I was
originally leery of going to the Utah Shakespearean Festival (now without the
adjectival -an ending for reasons I
don't fully understand). Part of me felt obligated in the same way I'd felt
obligated to learn about and like Shakespeare in the first place. Part of me
was curious, but the idea of a festival--a stereotypical Renaissance Faire--ran
through my head and persuaded me not to bother.
Still, it was
summer time in 2006 and I'd had enough positive experience with Shakespeare
that I wanted to try out the USF.
We went ahead
and bought the cheapest hotel we could find and snagged some tickets for Antony and Cleopatra and Hamlet. Money and interest prevented us
from picking up the hat trick of Shakespeare plays that the USF does (almost)
every summer, leaving The Merry Wives of
Windsor unseen, but I was excited to see what it was like to watch
professionally made productions in southern Utah.
The day or
two before we left, I was walking past the discount book section at
Wal-Mart--you know, the place that every
author aspires to--and a small black book with red lettering caught my eye. Hamlet: Poem Unlimited. Curious, I
picked it up. A short book, it looked like it was an essay on the play. Now,
I'd watched the Mel Gibson version not too long before, having eschewed my
juvenile rejection of the movie by then, and I was most looking forward, of the
two plays, to Hamlet. So I added it
to whatever else I was buying and checked out.
While driving
the two and a half hours from our home in Pleasant Grove to Cedar City--a
nervous drive for me, since I'd never done it before--I spent some of the time
reading through Harold Bloom's writings. It was my first real experience with
direct Shakespeare criticism and it really shocked me. Not only does Bloom
write with an air of authority that would make most pastors envy, but the ideas
were so complex that I could hardly believe that there was so much inside the
play. How had I not seen such profundity before?
With some of
Bloom's ideas rattling about my head, we took the first Cedar City exit. This
was before either Gayle or I had a smartphone with GPS capabilities, so we had
a printed out map from MapQuest and the address of the Festival and our motel.
Pulling off I-15, we arced around the off-ramp and began working south down
State Street. Eventually we got to the ghetto hotel where we checked into our
room. We had a little bit of time to kill, but not a lot, before that night's Antony.
Finding the
Festival was fairly simple, as Cedar City is built on the pioneer grid system
of logic and wide roads, so we finally made it to Southern Utah University. I
don't know my exact feelings when we came upon the Adams Theater, a replica of
the Globe Theatre, complete with faux-Tudor facades on the round and
hunter-orange colored stadium seats on the inside. Tarts, candied nuts, water,
coffee, and sodas were being sold from a small refreshment shack on the east
side while undergrads dressed in Renaissance-era liveries hocked commemorative
programs and homemade suckers. Being in southern Utah in the summer meant that
the sun wouldn't set until nearly nine o'clock, so the play didn't start until
eight.
We had gone
for price over experience that night, with seats fairly close to the back of
the theater and on the second floor. While as a child I would've loved the
balcony seats, as an adult I wasn't too keen on it. I had just received some
new glasses, which did help a little, but we were simply too far away from the
stage to know or care about what was going on. The man who played Antony wasn't
particularly captivating, and Cleopatra, while she had poise, didn't really
ensnare me. Years later, I was speaking to a veteran of the Festival about that
night and he said that he could hardly wait for the asps to come out. It was,
by many counts, a pretty poor performance.
Somewhat
bored and definitely disheartened, we returned to our hotel room. Gayle--always
more aware of things than I--was quite unimpressed, though she hid any
misgivings about the vacation from me. We were away from work and larger
responsibilities. Why worry too much?
Due to the
proximity of Cedar City to Brian's Head National Park, we spent the next day
driving through beautiful red rock country in our blue Ford Focus. We bumped
into my uncle, aunt, and children who lived in Saint George (about an hour
south of Cedar) and explained why we were there. I can easily recall my aunt
expressing her one-part-disgust-two-parts-respect for the actors who take faces
full of spit as their coworkers spray their lines across the stage. Having been
so far away from the action the previous night, we couldn't really speak to
that, but smiled and made appropriate grossed out noises.
We wandered
on a short hike. Since neither Gayle nor I is inclined toward physical
activities in general, we considered it more of a nature walk. We wandered to a
peaceful pond, stared at the immense trees, and avoided potential bee populations.
All in all, it was a delightful day.
Evening came
and with it we may have managed to hit the Green Show, a free warm up
performance of singing, dancing, and (purposefully) horrible jokes. Now that I
consider it more closely, I'm almost positive that we did, since I can recall
some Cleopatra jokes and some "Kiss my asp" phrases groaning the
crowd. Due to my greater interest in Hamlet,
we ponied up the extra cash and purchased tickets on one of the wings and more
in the center of the crowd.
This was a
choice that likely altered the trajectory of my life.
Brian Vaughn
took the titular role and captivated my mind. Every time he exited, I was sad
he was gone. Every nuance he placed, every word he dropped propelled the play
forward and, with the frantic energy of Shakespeare as fuel, drove us toward
the catastrophe with an air of agency that is oftentimes lost.
