking about. He was a leader of German Romanticism, a nineteenth century movement whose main features were the mind-dependence of reality, the dominance of thought over sensation, universalized ethics and natural theology.

After reading this it all became clear, Von Schlegel judges Hamlet as a coward, "but in the resolutions which he so often embraces and always leaves unexecuted, his weakness is too apparent". 

The ideal of dominance of thought over sensation is what Von Schlegel questions about Hamlet. Hamlet is all about thoughts, and his thoughts dominate his feelings. He over thinks too much and he is perplexed by his own thinking. This is an obstacle that Hamlet himself creates in the way he performs his actions, portraying his insecure self that is unable to put up with any task. The tragedy is surreal on its form, based on doubt and insecurity. 

Hamlet could be considered a paradox to the beliefs of Schlegel. 

Freud's Awkward Analysis

Oh! Joy! Sigmund Freud is on the packet that Mr. Tangen gave us! and somehow it was the first essay I wanted to read, coincidence?  I doubt it.

There is something about Freud that has always called my attention, his looks?  

No, definitely not. Simply the way he interprets the unconscious understanding human behavior. Something quite useful in Hamlet's case. The guy was completely out of his mind. But why? What was wrong with the dude? Freud would have won millions if he had psychoanalyzed him.

Even if 200 years had passed he actually tried, and he defines Hamlet's character through this essay. Freud discusses how Hamlet's case is very similar to Oedipus Rex's. That is, the guy had repressed desires to sexually posses his mother. Wait what?

Yeah Freud said that, and I completely agree. Hamlet wanted to avenge his father's death as a way to avenge his uncle from stealing his mother. When his father was alive, Hamlet felt that he still, in a way, possessed his mother, because she was part of their nuclear family. Once his father died, he had to completely give her up. Now his mother did not belong to his father rather to his uncle, even further away from him, making it impossible for him to posses her. 

Although both Oedipus and Hamlet suffer from the same complex, Hamlet's complex is repressed, he is never able to possess his mother, and compel his task. He is unable to fulfill his goal because he over thinks too much. This made him realized that his uncle took away his mother from him, just as his father did, representing the repressed wishes of his childhood, thus showing him that "he is no better than the sinner whom he is to punish" (Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams).

So what does this mean? Simply that Hamlet realized that it is not worth to kill his uncle, since he will never achieve what he deeply wanted. He accepts that he will never be able to possess his mother, and lets nature takes its natural course. Although not fulfilling his task he did act upon things, by expressing his anger and repressed desires, but somehow he sacrificed them by realizing it would be a worthless fight.

So Freud, even if you made it a bit awkward, I find it quite accurate.