An Overview of Shakespeare's Hamlet

Welcome back to the new thinkery. My name is David Barr and with me as always is my good friend Penelope for you. How are you Penelope? Are you in the club?

That won't she? Oh, yeah. Yeah. She's doing well.

She's having trouble sleeping, but she's as a boy she was ever. So she'll be a fine academic. Yeah, that's right. How are you?

How are you? How are you Alex? I'm doing well man. Very tired and I got the other kids sick, so it's been out here.

Yeah, this is great. Greg is getting a sneak peek into his future as quickly as his wife Hannah is due next month. Oh, yeah. So she's within the window of any time.

Well, you know, honestly, we don't know when we're going to publish this. So it's possible, but by the time the listeners are hearing this, I will have already committed a Rousseau. Oh, right. Right.

David, you're the foremost for their Rousseau father jokes. Well, you know, there's just so much information that I put out there about Rousseau. I definitely need to check my mind. We'll just don't let her hang out then.

The Akum's kids. Well, let me tell you Greg is somebody with a two-year-old who's on trouble sleeping. It's never too late to pull a Rousseau. That's what I want to hear.

I think the orphanage takes him at any age. Yeah. Also never too late to pull a Schopenhauer. The kids have a good one.

Yeah. Well, he kicked. I think his land lady down the stairs. Is that right?

Yeah. So that's a classy. Yeah. Can I give a shout out to a faithful listener of ours, Pastor Bill.

I just had a couple of verbins with Pastor Bill. You may remember he was in a pretty bad automobile accident a little less than a year ago. Right. He's still recovering.

He's got some struggles, but he listens. He was talking about the show. We were having some verbins. You know, he's, I mean, I would have said probably during your recovery, don't listen to the new thing.

But he sort of says it's like an endurance project. So he's talking about his mental not going to be afraid for us in the past. He has. Yeah.

For sure. I really appreciate that. He's a good man, Bill. I love him dearly.

Thank you, Bill. Now, of course, all the prayers in the world won't get Alex to where we're going. Right. Obviously he has a different pay-to-pay system to eat them.

Right. I like to think that a just God will reward a man who only seeks clarity. Is that what stress is at some point? Yeah.

That's a pretty good line. Yeah. I mean, probably God would be nice to a philosopher. He's just trying to figure things out a little bit.

Yeah. Right. So I mean, speaking of rejects, I'm told that to be else above my friend. We're on a family related theme.

So tonight, we're discussing Ham Shakespeare's Hamlet. This will be an overview episode and then we will do a dive into each of the acts. Is that correct? Yeah.

I found this. I found this. But the first time I read it, it's so misleading. I mean, I thought it was about some peaceful little area.

You know, like Hamlet. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember, dude, you had the same thing.

You thought it was about a little sucky with pick, right? That's right. That's right. I was hungry and I pulled out the book and it was something something different.

Happened. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

What did Greg think it was about? I thought it was about an omelet that was made with work. Yeah. There's a novel called Hands Out.

We're all wrong. Yeah. So what's it about? Oh, I totally forgot.

I was gosh, I had the whole joke plan where I was going to read this synopsis from Meros going to do this synopsis from Hamlet to members in like this was the second episode we were recording. Anyway, it doesn't matter. There was a terrible movie Hamlet too, a few years ago where the high school production puts on a sequel to Hamlet. I remember this joke and David and I thought it would land flaccus.

Nobody has heard of it. Fair enough. Yeah. But there listeners is another window into Greg's sense of humor.

So Alex, you're the polonius of the group. I do want to kick the song. Greg is the polonius. Well studied, but very, very old.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's right. It goes off the college.

Yeah. It's first. It's first. Life has mysteriously disappeared.

Yeah. I have some I've been doing that offline. Oh, geez. Listen, let me ask you guys or Alex, you're sort of taking the lead on this since you thought this recently.

What's the use of what use is that general overview episode for listeners? Why not just go right into the deep dive? Oh, yeah. I mean, this is something I've found a lot with Shakespeare.

There is a weird aspect of Shakespeare where he does like an immediate way in which the plot is compelling and you're moved and you're just invested in it. And then you start realizing all these curious details that you can't quite make sense of. And it starts to balloon into this larger world. Now with Beth, we did two episodes, one just us and one with a great non blitz.

But with Hamlet, it's his longest play. Beth is the shortest or the second shortest. Hamlet is by far the longest. And it just seems very, very difficult to do the sort of the drama of the play, and he just is especially in this nuanced way, like getting down some of these nuts.

I'm supposed to get to everything. Some of these nuts and bolts without doing a sort of acts by acts. That being said, it's also good to get a view of the whole. So what we're planning on doing is doing this overview, one act per episode.

And then Jan Blitz has agreed to come on when his edition of Hamlet comes out, hopefully in the spring, maybe it's a year from now next fall. But he's agreed to come on and discuss. Here's an interesting one. He's written a book on Hamlet and now he has an edition that he's finishing.

So I think that would be a good sort of, what is that seven episodes on Hamlet? That'd be pretty amazing. Yeah, I think that you're right, Alex, that if there's one of his plays, this, we're, a few others, probably deserve this kind of a deep dive. We'll discuss this in the episodes to come, but there's certain passages that you all, Amy, you can talk about for hours.

Can you say that, Alex? You said, I thought I heard you say that I heard this before. This is his longest play. That's right.