One scene I
remember particularly: After the almost-impossible-to-handle "To be or not
to be..." speech, Ophelia comes in--the unexpected light of innocence that
contrasts so starkly with Hamlet's darkness--and he exhales a tsunami of rage
upon her that they both know she does not deserve. As he unfolds his furor at
his mother-father and his ill-advised advisor, his emotions override his
intelligence. With a final slur on her honor, Hamlet shrieks, "To a
nunnery go!" and exits.
Vaughn's
Hamlet was already partway through the door as he shouted this line, yet he did
it with such power and volume that my clothing vibrated with the force of it.
I didn't
blame Ophelia for sinking into tears after such a moment.
I can hardly
recall how well the other parts were played. I can dimly recall thinking
Polonius a pompous ass--that's how I've considered him for so long, however,
that my instinct could just be confirmation bias in my memories--and the queen
was passable. I do recall, though, that the man who had bungled Antony now
played Claudius. As Gayle said, "It's okay that I don't like him now; he's
the bad guy."
True.
Indeed, the
poor work of the previous night only lent additional dislike of the incestuous
Claudius, which amplified during the second part of Act IV where the prince is
off to England and the other actors seem to be trying to keep the play moving
long enough for it to make sense to see Hamlet return.
When Brian
Vaughn took his bow for the standing ovation, he did so graciously. Then, just
before exiting, he paused, turned around, and took another leg, impishly
implying that he knew what we had enjoyed and was more than happy to have
provided it. I don't begrudge him that correct reading of the audience.
Gayle and I
went home elated and exhausted. A transformation had occurred in my mind, and
after Gayle fell asleep, I stayed up late with Harold Bloom and chewed over
parts of the play I'd just seen. Something substantial and transcendental had
transpired during the course of that play. The humble stage in a small pioneer
town in southern Utah had birthed something deep and life changing.
I've had a
lot of time since then to ponder on what it was about Hamlet and Shakespeare and Hamlet that so profoundly influenced me.
I'm confident that there are many reasons that have affected my feelings toward
the Bard and this particular creation of his, but there must be credit given to
when this play landed most heavily in
my life.
At the time,
I was studying for a career in English education while helping with the
finances by working part time at a computer store. During my rare time off, I
would work on a book that I'd had in mind since my first term in college. The
summer before marrying Gayle, I had begun my first actual draft of the novel The Terra Campaign: Impetus. It would
end up taking a couple of years for me to work through, and I had it in the
back of my mind that I would teach for a little while, then provide for my
family via my writings. Impetus would
be my first foray into professional writing.
Delusion,
however, can only satisfy one for so long and I eventually became consigned to
reality instead. My writing, though excellent in my mind, was failing to gain
traction with any of my alpha readers--and, reflecting back, I think the book
had manifold problems with it--and I wasn't feeling nearly as capable at it as
I thought that I should.
Simultaneously,
I was despising every second of my job. It was tedious, it was soul-draining;
it was insulting, it was wrong. Every aspect of my time in the store was
against my beliefs (I felt sleazy for convincing people to buy crappy computers
and overpriced add-ons) and the management was, I felt, hardly behaving the way
that people ought to.
More deeply
than that, however, was the idea that my unique self was being oppressed and
obliterated by commercialism and market forces. I felt utterly unappreciated by
those who claimed to care about me and mine. So when Hamlet shouts these lines
at Guildenstern, I reverberated with his frustration and passion:
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem
to know my stops; you
would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass: and there is much
music, excellent
voice, in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me
what instrument you
will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me.
What young
man doesn't read such passion and believe himself likewise victimized by
"sponges" who have no authority, no understanding of capacity? Hamlet
spoke to me because I could see myself in him--not in his bloodlust or
philosophy, but in his frustration at being constantly underestimated. Earlier
in the play, he says to his mother, "But I have that within
which passeth show;/These but the trappings and the suits of
woe." Indeed, that's what's so remarkable about Hamlet: we see a man confess to having something within him that surpasses
an act and defies the trappings about him.
Other
passages resonated with me: I have struggled with depression most of my life,
having lightly considered suicide from time to rare time since, as best as I
can recall, age ten or eleven. How striking it was, then, to read of Hamlet's
own struggles with "self-slaughter" and finding a voice--a more
eloquent voice--expressing my own senses and frustrations. This passage, in
particular, taken from Act II scene ii, which has been held up as a brilliant
piece of poetic plagiarism (as much of the sentiment is taken from Montaigne) and
the most exact description of depression that I've ever seen:
I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed
it goes so heavily with
my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory,
this most excellent
canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it
appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man!
how noble in reason! how
infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like
an angel! in
apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to
me, what is this
quintessence of dust? man delights not me...
Dark though
he may be, Hamlet is an inspiration, and my 24-year-old self fell in love with
that untamed power.
Comments