I was finally able to see Hamnet, which I loved (the movie theaters ‘locally’ are 45 minutes away). The book was great; I love Maggie O’Farrell’s writing; the film was a successful distillation of it’s essence, visually very beautiful. Because a close friend has lost a child – a central plot point – it also had me sobbing practically before it began, but that’s what living and loving others can – and should – do to a human.
I am a theatre person to my bone marrow. I love, love, love the theatre – despite almost never going to it (is that as weird as it sounds?), so perhaps it’s more honest to say I love the theatre as one loves an idealized lover, from a distance. Of course like the movies theater, theatre theatre are a ways away, so maybe not weird after all! The theatre I idealize and love, however, mixes with my memories of studying acting in the U.K., where they truly approach and treat both the theatre and theatre acting as a craft, and national treasure.
We in America tend, in my view, to treat it like a gross lottery, and only, mostly, the luckiest, most beautiful or connected people need apply, additionally elevating the lottery winners, whoever they are, to the point of gods – which has killed more than a few of these not god-like, often very vulnerable souls. An oversimplification, but…
Hamnet’s culminating scene is in The Globe Theatre, opening night of the newest play from Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet. It was wonderful, showing the experience of being in a space while allowing oneself – en masse, with others – to be overwhelmed by a story painted in words by players in costume. The book and film also successfully reframe Shakespeare’s life in Stratford as loving and full, if not fulfilling enough for the bard. London, London, not Stratford, is where theatre happens.
Both the book and film position his heretofore much maligned or dismissed wife as central to his life, his art, and his vision. That reframing matters, and is yet another reason among so many others why we need more and more and more women writers, directors, conceivers, inventors, coaches, bosses, leaders – centering women in ways unknown to date.
I spent a decade studying Shakespeare, in college and after, performing in Loves’ Labours Lost, 12th Night, Troilus and Cressida (in leather, no less), Henry V, and a few others lost to memory. The language, the language, the language! His best works are sublime, his lesser works are still filled with poetry and imagery that is compelling, beautiful, memorable and – to me – beloved. I never had a problem memorizing all those lines – they flow from the tongue, they fit, they make sense, they are like that fairy tale of old, where one sister has flowers and diamonds, pearls, rubies and gold dropping from her mouth each time she opens it to speak.
Yes, that is Shakespeare. To me.
Once, many moons ago, an infatuated fella read these lines to me; it was pretty compelling I gotta tell ya, even if it didn’t last!!
Sonnet 23
As an unperfect actor on the stage
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;
So I for fear of trust forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love’s rite,
And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,
O’ercharged with burden of mine own love’s might.
O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love and look for recompense
More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.
O, learn to read what silent love hath writ.
To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.