Sunday, May 30, 2010
Hamlet's Father's Ghost
It appears Hamlet is prepared for his father's ghost to visit him. There is no doubt in his mind when told that his father's ghost was seen by Marcellus and Bernardo that this did occur and that he needed to engage him. This interests me. It is as if he is in the realm of the imaginal already and no preparation is required. He strikes me as one with little interest in the outside world up to this point. The prince who has been pampered is a puer aeternis being compelled to grow up and his father is compelling him. Dressed in battle garb his father demands Hamlet avenge his death. This call to battle is every father's call for his son. The call to battle through the mother realm to become an autonmous man. Yet when Hamlet first sees him he is not sure what to call him. Hamlet, King, father...in that order as if Hamlet himself is sorting out who this archetypal/hallucinated figure is. He uses his first name, first, as if he is thnks he is on equal ground somehow with his father. Then he wavers and calls him by his title, King, which also doesn't quite define his relationship and perhaps pulls it too far the other side and then settles on father which, like Goldilocks, feels just right. Again the number three comes up when Hamlet demands his friends swear not just once but three times to never report what they saw. Is this a little OCD on behalf of Hamlet or have we already moved into the archetypal realm where numbers have significance and demonstrates Hamlet's respect for and understanding of this realm? We know we are in for quite a battle not just between Hamlet and those in whom he expects to seek revenge but between the archetypal and literal realms. We are just moving out of the alchemical period in history and its imprint is all abound in this play. WE will have fun.
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It is interesting to me that almost every male actor aspires to play Hamlet at some point, that the role is considered one of the stage's great challenges. Perhaps those actors, themselves puers in life, are instinctively drawn to this archetypal call of the father within.
ReplyDeleteI think of the comical image of Mel Brooks dressed as Hamlet in his remake of "To Be Or Not to Be," a sixty some year old man parading about as the melancholy prince. I find something sad and lacking in men of a certain age who aspire to remain eternally boyish. Yet so much of American culture seems to hold this as the ideal.
Perhaps the message is that only by embracing the father within can we truly leave childhood and individuate.