Yeah, that's right. OK. At least I've got a number of lines, right? Yeah.

I'm also going to teach it this fall. So this would be a good prep for me teaching this fall. I'm teaching the class on ambition. Alex and I had some dispute about whether or not Hamlet is ambitious.

Does he have that ambition, baby? Yeah, I mean, he's kind of like a philosophic ambition. He goes like, I don't see any of the Hamlet films. I actually, in addition to reading for this, I watched the first act of the Kenneth Brown.

Yeah. Yeah. Each doesn't have something wrong, something's right, in my opinion. But I think it's, it's, I've heard, I don't know, you know, performances well at all, but I've heard it's the most complete version.

I mean, I hear first folks, Alex, for you, Superior, Kenneth Brown, our own vision. Should we jump into the play? Yeah, what happens in this straightforward tale, Alex? So let's do an overview of the play.

Let's, let's, I want to kind of tag team this, much as, um, just like college for you guys. I make it after college. So let's, let's not be actual grads. Well, that's, that's an irritating half truth.

I apologize. That's a pleasant. But, um, but, uh, it's just got out the rest of the world. I'm telling you guys, every few months, Greg just busts out.

Well, he's been drinking, he's been drinking whiskey with his pastors or he needs to like, let all the filth out that he's been kept bottled up inside him. That's right. That's right. So give us the, come on overview, overview time.

What's happening? I'll set the stage. There's a weird ghost. Yeah, there's this weird ghost that shows up and, uh, so Hamlet takes place in Denmark.

And it's, um, in a, what's just happened is the elder Hamlet has died some two months ago, more or less. Yeah, a month or two months ago. And his brother has married his widow Gretchen, Claudia Sis' brother, and is now just married and shortly after the funeral, probably a month. It's very, very quick.

This is to stop the young Hamlet, who's still in a state of mourning and especially embarrassed by this arrangement. He refers to the marriage as incestuous, um, because they are, I guess, other, sister, by marriage, obviously. Uh, he is, I think, curiously, uh, the only person to refer to it as incestuous was not clear whether this is just his interpretation or custom. Basically what ends up happening.

You good? Are you playing with stables on the floor? Thank you. I mean, basically, uh, Hamlet is really upset.

He kind of, uh, is very morose and, uh, and obviously displeased with this though, more or less going along with things as I stand. He realizes he can't do anything about it. When, uh, his friends who have seen this ghost in the first scene come to him and he sees him in the fifth scene, apparently it's the, it's the ghost of his father who tells him that he was actually murdered by colleagues, right? Uh, this now gives Hamlet justice to kill a Claudius.

Um, but in the second acts, which is about two months later, uh, Hamlet still hasn't done anything about it. Uh, Ophelia, who's his kind of love interest, has been forbidden by her father, Plonius, to speak to him. And this has made him even more despondent. It seems like there's nothing redeeming in this world.

And so he kind of falls more and more into a kind of madness and, and depression. Uh, he ends up encountering some players who come in. He decides he can stage a play that, uh, looks a lot like his father's murder. Uh, this will presumably bring about a sort of doubt of guilt in his stepfather slash uncle Claudius.

As indeed, it seems to do, though that's debatable. I think we'll get to that eventually maybe when we do, uh, act three, Claudius at least knows at this point that Hamlet knows that he's, uh, murdered his, uh, brother and Hamlet's father, Hamlet's senior. And so he, uh, it kind of turns then into a kind of gripping who's gonna murder him first. Both are out for blood.

Hamlet has an opportunity, doesn't do it. Uh, confronts his mother, tells him to repent. He's back sent off to England. Uh, for some reason he doesn't know and the rent is sealed, which makes it suspicious.

He escapes, comes back to Denmark. He's complaining to get Claudius when he decides, oh, I guess all sort of light, Lertis, that's Bologna's is, uh, bride to be his father. That's Bologius's son, Lertis, a Philius brother. Uh, turns out that the sword has been poisoned as has been a goblet, couple of sword swipes, couple of poison drinks.

Everybody dies all along throughout this. There's this sort of sub plot of the Prince of Norway, Fortin Brauss, who is trying to reclaim some land, lost by his mother to the elder Hamlet. Um, and he just kind of walks us in and, uh, is basically pronounced king at the end, through no spilling of blood at least by his own hand. Obviously the whole raw family is now dead.

Bologius is dead, Gertrude, that's Hamlet's mother's dead. Hamlet is dead, Lertis is dead, Lertis committed suicide. It's one of the bloodiest endings. Only people really love the main characters are Horatio, that's Hamlet's best buddy from his college in vittenberg and Bologius who's coming in now seems to be king by the young Hamlet's endorsement just before he dies.

I love that so much. It's a really nice. I mean, that was very, I was very good. So amazing.

One question I have real quick just about the plot because I did it kind of quickly, but the play is clear that Claudius killed Hamlet senior. It's not ambiguous about that. That's question. Sorry.

Yeah, I think it is. At the end. And he, when he has that soliloquy where he tries to pray, I think there he confesses to himself. Nobody's there so he has no ulterior motive.

He doesn't actually confess. Sorry. Anyway, we'll get that one here. Yeah.

I have an opening question. If that's okay. Yeah. Yeah.

So Alex, one thing a, even a casual reader of Shakespeare might feel when opening this play is the disjunction between where the play is set and the names of the characters. So what's going on? And even the sex of Denmark, that's that's somewhat bizarre. We can understand his place in Italy, certainly his place in England.

