How Nine Words Revise a World?
As we move into the end of the play we can consider the performance choices and issues raised by a line that exists only in the Folio text of act 5, scene 2 (there is no way of knowing if this line was omitted from Q2 or added only after that text was published). Although this choice concerns a single nine-word line, these nine words can have a remarkable impact on the performance of this exchange between Horatio and Hamlet and can suggest questions about staging at least one earlier. As Edwards notes, “the new line, ‘Why man, they did make love to this employment,’ etches in Hamlet’s awareness of the unspoken accusation in Horatio’s remark, and his wish to exculpate himself in the new moral context for the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern”.
That is, in Q2, Horatio’s tone can be factual as he says “So Guyldemterm and Rosencraus goe too’t.” And Hamlet’s reply can be a calm assertion that “They are not near my conscience.” If you ask students to perform this line, individually or as a group, some of them will shrug as they speak, and that seems the correct gesture: The speech is a verbal shrug, which echoes the verbal shrug in his first response to killing Polonius, and seems to be Hamlet’s way of indicating he feels no guilt for sending his two supposed friends to death. But when they perform the Folio version of the speech, they will produce a vivid demonstration of the way in which a single performance choice can ripple forward and backward through the action. The added line serves as an implicit stage direction for the actor playing Horatio who, as Edwards notes, must ask his question so that both Hamlet and the audience hear it as “unspoken accusation”—an accusation based on the sense that, however disloyal they proved to be, it is not obvious that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern deserved to die.
Furthermore, as we explore the line and the performances it can provoke, we can also imagine how it might prompt actors to rehearse and test a number of choices earlier in the play. For example, if Hamlet is attempting to defend himself against the implicit accusation, he may be heard as saying, “They are not near my conscience because they embraced not merely the King’s cause but the King’s evil act.” The question, then, becomes, “Were Rosencrantz and Guildenstern unwitting dupes of the King, who had no idea they were transporting Hamlet to his death Or did they know what was in the warrant” Now, you can ask students to become directors to explore how a production might prove to the audience that Hamlet’s two friends knew they were conspiring to have Hamlet judicially murdered. One choice would be to have the King show the two men the unsealed commission when he commands them to take Hamlet to England. Such a staging would make it unequivocally clear that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern knew what was in the warrant and knew they were escorting Hamlet to execution and thereby justify Hamlet’s claim that they deserved to die for conspiring to kill the Prince—and would also raise the interesting question of how the two men react to what they read, and even if they react differently. At the same time, this staging would raise the question, “Does it seem plausible that the King, so careful in all his plotting, would take the risk of creating two more men who know his secret” These questions illustrate that when one invents a specific performance choice one also needs to test whether that choice will work with other choices made before and after.
When you reach this point, you will have enabled students to become deeply immersed in the complex, recursive process entailed in performing what Robert Hapgood has called “imaginary rehearsals” (132—33)—and to become better readers, more creative inventors, and more alert spectators not only of Hamlet but of other plays by Shakespeare.
I love it at first sight! You can rest assured, Cartier Tank Replica is quality assurance to you, welcome to our online Boutique and plunder Replica Cartier Tank Americaine 18kt Gold pink Leather Band.
Processing your request, Please wait....
