Reflections on Hamlet

Today one of my students asked me "Have you ever heard of the work Pride and Prodigious? It's very famours."

It's good to know the influence of Jane Austen has transcended cultural barriers and the Pacific ocean to make its way to China. If one thing infuriates me more than Jane Austen, it's the recent head-ache inducing infatuation for her. I don't mind someone liking good literature, and I consider Jane Austen good literature, but it's one thing to tolerate the money=happiness theme that permeates all of her works and it's totally another to embrace it with uncomparable affection. I guess I have to be filthy stinking rich before an American woman will ever find me attractive. Ok, so I know that's not true, but being rich wouldn't hurt right? And that's what really scares me.

So I've been reading Hamlet in the past week, and, hopefully some of the Shakespearen experts that are known fans of my blog can clear up some things. I'm fine with everything in the play until the last scene. Does anything make less sense than the sword fight at the end? Let's start from the beginning.

For one, Hamlet discovers, the second he returns from a pirate-ridden journey England, that his one and only love Ophelia has killed herself. Naturally, he does what every normal man would do and jumps into her grave, with her brother, to prove that he loved her more than Laertes ever could. They fight in the grave, blah blah blah. You know the story.

What transpires after the fight is something I will never understand. It seems, shortly after the grave sight brawl, that one of the king's courtiers shows up and says to Hamlet "You know the guy who sent you to England to be killed, murdered your father, and married your mom thinks you can win a fencing-match against the guy whose father you killed and just fought in the grave only a few moments ago." Really? Sounds like a swell idea to me! Hamlet is suicidal and mad, I'll give you that (even though I seriously doubt his madness) and a death-wish swordfight would makes sense, but Hamlet has spent the entire play contemplating when to kill Claudius. It seems to me he's passing on any chance of doing this by agreeing to fight Laertes. Hamlet knows that Laertes wants to kill him, he has to. I guess Hamlet could kill Claudius while fighting Laertes, but I would find it difficult to kill someone with a sword while another person is chasing me around the room trying to kill me with their sword. I don't know, I'm no Hamlet.

And while all this tomfoolery is going on, Fortinbras and his entire army are sipping coffee at the Starbucks just outside the palace walls. The entire reason Francisco and Bernardo are on guard at the beginning of the play is because this same guy Fortinbras wanted to invade Denmark and take it for his own. So no one in the castle is thinking "Wait a sec, maybe we should postpone the swordfight, the guy that wanted to invade us a couple of months ago is at the Starbucks across the street with his entire army. "

Nothing has happend here in the last few days. Some of the other foreigners introduced us to a swanky quasi-western restaurant; I have eaten there two nights in a row. I forced myself to write this blogpost, out of commtiment to posting on a regular basis. A little over 39 days until I step off the plane in America. These posts should get more interesting some day soon. I'm currently reading Macbeth. I think someone should perform a Harry Potter version of it where the weird sisters are muggles and everyone else in the play is a witch/wizard. It wouldn't really work, but it would be fun to watch.

"I'll see you in the morning if nothing happens."