And then you have plays like the Tempest, which you're kind of difficult to pinpoint. But why do we have this play in Denmark? Do you have any thoughts about that? And then the, how do we situate the background or sorry, the setting of the play with these Roman names?

Well, what shakes up to just to begin with? I'll just amplify the question. If Alex said that, I thought I do. Like why is it set in Denmark when almost all of his other tragedies, historical tragedies are set in either England or Italy, right?

Rome. I mean, there's the course of my path, but fine. So then we're set in either England or Rome. Yeah.

I think the Beth is an interesting example because it kind of stands halfway between Norway again, right? Norway, the Norway and Lord is invading it. He's rather pagan and then it's set between them in England, it's sort of the two influences, the foreign influences. And their England is set to be a fully Christianized country.

And I think there's similar reasons for Denmark, except between Norway on the one hand and then Germany, because of it as a bit as mentioned. So I think I, and Poland. So I think there's a, there's similar reasons it's caught between two sort of influences, but it seems to be more pagan Norway and more Christian sort of mainland Europe. Or like some kind of, I think that's the huge, for me, as I was trying to understand it, that's the, the setting is the, is one of the big keys to understand the text, that it seems like, and I'll try to make this clear later that Hamlet himself is partly Roman and partly Christian.

And so I think that's responsible for the law that takes place in the play, that the drama might not be as complicated if he were simply Roman or simply Christian. Yeah. I think in this play as in others and things, what you're getting at that geography is kind of shorthand for their ideas or concepts. The regime, yeah.

That are a play. Another thing I'll say is that there's also a hint. So there's, there's a pagan and Christian element, which is a theme also in Macbeth. Some distinctive additions from Macbeth that I think give Hamlet as peculiar character are one, it's not just Christian, but it's like, there's the scholarly element, right?

This isn't just, you know, evangelizing the good word, right? Of, of Christ. It's institutionalizing the university of Edinburgh. There's also kind of emerging pan-Europeanism, right?

There's treaties with England. There's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, L'eriti's going off to France to go have a jolly whole time, right? There's a, Polonius as well has studied in university. So this is a couple generations.

Meanwhile, up in Northern Europe and Scandinavia, Denmark and Norway, there's still a lot of the pagan stuff. Like there was a fight between the elder Fortinbrass and the elder Hamlet overland. It was basically like an honor, that, right? So there's that, there's also an emerging artisan and mercantile class.

There's this character later, Azurek, who is replacing the old aristocracy, people like Rosenkrantz and Guildenster, who seem like disaffected noblemen, who just don't have as much of a role in Azurek who can pay his way to the court. One thing we hear about in the preparations for war with Norway is that there's all these inventions, right? Canons and things like that. So I think it takes that pagan and Christian being, and the layers on to it, you know, questions of, you know, the university, right?

The, this tradition being mediated by book learning, you could say. And that university is very important for Christianity, of course, right? Wittenberg is where Protestantism began, basically, right? Yeah.

And there's a reference to the diode of worms as well. So this is pretty, pretty powerful. That was, they would attempt to lose weight actually last month. Yeah, you did a test on the work?

Yeah. He thought that was a good idea. Can I defend myself against this, uh, quality that doesn't confess business? I'll rare it back just a little bit.

This is actually scene three, I believe. He more or less confesses. So I just have him, I noticed that he never actually confesses. But what I mean by that is not that he, so he doesn't actually ever say I did it.

He eludes to having done it several times. And then he asked rhetorically about if one has done this, can one get forgiveness? And I guess what I didn't confess, he never confesses was this confession as it were happens in a church, but he never actually confesses to God that he's done it and asks for forgiveness. It's all couch and withdrawal terms.

Should I confess? Can I confess? Um, it seems clear that he did it, I suppose, uh, clearer than I had in my head, but he, but the, like the religious confession part doesn't seem to happen. Yeah.

Well, he doesn't confess. He, he proves incapable of your confessing. Right. But he's lying 40 to 41.

Oh, this is my dish. This is the full journey. He says, Oh, my offenses make it smells to heaven. So if he had the primal eldest curse of life, which is usually understood to be a reference to can't enable, fratricide.

So, um, which I guess would mean if he's also, I don't know if the eldest means the elder brother or eldest means the oldest, uh, current primal eldest would be a pleantass. But, um, yeah, I took that to be, but yeah, he has trouble confessing, but this is a good sign that, uh, him let's, uh, play within a play this, uh, it's called the mouse trap has, uh, succeeded, right? That it has kind of provoked some sense of guilt. Some worry about his, uh, immortal soul, um, but he proves that he's unable, I think, to actually I don't know if I can confess for it.

Yeah. I'll just, I have, I'll see you have a specific question. Great. Since, you know, we want to try and key was closely to the mission of this episode, which is a kind of topography of the play.

Can you discuss a few of the major themes that emerge, Alex or, I mean, you can discuss themes or what should readers be aware of? Are there any kind of North Stars that they should be following as they progress through the play? Like you said, it's exceedingly complex. So, and you, this is again, one of these great works that one lives with and returns through time and time again.

It's just too complex to get it, reading it the first or even fifth time. What are themes to track and what are things to keep one's eye out for? I guess Alex has this in the run of show notes, but one of the things that I think that it's true that it's about, but I think that it's overstated is Hamlet's indecisiveness. And that's true.

