I'm as bewildered that Robin Hamilton can't see incest in Hamlet as he is
that others can. Look at III.4, for instance: Hamlet goes into his
mother's bedroom and murders the man who is hiding there like the
stereotypical adulterer caught by an unexpectedly returning husband. Hamlet
asks eagerly if he's killed, not "my uncle," but "the king," a word he uses
to refer to his father in the next sentence he utters. He then describes to
his mother her sexual behavior in the most leeringly obscene terms, in the
midst of which he is terrified by a vision of his reproachful, murdered
father hovering over the bedroom. He then gives his mother a long lecture
full of helpful advice about how she can avoid having sex with her husband,
and finally leaves, dragging the fallen limp form of his mother's
bedchamber-companion along the ground after him. I mean come on what more
do you want -- a chorus in the background singing "Alas, poor Oedipus"?
In fact there's even a heavy atmosphere of explicit incest in the play.
Claudius is called "incestuous" at least four times, and as soon as Gertrude
comes on stage Claudius introduces her, with breathtaking effrontery, as
"our sometime sister, now our queen." In that same scene Claudius invites
Hamlet to "be as ourself in Denmark." It takes a effort of stony will not
to see the Oedipal irony in that invitation.
I think Olivier would have agreed with me -- the bedroom scene in his film
version was played so sexually that I wonder how he got it past the censors.
Olivier's version in general combines a classic "melancholy Dane" staging
with an outrageously Freudian interpretation of the characters' motives, a
combination which I find right on the mark.
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Jon Corelis [log in to unmask]
http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics
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