Hamlet Shows Shakspeare's Long-Lasting Cultural Effect

Pondering the Definitions of Popular Culture, Again.

What is Popular Culture? The definition in “The Introduction” by Stuart Gillespie and Neil Rhodes to Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture seems like a good definition to me “cultural products created of the people… for the people.” But who are “the people?” In this introduction they say that “citizens and yeomen were frequently were frequently classed together as ‘the middling sort of people’, divided between town and country and it is these groups rather than those who ‘have no voice nor authority in our commonwealth as Smith puts it, who would usually have been referred to as ‘the people’.” To me, this is an insufficient definition of “the people.” Everyone, from the Queen down to “those who ‘have no voice nor authority’” are people and are therefore part of “the people.” Sometimes it is useful to look at the different aspects of a culture, the types of literature that make it into textbooks, films that win awards and praise while being perhaps a little too aware of their own artsy-ness and other praise-able qualities, art that is found in museums, to the generally enjoyed books, movies, and TV… and other aspects of a culture that are less snobby and may or may not have plenty of their own merits. Shakespeare wrote for and was appreciated by the snobby elite and the groundlings and the in-betweens of his own day, and he has returned (if he ever left) from the realms of the snobby elite to being accessible and enjoyable to all of the people from the snobby elites to the couch potatoes. Shakespeare’s play Hamlet has been an inspiration and a source of cultural reference points for the people that have gone before us and it still is for us, the people, now.

A Shattered Mirror is Multi-faceted

One of the most interesting, though perplexing, images in David Tennant (and Patrick Stewart and Penny Downie)'s Hamlet was this broken mirror. I recognized that it was probably an important symbol but I didn't bother trying to figure it out until today. I've come up with several theories now though. My favourite one connects to my general interest in Shakespeare, especially Hamlet, in the eyes of Popular Culture; Hamlet is one of the best remembered of Shakespeare's plays, but people remember it in very different ways and not always clearly.

Taming Romeo?

Before I started reading Romeo and Juliet, I looked at a few articles of literary criticism on it. One of the ones which interested me most was an article The taming of Romeo in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet discussing Juliet taking charge and “simulating maleness” to sort of tame Romeo and use him as a way of escaping from her own trapped social position. It was a very gendered reading and it rather annoyed me. I was rather annoyed at the author saying that Juliet was acting male because she was realistic and to the point.

He says that he believes that Juliet “demonstrates her independence and masculine mindset” and that “[Shakespeare] inverts the gender roles, making Juliet engage in behavior usually exclusive to men.” He backs this up with the falcon imagery. Juliet is likened to the falconer, and Romeo to the falcon, though normally falconers are male, and the falcons used were female. I kind of see this, since I do see the passages he points out—the clear references such as “O for a falconer’s voice / to lure this tassel-gentle back again”(II. 2. 158-159) and also the references to Romeo being in the dark (like a hooded falcon)—so I do see the falcon imagery that Mansour is talking about here. Mostly I just don’t like him saying that this means that Juliet is “simulating maleness” as he says or even that “Juliet demonstrates her skill at mastering Romeo.”

Also, Mansour talked about Juliet being the falconer related to the earthbound and limited state of women at the time, and that this relates to her being rational and less flighty and speaking in “Juliet does not take wing in her words as Romeo does.” Perhaps, in this scene this is true, but during other parts of the play Juliet certainly has long and beautiful speeches and is just as melodramatic as Romeo is.

It was an interesting article.

Justice and Mercy

Throughout The Merchant of Venice there is tension between Jews (mostly Shylock) and Christians. The Christians abuse, spit upon, and despise the Jews, and Shylock and the other Jews (other than his daughter, who elopes with a Christian) hate the Christians. Nobody seems completely in the right.

The tense fourth act deals largely with deals the most clearly with the conflict between Shylock and Antonio, or on another level, the law and mercy. Shylock insists “My deeds upon my head! I crave the law/ The penalty and forfeit of my bond.”(Act IV, Scene I, 213-214) In other words, he did not believe that he needed mercy at the moment, and he wanted a pound of flesh from Antonio’s chest. But a little later, once Portia has proved that he could not be convinced to take any sum of money in compensation, nor would he ease Antonio’s pain in any way, nor would he show any mercy at all of any sort not mentioned in the bond… then Portia brought up the specifics in the bond and in the law which showed that it was actually Shylock who needed mercy, not Antonio. This shows a kind of Protestant philosophy, you can’t trust in the law, or it will betray you. “That in the course of justice none of us / should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;” (Act IV, Scene I 206-207) Only in the mercy of Jesus Christ are we saved. Portia’s passionate plea for mercy lets her stand as a representative of Protestant understanding even while Shylock represents an Old Testament understanding of law and judgment, or the Jewish Law of Moses, along with a refusal of Christ and his mercy.

Portia was described as being a sort of Christ-figure in my Honors Class when we discussed this, since in the beginning she is bound by some inheritance laws which she accepts, but once those laws no longer bind her she can act to bring mercy to her fellow Christians. She knows the laws very well, and she advocates mercy, but when Shylock insists on the law, and not mercy, once she reveals the legal difficulties he is in though, Portia does not urge any mercy in dealing with Shylock,.

It’s Antonio who seems the most merciful in actual practice. He asks for the fine of half of Shylock’s property that was to go to the state to be waved, and proposes that he keep the other half in trust for Shylock’s daughter's husband, as long as Shylock converts to Christianity and that he leave his own half also to his daughter when he dies. I believe that this was meant as mercy. Shylock needed money in order to live, and Antonio holding In trust the other half for Shylock’s daughter's husband is a kindness to the daughter and her husband, if not to Shylock who was still furious with her. The forced conversion was not something that would have been at all uncommon in the Renaissance days, and it had already been established that Jews were held in contempt… so it could be considered a mercy to try and pull Shylock’s soul into the path Antonio believed correct. But, it might not have been meant as a mercy, but as one of the most personal blows that he could possibly inflict on Shylock (and a similar sort of thing about requiring all the money to eventually go to Shylock’s daughter, as he’d recently said that, “Would that any of the stock of Barrabas / Had been her husband, rather than a Christian”). Shylock’s whole identity was bound up in being a Jew, to be forced to be a Christian like everyone he’d hated for so long, would be deeply difficult. But, I believe that Antonio meant mercifully, and this is after Shylock had insisted on cutting out a pound of Antonio’s chest flesh rather than ten times the amount of money loaned.

Another way to interpret this is to relate the Jews to Catholics. Shakespeare and most of his contemporaries in England would have had little to do with Jews, though they were still plenty prejudiced against them, as a rule. But they did have Catholics among them, and in England during the 16^th century and for a long time afterwards there was almost as much prejudice against Catholics as against Jews. Catholics also had a more doctrinal emphasis on the laws and works than Protestant ideas of grace and mercy.