Obviously, it's in the play. Hamlet is indecisive, but I think what people are missing is what is the source of his indecision? Why can't he make decisions? And I think that too often it's probably connected to a kind of, it's simply indecisiveness.

He can't just make up his mind as opposed to like they're actually competing polls that are pulling him in different directions that have real weight in his life. So, he's indecisiveness is one of the big things. That's probably the biggest thing people come away from, right to be here or not to be. He's one of those famous lines.

He can't decide what to do, but there are others. Alex, I know you've got to have many. Yeah, I mean, so the indecisiveness that you're right has to be pinned down a bit, right? It needs to be to be.

It's not just like, oh gosh, I don't know what to do for dinner or should I go back to school or should I eventually my dad's dad? It's yeah. Yeah, he has a real crisis that's tied to all these things we've talked about. So again, so you take this old problem of pagan and Christian virtue and then it's filtered through the book learning and that's apparently what Hamlet's been up to.

He's the prince. He's apparently, it's not clear whether this is an elected monarchy at the time. There's questions about this. There is some election references in the text.

I mean, yeah, I believe so. He is the prince. He's studying at Vittberg. Yeah, one point thought, you know, man is the crown of the world and everything is a vaulted beautiful heaven.

The cosmos is beautifully ordered. He had this beautiful kind of almost kind of scholastic version of Platonism or something like that where everything is organized and everything is just so lovely and perfect. And he has this gash, right? Where he when he sees that his mother has married his uncle, right?

And he called, he refers to this as an unweeded garden in his first soliloquy. Subsequent events, right? So then Polone says, Ophelia, you can't talk to Hamlet. Like he's going to take advantage of you.

It's going to, and this causes a lot of problems. Hamlet then in act two, after this is taken effect and Ophelia is given him the cold shoulder, he realizes she doesn't love him. So this garden had one flower in it. Now that's proven to be a weed.

And so what keeps happening to Hamlet is that he keeps encountering new events, new possibilities. Like when his mother confesses, for instance, I think he has a new set of purpose that people can be fixed. I can weed the garden myself, so to speak. And so to go, the way that this is put by Ophelia in Act 3, scene one, is she refers to him as the observed of all observers.

And I think that's a great synopsis of Hamlet's role in the play. He's constantly observing the world, constantly revising his view of things. Meanwhile, he's of intense public interest to everybody around him. So everybody's observing him.

So the whole play is constantly in fluxes. He wrestles with these deep questions. And so he comes to kind of image, this is how he's often interpreted image of modern man is wrestling with all these influences. So when he comes to, doesn't he come to despise the world though?

I mean, I'll try and find the lines. Okay. So you're really like, the world is awesome. The vault is in heaven's like the world's nothing left.

Like this goal is like we're just dusting the winds. Yeah. Everybody turns into food and poop and then poop will come out. And in my, in the words of my friend Michael McShane, the world is just a bunch of poo-eaters.

This is how he interprets that air-sop and he's what's the play with other piece with all the poop as they're flying up to. Yeah. Anyways, he changes quite a bit. And I think the, to go back to David's question of the, what are the, would you say, pole stars or something like that?

I think Hamlet famously has seven soliloquies by Hamlet, those other characters as well. He's seven soliloquies and these kind of can be used as stopping points throughout the play to kind of meditate on how his view is changing. He also has, gives hints between these soliloquies, but that's a good way to kind of move from one to the next to the next. And think about this observed of all observers, this person who's figuring out his place in the world as people are trying to pin him down.

How can you pin this guy down? He's too, it flocks to uncertain. He flips from idealism to a base materialism to everything in between. It's really quite impressive.

So he's indecisiveness. His school learning seems to be a theme, right? Just pairing with that. I mean, thinking about like Moses and Cyrus and some of these other rulers and Machiavelli and others, who are these sort of hybrid people insofar as they're greatly formed, not just by their regime, but by going abroad.

I mean, it seems to be central, not just that he studied, but that he studied abroad, that he spent his formative years, right? That he spent his significant amount of time in Germany at the center of this new religious learning. So, you know, essentially, I don't want to typecast him too much as academics. So he sees serious about his studies, but you know, to paraphrase another one or Shakespeare's plays, he seems to like plays too much.

He's this artistic side. So he's an interesting kind of hybrid creature. You can see this and he seems to understand political intrigue well, and this comes out in the complexity of his scheming. But the mode of his scheming is through art, essentially.

Unless that's too much, Alex. I don't know. I mean, another way to put this. He might be one of Shakespeare's smartest characters, if not the smartest.

Maybe Prospero is the only exception I can think of. I don't know. He just doesn't get as many lines as Hamlet. Yeah, right.

He's incredibly introspective. And he takes seriously the question of how he's supposed to live, right, in light of the events happening around him. And he's incredibly nimble. This is something Prospero perceives.

He has so much knowledge of soul of all the characters around him that he can manipulate them well. Hamlet seems to have that, but he's also seems genuinely probing and searching throughout the play. And that's one of the things I like about his characters. He takes the things that happen to him seriously as affecting his worldview and affecting the course of action that he can.

So you don't think it's popular for people to point to surmise that he goes mad at a certain point in the play. You don't believe it. I'm struggling to find my lines, but doesn't he intimate that he's actually pretending to be mad at one point? And so then the question is, is he pretending?

He stops pretending. He actually has become mad. But isn't there a couple of ways that he might be winking at the folks? Like clearly this is just playing.

