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October 15, 2015 8:06 pm  #1


Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

So far all uploads of the complete programme have been taken down. Ivy suggested to collect all videos, gifs, etc. in here. 

Here is a short one:

http://gosherlocked.tumblr.com/post/131223130381/nixxie-fic-new-video-clip-from-last-nights

 

Last edited by SusiGo (October 15, 2015 9:04 pm)


------------------------------
"To fake the death of one sibling may be regarded as a misfortune; to fake the death of both looks like carelessness." Oscar Wilde about Mycroft Holmes

"It is what it is says love." (Erich Fried)

“Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame. I’m also a great believer in treating others as you would like to be treated.” (Benedict Cumberbatch)



 
 

October 15, 2015 8:10 pm  #2


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

And here is Ivy's link to the wonderful part with the school kids from East Ham:

http://cumberbuddy.tumblr.com/post/131175885459/benedict-visited-a-school-in-east-ham-to-check-out

Discription: "Benedict visited a school in East Ham to check out their version of Hamlet and their thoughts. Brilliant."


------------------------------
"To fake the death of one sibling may be regarded as a misfortune; to fake the death of both looks like carelessness." Oscar Wilde about Mycroft Holmes

"It is what it is says love." (Erich Fried)

“Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame. I’m also a great believer in treating others as you would like to be treated.” (Benedict Cumberbatch)



 
     Thread Starter
 

October 15, 2015 8:41 pm  #3


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show


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Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from!


 
 

October 15, 2015 9:12 pm  #4


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

I loved how Benedict said to the kids: that was beautiful.
It really was, but better still was them talking about the play...they were so switched on.


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http://professorfangirl.tumblr.com/post/105838327464/heres-an-outtake-of-mark-gatiss-on-the
 

October 16, 2015 12:03 pm  #6


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

Fantastic.
Thank you.


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http://professorfangirl.tumblr.com/post/105838327464/heres-an-outtake-of-mark-gatiss-on-the
 

October 19, 2015 7:43 am  #7


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

I have no idea how long these will work but here are links for part 1 and 2 of the interview:

https://vimeo.com/142805097
https://vimeo.com/142824123


------------------------------
"To fake the death of one sibling may be regarded as a misfortune; to fake the death of both looks like carelessness." Oscar Wilde about Mycroft Holmes

"It is what it is says love." (Erich Fried)

“Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame. I’m also a great believer in treating others as you would like to be treated.” (Benedict Cumberbatch)



 
     Thread Starter
 

October 19, 2015 3:44 pm  #8


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

Cheers again.


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http://professorfangirl.tumblr.com/post/105838327464/heres-an-outtake-of-mark-gatiss-on-the
 

October 23, 2015 8:53 am  #9


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

So, the whole extended interview is up now, consisting of seven videos:

https://vimeo.com/user4690315


------------------------------
"To fake the death of one sibling may be regarded as a misfortune; to fake the death of both looks like carelessness." Oscar Wilde about Mycroft Holmes

"It is what it is says love." (Erich Fried)

“Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame. I’m also a great believer in treating others as you would like to be treated.” (Benedict Cumberbatch)



 
     Thread Starter
 

October 23, 2015 11:20 am  #10


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

Thank you for all that!
*hurries to watch and listen to everything*


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd be lost without my blogger.
"It’s not a ‘gang’ show, it’s the Sherlock and John show. It’s about developing their characters and their relationship, and the characters drawn into their orbit.”  Steven Moffat



 
 

October 23, 2015 1:24 pm  #11


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

Anybody willing to make a transcript? *puppyeyes*

 

October 23, 2015 3:36 pm  #12


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

I'm already working on it
give me an hour ?

Edit : an hour and a half later I'm still only at half the time of the first part of the video...But I am working on it. Wish I could go faster.

