So I just saw the most incredible production of Macbeth that wove parental grief into the whole regicide plot in such a fascinating way.
So at the very beginning of the play there was a scene where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are at a funeral as the primary mourners. A stretcher is carried on with a covered body. The body was notably very small. They laid flowers on it and Macbeth immediately left for battle.
Now *I* studied Shakespeare in college so I immediately knew there is one single line that implies that the Macbeths lost a child at some point. Most of the time this isn't utilized in productions; it's just a throwaway line, intended to paint just how determined Lady M is for this regicide thing to work and how furious she is that her husband has cold feet. In this production she delivers "I have given suck, and know how tender tis to love the babe that milks me" nearly in tears. She takes a moment to steel herself before saying, "I would while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains pit, had I so sworn" and she very nearly SCREAMED this in Macbeth's face.
Also noted was how the Macbeths looked at Macduff's children. Lady M was clutching her heart, nearly breaking watching them embrace their parents. Macbeth could not even look at them.
At the end of Lady Macbeth's plot, when she is sleepwalking and sleeptalking, she is typically portrayed as speaking to no one or to her husband. However, at a certain point of her monologue she got on her knees, raised her voice to a comforting octave, and began miming tear wiping, hand holding, hair and face stroking, around a child-sized figure. "Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on’s grave." Then she stands and appears to take the child's hand. "Go to bed, go to bed. I can hear knocking at the gate-" then she looks down and realizes that no one is there, followed be the most heartbreaking shriek I've ever heard followed by a full minute of her just weeping while curled up on the floor before she stood up, finished her monologue and left the stage.
Most of the time when the loss of a child is utilized in a performance or adaptation, it is assumed that the child was an infant and lost some time ago. To imply that the child died IMMEDIATELY prior to the events of the play and had been cared for and loved by their parents for a few years adds such a fascinating layer to the desperation to ascend to the throne, Lady M's madness, and Macbeth's initial hesitation into "in for a penny, in for a pound" attitude, Macbeth's fury that Banquo's, not his, children will take the throne, and even Macbeth's eventual demise following a frenzied final battle.
How far will grief push you to fill a hole? How far will grief push you to desperation? And what happens when none of your new pursuits are filling the void left by the one you lost? And what happens when you realize you have nothing left to lose?
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I. the other day i was thinking about the characters in Hamlet, as you do, and i got around to Gertrude and Claudius, and I was like, huh. y'know i never noticed this before, but Claudius didn't actually have to marry Gertrude. he was King Hamlet's brother; he was in line for the throne either way. and Gertrude certainly didn't have to marry Claudius, since she's the prince's mother. they have to keep her in the palace. so... why?
well, why do people usually get married? because they're in love, right?
i'm thinking about what facts the text actually tells us that everyone agrees on, and it's 1. Gertrude and Claudius got married 2. RIGHT after King Hamlet died, like so soon that they just served leftovers 3. and nobody but Hamlet seems to be mad about it, and 4. Hamlet wasn't even there when his dad died because he was away at college. oh, and 5. Claudius definitely poisoned King Hamlet to death.
i know how this story is usually told by Prince Hamlet. i do. but if you just look at the facts, well, imagine some Steve Buscemi-lookin motherfucker, the younger brother of the king. he's in love with his sister-in-law. and the king, well, he 6. has managed to hold off the incursion of several hostile countries nearby, so he's probably Good At Violence. we'll cast him with Brian Blessed (or for the younger generations, Fassbender). Buscemi's probably been scared of him all his life, but also grateful that he doesn't have to be king, ever, because he's not the kind of guy who leads armies into battle.
but then Hamlet marries this Disney Princess of a woman (I'm imagining someone like Nicole Beharie or Lily Gladstone, that level of unreal beauty and charisma with some serious steel in the spine). and Claudius is like, oh no. because he knows what kind of man his brother is. listen to how Prince Hamlet describes the two of them (emphasis mine):
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow;
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man:
This was your husband. Look you now, what follows:
Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear,
Blasting his wholesome brother.
he's a big, strapping man's man. he threatens and commands. i bet he has a suit of his war armor hanging in his bedroom.
how would that man treat a woman?
maybe Claudius tries to warn Gertrude. maybe he just tries to be kind to her. either way, by some miracle, she falls in love with him. and after some time, she asks him to get rid of her husband. to save her.
what can Claudius do? he knows he's not Hamlet's equal in battle. so he does the only thing he can: he poisons him.
and it works. King Hamlet is dead; Claudius is king! Beautiful Gertrude is his and free, and she still chooses him! They hold a funeral, and then a wedding. The court rejoices! Happy ending!GRAND FINALE! ROLL CREDITS. The castle is still strewn with flowers, Claudius and Gertrude are still relieved and bewildered at their narrow escape, laughing together amongst the jubilation, and then,
and then,
the prince comes home.