He's not genuinely mad. He's not genuinely crazy. Yeah. And people know when he seems mad, the police at one point says there's methods, right?

There's something actually going on. So I think he does be madness. But sometimes when you're changing your mind about the world and you're suddenly being gripped with a new vision of who you are, what man is, how the world operates, whether there's a god or not, whether there's an afterlife, if you're really changing, you're going to seem a little bit insane. That's what the Celiant Exstrangers is in the office, for example.

He's like, I might see mad as a change my mind up and down more or less. You get a sense of that being philosophic can look like madness because you flip from radically different positions. One to the other is you consider their various merits and you take them seriously, right? You know, Socrates and the Beathetes attacks protagonists, but a little later when he restates protagonists, is you better than even photographers could have?

Theodore says, wow, I'm not really sure whether you believe this or not. Like, is this your view? Like, it's so persuasive. You can get a sense of madness from great philosophic sobriety, right?

You know, there's another theme, I think, just having touched it again today to try and prepare. It seems like it's in the foreground, but quickly fades back. It's really at the very beginning, the very end, it's there. And you can kind of forget, it seems to me, just how political this play is.

Like, it seems like a sort of private affair, of course they happen to be kings and stuff like this, so it could be a strictly private affair, but right, Fortin-Bross comes into the end and sort of takes over, right? A, and then B, at the very beginning, they're on guard. And maybe this is typical of a Denmark or whatever that they have guard stationed outside of the castle, but it seems like they're watching, and of course everyone always stood watch and all this, but the emphasis on the beginning seems like there's a kind of watch out of fear from a potential attack from a neighbor or something like this. And so like the book seems to me like the grand politics is happening in the background of this play the entire time.

Yeah, I think that's a good, that's a fantastic point because the first of all, the guard is explicitly said to be because of Norway. So, obviously you have guards at different times, but this specific guard, which might be like a bit more on the outskirts of the castle. And everybody's very tense. They're worried.

The big play begins with concerns about whether the approaching change of guards might be the enemy. Exactly. Yeah. And so, but I think that's, that's a great, the fact that you can forget these grand politics that's happening, obviously, the beginning throughout the play, and then really ends in really powerfully at the end, gives you a sign, it's in a way echoing Hamlet's problem, which is there's all this stuff happening outside, but it all becomes domestic or inward.

It's much like with Hamlet, who should be in dealing with his life hours, but he's always inward looking, right? So you kind of forget the world around you. And that's, I think, I mean, I don't want to emphasize too much the university learning, but I think Jan Blitz points out that there's only two plays where universities are mentioned, and this is one of them. And it seems like what you see here is a guy who wrestles with his moral problems to a kind of study, right?

There's all sorts of always the most learned characters from racial, Hamlet and Polonius use tons of classical references. I mean, they're constantly using images, ratio, tells of, you know, interesting, mythical stories embedded in Roman history and stuff. There's, so there is a kind of way in which their points of reference or their ways of self-understanding are mediated by their book learning throughout the play. But I mean, I know that the major players are Sweden and Denmark, but again, I'm, you know, are those the only major international players here?

The Norwegians marched through, I'm sorry? You said Sweden. Oh, sorry, I meant Norway and Denmark, excuse me. Yeah.

There's England, there's a treaty with England, and then there's the Polax. Oh, right, the Polax. The Swift-footed Polax, the Sleded Polax? The Sleded Polax, yes.

The Sled Polax, yes. Yeah. But I mean, I want to start telling Polish you. But, so did Alex Elnorb say you're a Polishoke?

Did you answer the, my question about the Roman names? I mean, Greg kind of to stab at it about this hybrid pagan Christian universe that they're living in, but do you have anything? Horatio strikes me as actually Roman. I mean, like in a way, right?

I mean, like, oh, damn, I can't, I'm not going to be able to find all this quick, but right? Like when he finds out that his dad's been killed, like he's like, let's go kill him. And he said, then he said, I dare damnation or something like this. Am I messing that up?

You're thinking of Lertus? Lertus, excuse me. Lertus, yeah. Lertus.

That's another Roman name. Yeah, right. Right. So like going back to what I was saying earlier, what I think is going on here, like look, if Hamlet is learned, he's been confused by his university education.

He's kind of Christian. He's kind of pagan. Right? If Hamlet simply Christian, what do you do?

You don't kill him, you turn the other cheek. Like, the problem seems to be that he's really pulled between these two competing worldviews. And some of the Roman named characters seem to represent actually this quite serious Roman alternative, like who gives up? I don't know.

You're not going to kill a guy because he's in church. That's that's only Christian. Like that's not gonna worry a Roman. It gets even more complicated because the King of Norway, his name is Fortengrass, which is French for strength in arms.

Right. And but then Hamlet, the original name was Amleth, right? From the original story. apparently I haven't done this research, which is just what I've read about it.

And people talk about this a lot, for reasons all state. But it was apparently the ancient story was a version of the Caesar and Brutus story. And so it wasn't hidden in Hamnet was also the name of Shakespeare's son in your son. So there's all but the Brutus thing is interesting because at one point Polonius says, oh yeah, when I was in college, I did a bit of acting.

I played Caesar, Brutus. Right, right, right, right. And then later Hamlet, whose name means literally Brutus like Brutal or Brutish man. So it's it's even Hamlet has a kind of a homing name that's obviously filtered through this other, you know, tradition.