Last edited by Lilythiell (October 23, 2015 4:59 pm)


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd be lost without my blogger.
"It’s not a ‘gang’ show, it’s the Sherlock and John show. It’s about developing their characters and their relationship, and the characters drawn into their orbit.”  Steven Moffat



 
 

October 23, 2015 8:10 pm  #13


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

So, I obviously haven't finished (far from it, I'm barely onto part II, which I will finish typing tonight).
There are, I am sure of it, a few mistakes and parts I didn't take down because they were just repetitions, or part of the thought process of formulating the questions). If you spot aanything inaccurate -as you're bound to- do signal it, please! Also, I am very, very much aware that it is going to be a REALLY long post...
I figure I could, because Ben's answers are lenghthy (big surprise), do a post for each question/answer. What do you think, mods?
For the time being, I'll post it in only one post

Both enter, talking about the character of Hamlet. Ben's answers are in normal font, the interviewer's questions in bold.

He’s a, he’s a lot, during the day. And it is that thing, I mean, I’ve actually played one of these types of roles that’s taunting (?) you, you have to plan your whole day around in order to get it right otherwise you come out here in this vast web
 
(…speaks about Olivia?)  you were standing there thinking ‘God, oh God, oh God’ you were very, very nervous before you walk on (the stage)
 
No…
 
You see, ‘cause some people are, some people have…
 
No, I mean no I have a form of nerves in some light…it’s about, it’s about thinking “Oh Gosh this is gonna be different and I don’t quite know what it’s going to be, but it’s ne- I never… I never have a seizure of terror, the sort of seizures that they would talk about. Moments, definitely, definitely, but I think that we need a bit of it, we all…
 
Oh, absolutely. All the same, pumping of the adrenaline.
 
Yeah.
 
It must be remembered that Hamlet is a role – a hoop – through which every eminent actor sooner or later’s supposed to jump. What made you jump now?
 
God you make me sound like a circus performer. Er, I suppose there is an element to that – What made me jump now …age, life experience most importantly, the opportunity to bring a new audience to a four hundred-year-old piece of brilliance, and trying to make Shakespeare as relevant now as he has ever been since then. And I think…for weird, strange… I mean I’ve just become a father, I used to think that I’d have to be childless to be a Hamlet, and I thought, well maybe that’s gonna be a difficult ingredient to play with this, it’s miraculous as I’m sure you know being a dad you’re, you’re thinking about how you’re a parent shoots up as well, so that just sort of fed into it, so that was serendipity though, that wasn’t as planned as this was. It’s been…it’s just been…It’s really felt like the right time and also finding the right partner in crime, I approached Lindsey Turner to write this a good couple of years ago, we really took our time with finding the right space, the right production team to go with and the right sort of scope and world to create this play in.
 
But is there any, I don’t think it necessarily mean it’s sort of a circus thing, more a, there is this, maybe a sort of personal analogy made the unreconstructed beaches brought (whatever the hell that means) It’s coming at you, and no one must find out, none of the fans, before they make it smaller…
 
It’s a huge wave.
 
…and I know a lot of actors, most of the great actors they went “I’m gonna have to do this”.
 
Yeah
 
At different ages,
 
Yeah
 
I mean, and you must have felt part of that *deep breath, well…*
 
A few people were asking me, more than I was asking myself, actually, to begin with, I, in the back of my mind, I thought why not, maybe one day, I mean I began my professional career in Regent’s Park and with Shakespeare – had a wonderful time there, two seasons running – and Shakespeare’s a huge part of my very privileged education and so it –being around me and in me from a very young age and I’ve seen some truly extraordinary Hamlets in my time – Steven Delayen, Simon Russell Beale, Mark Ryan, Laurie Kennel to name a few and Sam West so it’s been part of my culture both as an actor taking nourishment in the culture of theatre and as erm, somebody who it might be expected from, one day. But, I mean, on that regard it really did come from other people to begin with and …
 
When you’re gonna do it.
 
