Have time this weekend for just a few quick comments.
Frederick Pollack's "Zombie Jamboree" is a good read though impaired for me
since I don't know the Burgess novel. The rest could almost be a
screenplay. I won't comment on the Sixties since this character set doesn't
include a scream.
Everything Mark Weiss says about Hamlet is reasonable and correct; I'd only
add that none of it necessarily rules out other interpretations. Dramatic
action, if it is any good, is typically overdetermined. As an example of
this, to look at Hamlet III.4 again, it's striking how often Hamlet is
called "Hamlet." The obvious explanation is that "Hamlet" is in fact his
name, and this explanation is of course correct. But Shakespeare didn't
have to make Gertrude call him "Hamlet" (and not, for instance, "my son")
four times in this short scene, or to make "Hamlet" the first and almost the
last word out of her mouth, or to make Hamlet senior also call him "Hamlet"
when he appears. Though the obvious explanation is correct, it doesn't rule
out the possibility (which I of course think is more than a possibility)
that Shakespeare is here pointing up the identity of Hamlet with the
previous man she called "Hamlet" in her bedchamber. Remember too that when
Claudius appears in the play the first thing he does is to remind everyone
that the old king was also called "Hamlet," which was also true but which
also, I think, allows for an explanation beyond that fact that it was true.
Thanks to David Bircumshaw for his comment on my "The Egg."
I noticed a new anthology of verse from the last half century of Poetry
magazine has been published but have only just glanced at it.
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Jon Corelis [log in to unmask]
http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics
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