I mean, I didn't mean but we we joke about the Sleded Polonius, but that's even like a Greek way of referring to somebody, right? Like, and then you have all these references to the Roman or Greek gods throughout, or some not able to find it quickly, but right. Yeah, anyway, they're all kinds of references to the Roman gods here. Hercules is a niobii, Hyperion.

This is in Act 1, Scene 2. There's three references right there to Greek mythical figures that Hamlet makes. The other thing we kind of discussed this earlier that I'm struck upon first reading is even the big characters display some kind of philosophic insight. Everyone from the the the grave diggers to Bernardo and Marcellus, they all are, they're not they're no real dums in this play.

Yeah, Blitz does a great job with the grave diggers scene of showing how to create digger really holds his own in a contest of wits against him. He's even the learned it. So though, I mean, he is really bad with Horatio so much, but he battles with Polonius and kind of maps the floor with this kind of doddering Machiavellian character with the grave digger. Great digger really holds his own.

He also does a good job of with Osric, who seems kind of silly, but Osric gets his way. Osric doesn't get wrapped up in the prideful sort of affairs of noblemen in the courts, but a bit more pragmatic because he's a sort of mercantile type. Yeah, and I think this is all, I mean, the fact that there's this kind of pervasive philosophic attunement, if you will, gets I think the fact that despite Hamlet being this sort of exemplary figure, he is in a way kind of typical of the age in which he lives according to this play, which is, you know, again, so Hamlet's often understood as a play about modern men and Hamlet as the exemplar of modern men is self-examination and turning inward. And we don't want to be too, I think, ham-fisted with these kind of interpretations, but I think there's a real germ of truth here, which is that when you have competing worldviews, and you're not just torn one way or the other and having to decide, but you're having to think it through, it creates a kind of skepticism and I think even a risk of nihilism.

I think that's maybe one of Shakespeare's biggest warnings here is that ultimately, if you have competing worldviews, the result is sort of engendering thought, but it might mean that your outcomes are going to be basically one or the other, a kind of nihilistic kind of pragmatism of this emerging kind of pan-European mercantile sort of arrangement, or it's a philosophic argument, but none of these doctrines, none of these worldviews will be taken all that seriously precisely because you're also compelling and also fundamentally competing. So you either just say, whatever, I'm just going to go make money and live a comfortable life, or you wrestle with them in a deep existential way, but it doesn't seem like there's much room in between. Is there? Is it fair to say that Horatio is stoic, that he represents a kind of, or he advances a kind of stoic worldview?

Yes. So again, you get these various alternatives, right? So you get Horatio and Léartes, both as sort of, by the way, the shows of course, which we all know that there's not a singular romance or worldview, but so you get these alternative Roman worldviews maybe in Horatio and Léartes. Yeah, there's deep, there's, I mean, early on Horatio, the Bernardo and Marcelis have brought him to see the ghost that they've seen twice before, and he's deeply skeptical.

And he doesn't even see it. They, there's all this play on seeing versus hearing, and he refuses to believe what he's heard. And, and he starts, I think it's, Marcelis is telling the story again, yet again, he's has of, of this, when finally the ghost appears, and it's not the story that's going to convince him, but the actual sight of it. And so there's a kind of deep spiritual skepticism and sort of self-reliance, a lion's own senses and on himself and Horatio is throughout it.

Peculae withdrawn. Now he has that challenge because he does see a ghost and he gets very attached to him and he gets very worried about his friend. It turns out. But yeah, I think there's the various competing worldviews and they're all, I think, put on the, put to the fire.

Now, quick question. But the exception of Gertrude, the queen, and even, not even her examples, not in a big way, women seem to really receive to the background in this play. And other Shakespeare's plays, they're front and center. This isn't a question because, it's not saying, oh, it's unfair that he didn't write women into this play.

But I wonder why in the Hamlet universe, they play such a muted role. Or do you think I'm, is that an incorrect observation? There may seem to be a central character to the, to the play, but other than her. Oh, she's a central but like in a history, I don't know you're right.

Too much depth, if that's fair enough. Yeah, I mean, it's true. Gertrude and I feel like both get pulled in. I wonder in the case of this play, whether anybody is truly independent of Hamlet.

I mean, it doesn't feel like most people are talking about Hamlet once he becomes at least a problem. Oh, I see what you mean. So he pulls everybody into center. Yeah.

So I mean, even when we wait, everybody's in the background. Yeah, everybody's in the background. And he's kind of the focal point. And this is why I really love this way.

He's the focal point. And yet he kind of fades into, he doesn't, but he's not concrete, right? He's not like, make Beth who has a kind of strict problem. And he makes decisions on one side, the other than that as consequences.

But he doesn't seem like his character fundamentally changes made him wrong about this. But Hamlet seems to really change, at least his worldview, a number of times as he makes his way throughout the play. And that's what it finds remarkable about it. It is like a community centered around a kind of philosophic type who's wrestling with his youth and trying to act and cannot act.

And everybody's always talking about him. It doesn't feel like that. Maybe it seems like he's the guy. Yeah.

That's the title I dedicate. That's right. Our ghost real in this play. I just remember not this time I read it.

One of the last times I read it, I was sort of suspicious that people were just having hallucinations. But then the fact that they're all sort of, obviously, I think they also the three characters he had in the first act, right? And of course, the disbeliever sees it. And so, okay, fine.