Yeah. Yeah. No, really and now I just, I thought ‘Oh. Oh, is there a sort of biological clock ticking for actors to do this by a certain time and…I don’t know, we’ve seen all sorts of different ages, I mean Simon was, some people say, older than Hamlet normally is, and we’ve seen Ben Whishaw, (…) who is a genius, just exceptional as a very royal, young Hamlet, so…It wasn’t that so much, it was really about feeling it, really feeling it in my bones as to be the right time, and I’m very glad it’s now rather than when I was, when it was first possible, or even at school when I was first offered it by a teacher then and I was desperate to do it but I had A-levels I tried to get, so I knew that it would mock with my concentration to say the least. It’s…It’s got to be something that you can commit yourself to completely as well, I mean as a hoop or any other metaphor for it, it’s like a massive wave and there are nights when you think ‘Christ…I know it’s coming, I know it’s there,’ but before you know it you are, you are in this incredible web and this, this sort of force, this drive of the play just takes you over. There are nights when you go ‘Chri…’ I can feel myself pushing and reaching to keep up with it and there are other nights when it’s just, it’s in everything, every, sort of molecule of your body and it’s a wonderful experience to have. And I’m glad I’m having it now rather than I was younger.
 
Before I move away, I just sort of wonder, would you have felt a lesser actor if you hadn’t tried to do this, or done this as it were?
 
Um, n…It’s a really difficult, hypothetical question. I’m not sure. I’m really not sure. Because you know, I’ve never set out to complete a sort of bucket list of great parts in any kind of dramatic art. I’ve been fortunate to get to a stage where I could take some risky choices and what I’d like to do is basically keep learning and risk, and do things I haven’t done before. So, to say would I have felt a lesser actor? No, I don’t think so, no. I don’t think so. I just, I really…had a strong drive to do the play with the people I approached to do it with and it’s come together for the right reasons and it’s not just about the part, it’s also to bring the play to a culture. I think that’s a very important part of it, you can have great Hamlets, you don’t necessarily always have great productions and that was a huge and important part of why I took my time in it.
 
I’ll come back to that later, but you said in your opening remarks that you were bringing a new audience, which you certainly did.
 
That’s been a remarkable thing, a very intended audience as well as the courteousness of the usual Barbican crowd, which of course we want, so yeah of course people who come to see Iv van hove and Complicite and all the other brilliant people who are housed by this incredible art centre.
 
Well I have been a couple of times so far and I’ve just been, people have been “Hi, guys”, just waiting,
 
Waiting?
 
Following, yes
                                                                 
…which is, it’s very exciting.
 
So to get to the play, Steven Greenblatt the critic talks about the soliloquies being about a new intense representation of inwardness in Shakespeare. And they seem to me, this is my opinion, as essential, the glory of the play, this play by a genius about a genius. And I thought you, they were wonderfully spoken and presented, so can we just talk about it, because what’s going on is quite fantastic, isn’t it, really. The first thing, before we talk about the meaning, what is it like, coming up to to be or not to be when you know that they are the best-known lines in the world of theatre and people are chanting the first two or three lines of that speech in their minds.
 
Are they? I’ll never be able to say it again, now then.
 
And you have to come to it as if…
 
One, two, three, just yeah, there could be a chant along.
 
…as if you’re thinking it for the first time.
 
That is it. I mean, that’s the trick of any acting, you know, in the present moment. I think (the trick of any acting) is to…it’s to find the need, to find the need to say it. And the soliloquy’s chart…I mean, what you said is absolutely true, there’s this immediate access you get to a consciousness in an unconscious world. It’s not just the sort of metaphysical, philosophical point of “is there a world that exists outside of our brains?” or “is all this stuff of receiving tastes, emotions, anything sensory, anything outside of ourselves even real?” What I mean by that is he sees himself isolated in an uncaring world that he doesn’t inhabit – or want to inhabit – to begin within the play.
The first two soliloquies, the first being O that this too too solid flesh would melt –and it is important to talk about him, I think, because that’s how we tackle them, it’s about the need of him, for him to say what he says. The first soliloquy for me, O that this too too solid flesh would melt thaw and resolve into a dew is wishing himself to be absent from a world which is utterly devoid of meaning, of understanding, of humanity, because of what he’s experienced as a grieving son watching his mother remarry within a month to his uncle. You meet a man who’s in a very particular psychological state, who’s just broken through this kind of extraordinary time warp and kind of stick his head up towards an audience who’s been involved in the world of the play which is reduced to a king who’s talked about the state of the politics of the world is, what the state of the status of Denmark, this new marriage, this new accorded peace in the wake of his brother’s death. And the political world outside does those things with Fortimbras. So you have this, sort of state of the union, address, this sort of preamble to a much bigger party that goes on and on through the night to celebrate the beginning of a new Denmark. And then you have a man who’s not dressed as any of the others are dressed, who is already isolated, who’s denied escaping from this world which he’s obviously abhorring of and detests. And he just slips through and talks to an audience in a completely honest way about why he cannot stand what is going on around him, and to him it’s the world that’s at fault in that first soliloquy.
 