II. I'm not sure that Prince Hamlet loved his father. He talks about him mostly like he did to Gertrude in the monologue above: admires his manliness and kingliness, grieves his death, bitterly compares him to the emasculate Claudius. He admired his father, maybe. If he was violent enough that it took murder for Gertrude to escape him, then maybe Hamlet experienced that too.
The play is about whether Hamlet will choose violence or not. No one disputes that. It's why Laertes is held up so often as his foil (though Ophelia is the closer foil, but that's a post for another time) -- he's violent and swift to take revenge. Hamlet is thoughtful; he fears death; he doesn't want to kill anyone. And in that way, the play is also about whether or not Hamlet is like his father.
In the medieval work Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus, which holds one of the earliest attestations of the story of Hamlet, as "Amleth," his father's name is Orvendil; not the same name at all. But Shakespeare gave them the same name. This is the mirror held up to nature: will this Hamlet be manly and violent? A strong king, a terrible husband and brother?
Imagine him in mourning colors among the wedding decorations. Imagine this scowling, confused, grieving young college student refusing to move on, refusing to rejoice with the court at his father's death. Gertrude and Claudius must be looking anxiously at each other: what kind of person will young Hamlet be? Is he like his father? How much? They try everything they can to bring him back to joy and life: inviting his college friends to stay, encouraging his ex-girlfriend to get back with him, even agreeing to have a Theater Night because he used to like theater, why not.
And then there Hamlet is in Gertrude's room, furious and seemingly out of his head. He is armed. He rears up to strike her. And in the firelight, just for a moment, he is silhouetted perfectly by his father's armor.
Polonius knows what that means. He calls for help.
You know the rest.
III. It's a ghost story, sure. It's a horror story, probably, about prince Hamlet's descent -- though I'd argue it's not a descent into madness, but into masculinity. He's struggling with his father's legacy. He's grieving and angry and confused.
And that's the play. He's the play. It's not The Tragedy of Hamlet, King of Denmark. The horror is that prince Hamlet can't stand the happy ending. He comes in at the moment when all is saved, and he's the fly in the ointment, the ink blot that spreads until it engulfs the scene.
When they bring him to see the ghost, he gets angry. Horatio and Marcellus don't want him to follow it, but he fights them. In fact, he threatens and commands, telling them the ghost has made him hardy, and that he will kill them if they try to stop him. His friends watch him walk away, worried and scared.
And that is when Marcellus says, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
IV. Okay, one more.
It ends badly, right? Most of them die. Fortinbras invades the castle and claims the kingdom.
But there is one little moment of hope, and it's this: as Hamlet is dying in his friend Horatio's arms, having given himself up to masculine violence and destruction, he thinks of what his last words should be. He's a college student who loved theater and music. He's just a kid.
So he makes a pun: "The rest is silence." And then he dies.
Violence didn't get all of him. Somewhere in there, part of him resisted. Part of him survived.
Part of him, perhaps, could have been in a comedy instead.
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romeo and juliet was about how children repeat, replicate, and copy what they observe adults doing and about how the cycle of violence is endlessly perpetuated. juliet was 13. romeo was probably around 17. romeos friends - benvolio, mercutio, and the like - were also probably around 17-19. we accept that they're the same age as tybalt, which places him from 17-19 too. paris, despite being weirdly older than juliet, is probably still just their age because the r+j age gap is still weird.
3 children found freshly dead in a tomb. two suicides, one homicide. friend of both is deeply shaken. unwell teens murder each other in cold blood and broad daylight appears to be duel. who are their parents? where are they learning this?
stop casting them as adults. they are not adults. they're KIDS. in the words of ms flemming from heathers: OUR CHILDREN ARE DYING!!!