But he's an armor. Am I misunderstanding that? He's described as being an armor. And so then in that case, okay, he's been beavers up.

Yeah. Oh, his beaver is up. His beaver is up. So you can see right through the beaver is the thing.

It's just way it's operate spread. No, the beaver's up on his face is usually on your hand, but out of the way from the mic, because then people can sorry. The beaver is typically on your face, but he says his beavers up. But I'm quite serious.

Like, I don't know, always suspicious that maybe in the Tempest, for example, there are sort of magical elements going on. But if Hamlet really is crazy, just imagining seeing these things, I don't know. Well, we just suppose that's true. That's a fair question.

Or if it's what the status of the ghost are, yeah, maybe another way to put it. We discussed this with Macbeth. Do the ghosts only happen in these weird pagan hybrid? Like, they're no ghosts in the room.

That's not true. No, no, no, no, no, there are. Yeah, the ghosts of Caesar. Yeah.

Are there ghosts in any of the English plays? There's some strange supernatural stuff, I think, almost in Lear. We should have like a machine on to discuss King Lear. Because there isn't, so I'm just wondering, actually, now I, you know, listeners are going to be sad about the answer.

But like, okay, Macbeth, supernatural stuff, and then some extreme, Greece, supernatural stuff, Rome, supernatural stuff, England, not really. Denmark, just the one. It would make sense. So like he has historical plays and he has these quasi-historical mythical plays, Leary, right, right, right, right, and all those.

So, and then he has just his kind of fanciful plays because you can even though I measured him there and with, right, what's the name of the character who's a, who's described as a fantasy or a phantasm or something like that, oration? Yeah, what's his name? I'll grab it, lady. But I think one thing I'll say about this that's similar to Macbeth with regard to supernatural, it seems like there are concrete moments where you cannot deny the supernatural.

Everybody sees the ghosts of Hamlet in the first, first scene and the last two scenes of the first act, right? Similarly, it seems like the witches just are right about this very specific prediction in Macbeth. And so they seem to have some Sumner and Chanel on the other hand. On the other hand, there are these other moments where the supernatural occurs in this play and you're not clear that it's supernatural.

When he sees, for instance, his father in the bedroom scene, Gertrude doesn't. Now you can give an explanation for why Gertrude does. You have to give an explanation for it or you can just pause it that this is Hamlet's vision, right? Similar, you could say in Macbeth, there are moments like when he sees the dagger or when he sees, I'm forgetting his name, his right hand man that he's murdered.

Who's Macbeth's right hand? Banquo. Banquo. When he sees the ghost of Banquo, he's only one sees it.

So you're kind of inclined to say, well, other people see the witches, those things do come true. Maybe these are statements of his imagination. And that's proposed within the play. Right.

And there's a good reason, I think in Hamlet, to say that maybe this return of his father in Act 3 is in fact just a vision. He's feeling guilty about delaying and it seems to just come in on these weird terms at that time. So I think the thing that Shakes, sorry, there's a long way of saying something very similar. I think Shakes, forces us to accept the supernatural and then raises doubts about is like its extent.

Right. So I was just wondering if there was a distinction between Christian and non-Christian worlds. That's all like non-Christian worlds, Christian worlds, no ghosts, these kind of Christianizing worlds, there's still room for ghosts. So maybe we could do this not as a story is between strict English history, right?

Those are the quasi historical plays outside of English history, which maybe Shakes for gives himself a little more free reign to explore different possibilities, right? Or just, yeah, that's really good. Where do we go from here, fellas? But we're going to do all the hacks.

I don't know. Do you think we did a good job with the play? Should we talk about the play with an apply? Yeah, you should definitely.

Let me throw something out there. The play with an apply throughout the whole of Hamlet, there's constant reference to playing and to performance. And in fact, Hamlet's often playing that, for example. And at the very end, Horatius has put all these bodies on the stage and I'll tell the tale and there's always reference to theater again.

But maybe the sort of pinnacle of this is in the center of the play in Act 3, you get a play within the play where these actors come in. And I think one of the themes to keep in mind, and this is tied into this kind of book learning thing, which is that if you were decisions in life or mediate through a kind of education and learning and reasoning and meditation, then everything becomes a little too studied and it becomes a little too performative, right? It's not just conviction and choice. It's something like rational thought and careful exposition leading to a decision, which is too much like an actor.

You know what I mean? Like when an actor takes it, he says, oh, well, I should do this for this reason because I'm feeling this way. And so I need to go for it. When that becomes actual life and not just something on the stage, I think that's a problem.

So in Hamlet's first speech in Act 1, Scene 2, it's not a soliloquing, but it's his first major speech. He gives a three-short speech before he gives an individual speech. We are lamenting his father's death. He's still dressed in black and Claudius and Gertrude say, hey, hey, your father's death is just the way of the world.

This is how things go. Death is common to all. He says, yeah, it is common, which is a joke. He means it's both universal but it's also low, like something basis happened.

And she says, if it be, why seems it so particular with the and Hamlet says, it seems, madam, hey, it is. I know not seems to not alone my icky cloak, good mother, nor customary suits of solemn black, nor windy's desperation of forced breath, known with a fruitful river in the eye, nor the dejected behaviour of the visage, together with all forms, moods, and shapes of grief that can denote me truly. These indeed scene for their actions that a man might play. But I have that within which passes show these but the trappings in the suits of well, and a little later when he's talking about this activity of drinking, he laments that this is horrible because if people find one thing wrong with you, that's all they focus on against your virtues.