It’s almost a parallel world he’s creating, isn’t it? You’ve said too, a few times “talking to an audience”, is he as much doing that as talking to and about himself?
 
Yes, and this is the thing, I think, sometimes it’s rather a bit like a conversation in a mirror or a conversation with different synapses in his brain, not to necessarily individual members of an audience but to see them as parts of the process of his thoughts. So each thing or new thought or new change, each link that’s made is something that can direct you when you are sharing these things around with thousands of people into believing that it is a projection of self. So yes, it is very much him talking to himself but…As an actor doing it, you don’t, you know you…when you look into that – it is a void, it’s not faces I see, it’s a void, and that is someone staring into a distance, into an abyss and that’s what he does continually further and further in the play until he then looks back on in on himself and goes “Oh, actually, no, it’s me, I can do something about this, up and now, play, I can test the king that way”, you know.
So talking about the stepping stones, I feel like the second soliloquy to be or not to be is where he realises that it is purely in this horrific world that nothing makes sense to him, about whether it’s right to take your own life or not, and even in thinking about it he realises he doesn’t have the will to do it.
And that depression that sinks him into this sort of endless night way he feels there’s no escape from, this toxicity is what then turns into the thoughts he shares with Rosencratz and Guildenstern which are completely different. He says “I have of late but wherefore I know not lost all my mirth”. For us watching the play we know exactly why: his love has broken up with him, in a way he’s trying to expose who he is with a court he feels is watching him behind closed doors, he’s experienced his father’s death, he’s experienced the ghost of his father saying that his uncle has married his mother after killing him. I mean, we know exactly why he’s lost his mind.
So he doesn’t show all of it, but he does then talks very honestly about how this world he can’t escape through suicide is so toxic, beautiful to look at, everything is there as it should be and what a piece of work is a man, how extraordinary the potency, the potential of humanity is. But I can’t see, he can’t see any way of involving himself, enjoying himself with that because it’s rotten, everything is toxic.
 
What do you think Shakespeare gains by not putting that in, let us say, a conversation with a friend?
 
Well he is, Shakespeare, that’s not really a soliloquy that one I have of late but wherefore I know not that is a, that’s a confession to two friends about his mental state.
 
But the big thing it seems to me are the soliloquies.
 
I agree, I think the main thing about this soliloquy is that you have a huge amount of empathy, you have more listening and more involvement with one man’s point of view than you do in any of the other players. And I think that is the romance with him, it’s not necessarily you like everything he does, or you can understand the mistakes he makes, but you at least, do get to understand the man. And that’s, there’s an incredible amount of potency in being able to share the [END OF PART ONE] most profound thoughts in any language almost of what it is to be a human being and the pain of that. And these confessions are so stark and naked –
 
And so elegant, that’s another thing that comments so much on it, but – Many people describe the way people think and try to make it look and sound rather incoherent, disconnected bit of streams of consciousness and that sort of thing, which has gone powerless. But this is an elegantly turned, formulated, thought through you can go…
 
But I think he argues with himself though, I think he takes his own arguments apart, I mean to be or not to be is a fantastic example, you’re set up there with the antitheses, you know, you’ve got existence and non-existence and he talks the problem through. I think that’s the real beauty of it. He does it with the most stunning accuracy and poetry and imagination, really raw, alive but felt imagination, but he works problems out through those soliloquies. So you’re listening to a man asking questions.
 