And so Hamlet reveals himself to be kind of perfectionist. He wants to, he's sad. He's very upset about what's happened with his father, especially after in a few scenes he learns about the murder. And he has to in a way act such that his action will be impeccable, will be perfect, will show exactly how he feels and not be open to interpretation.

And here I think he quite clearly shows that this is his inclination. Anybody can look sad, right? You just put on black, you're so sad, right? Which is, you know, I'll act at David's funeral.

But anybody anybody can do that. It's quite another thing to do that in such a way that it's beyond acting, right? That you can actually, but he suspects, I think what he says, I have that within that surpasses show, there's nothing you can do. Nothing, no external action that is perfect.

That's beyond screutability. That's not open to interpretation. I think that really bothers him, right? And so when he goes to the play within a play with Claudius, what he's essentially doing is exposing that in Claudius.

I can bust the scenes on your BS presentation. I can figure it out and make you feel guilty. And he seems to succeed in that second pretty, pretty powerful, pretty powerful insight he has into human nature. You know, it's interesting.

When you read Hamlet and you pick up on these insights into human nature, there are a lot of interesting lessons in the play. But when you try and put a bow on it, like the big takeaways, the sum of his plays, the takeaways are not so complex. So in the Tempest, the Tempest is one of my most favorite plays. It never struck me as terribly complex, especially if you have played on the back of mind.

Hamlet is a different animal. It's very hard to walk away from Hamlet with any kind of decisive insight on what the play was all about, with the messages, either many messages, but putting it together in an ecosystem that's fully functioning is, I've found this is totally impossible. Do you have any, this is a big question, Alex, do you have any provisional thoughts on what it's all about? No, I mean, maybe we'll figure that out a little bit.

Jan Blitz has a really interesting, you can find us online. And you keep referencing Jan Blitz. Is there a book of his book? It's called Deadly Thought, which is a very good title.

But the introduction is rarely available online if you search Jan Blitz. That's with an ass, Hamlet, online. Just the answer is that Jan Blitz is Hamlet. Yeah, you'll find his little island retreaters.

Yeah, but what about the man that has the beaver on his face? Well, that's not great. No, no, no. How do we find that?

Just Google, just Google beaver, I guess, or I mean, God, I don't know what's your thing David, that you're trying to work towards. You're building to itself. I don't know what it is, but I'm trying to know anymore either. I got off the you just thinking about him.

I don't know. I mean, maybe we'll figure this out a little bit. I do like that line of affiliate. And this is just a crutch that I rely on and understanding it now, knows what I think, you know, by the end of the series, but the observed of all observers.

I think that's in a way, a statement about the predicament of man, you're trying to figure things out while people are trying to figure you out. And that leads to a really difficult problem, where you try to pin people down and can't even pin themselves down. And it just leads to a lot of conundrum about who you are, what to do and it makes human life really difficult. I mean, I just, but I mean, again, I mean, I think this is another thing that Hamlet does, that he doesn't like if Hamlet were simply a scholar, again, we might not have these sets of problems, right?

Like, if you were a Shakespeare, if you were a Socrates, if you were a Plato, if you were a whoever, I mean, what he is, it's not clear that he would be drawn into the acts of problem that he's drawn into here. It seems to me, right? So again, it's like he's not fully any of these things that he is. Yeah, I mean, this is the problem of going to be well rounded.

That's the lesson here. You've got to be a full zealot Christian, or a full stoic, or a full hard on Roman honor lover, or a full hard on beaver account. Oh, God, I set you up. I'm sorry.

I apologize to the one you think that's what Hamlet senior was all about. Yeah, I think you're right. But I mean, but is that possible in the world? No, no, that's good.

I mean, always a possible in the modern world too. And you have all these different things pulling you. That's very good. And so this is what you see this a lot today, where you see like, you know, reactionary Christians or reactionary like Renaissance types or, you know, whatever position people take, it has to be in part reactionary because to be truly open and to really understand, you know, the world is not you can't just accept their tradition.

They're competing traditions. So thought has to enter into it. There's just no way. That's very good.

It might be an interesting case for looking at comparing chorulaeos to Julius Caesar in that regard, right? There's so many more options available to the characters in Julius Caesar that may or may not be open to the character. Once Rome has become this sort of big thing, all these various next velocity enters and then there's stoicism, there's epicurianism, there's rhetoric, there's all these things that compete for your debate. Yeah, I mean, in a way reminds me of Athens, right after Solum talked about this a bit when we did what we did episode with BJ Dobbsky, I'm domestically the Dallas, you get the sense that their the Athenians are operated open ended and that's why you get these poets, philosophers, softness, orders, like all these different types floating about and part of the reason Athens tolerates them is because Athens is like, yeah, I don't know, we can't do something.

Like we're not we can't be Athenians in the old style anymore. And similarly, I think you just can't be a Christian or pagan in the old style anymore. According to the process is therefore, I'm not saying Shakespeare's pro-Catholic, but if they were simply Catholic, that might be easier as well, right? So like the Protestantism is opening up problems too?

Yeah, I think Protestantism is one way of dealing with this, right? It's kind of turning inward or way from the institution. Right. Yeah.

You guys have some favorite lines in the play? Oh, I think I always like in high school the advice that he gives to son, which is not the office school, you know, give every man die in year, but not by tongue, stuff like that. No. Yeah, no, that voice.