One of the things about him is that he goes right around, he’s 460 degrees, all the time, it’s like we’ve got a thinking man who never stops thinking, circulating his own ideas, round every problem, there are people saying he hesitates, well I don’t think he’s hesitating, I think he’s thinking.
 
He’s thinking. He’s thinking. I mean, he is only a prince. It’s an absolute monarchy. He’s been talked to by a ghost, I mean just talking in bare plot terms, there’s a huge amount of what he does and thinks about which is required by this simple fact: he is powerless. To begin with all he wants to do is extract himself from the world and both the authority of the king and the authority of his dead father’s ghost say “no you have to engage in this, you have to avenge me” as the ghost of his father tells him. And the king says “you cannot go back and study in Wittenberg”. He wants, he doesn’t want to do anything, that’s not something to do with the army, that’s not something diplomatic, there’s no royal service there, there’s nothing to do with state craft, it’s purely to be extracted from this thing that draws him in. And for that alone he has to do a lot of thinking when he’s then faced with this dilemma of sort of unbelievable extremity – his father’s ghost telling him his uncle, not only killed him, but poisoned him whilst he was asleep with no atonement made, but in a cold-blooded, meditated murder to gain his crown and his wife. I don’t, I mean, many people – you should be able to just sort of draw out a knife or a gun and be done with that…
 
I couldn’t agree more, and I think that expectation is misplaced. That’s one of the reasons he stalls, to give him more proof.
 
Absolutely, and I think, you know, just as far as the crime and the aspect of it, yeah, he needs to have substantial proof, he needs to witness a connection between the accused and the accusation. But I think really importantly, through those speeches, I think he manages to have conversation a lot of us have about in whatever form it may be privately and he’s showing that publicly, working through those problems he hits against the most profound questions we have about humanity in our existence – whether it’s to do with love, whether it’s to do with death, whether it’s to do with the sensory perception of the world that we’re in, whether it’s to do with the power of our brains over what we feel, what we should do, whether it’s to do with literally self-loathing on a very manifest scale. You know, doubts, even the most hero complex alpha male has at some point when that sort of paradigm crashes and there are all sorts of people out there, whether they’re in high finance or in any kind of particular world where it needs to be rigid, logic, Claudius-like. Claudius is why within this play, why that flurry of death comes on in a second –sorry to have plot spoilt, but that’s what happens.
And it’s about a man who’s seemingly been thinking in straight lines, so you got Hamlet, like you said on a revolving thought merry-go-round getting everything out that he can.
 
It’s like spheres, isn’t it?
 
It’s spheres within spheres, and then this man who’s in direct lines and is all about problem solving and logic, but when he cracks it’s devastating, to the point that everything starts to fall apart. His guilt being open is what really releases the play into the revenge.

 

Last edited by Lilythiell (October 26, 2015 6:56 pm)


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I'd be lost without my blogger.
"It’s not a ‘gang’ show, it’s the Sherlock and John show. It’s about developing their characters and their relationship, and the characters drawn into their orbit.”  Steven Moffat



 
 

October 23, 2015 8:35 pm  #14


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

Heavens, Lily, I am fine with it. But this is such a lot of work. Thanks for taking the time. 


------------------------------
"To fake the death of one sibling may be regarded as a misfortune; to fake the death of both looks like carelessness." Oscar Wilde about Mycroft Holmes

"It is what it is says love." (Erich Fried)

“Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame. I’m also a great believer in treating others as you would like to be treated.” (Benedict Cumberbatch)



 
     Thread Starter
 

October 23, 2015 8:39 pm  #15


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

My pleasure, really


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd be lost without my blogger.
"It’s not a ‘gang’ show, it’s the Sherlock and John show. It’s about developing their characters and their relationship, and the characters drawn into their orbit.”  Steven Moffat



 
 

October 23, 2015 11:03 pm  #16


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

Here's part II

 
The first big scene is, I don’t know how average people go with this massive – but I’ve always had a very good idea of how they could stage it –the dinner table became a court, became a play, that’s how you came locked in to a sort of sense, I hadn’t seen that before, and Laertes is asking permission, can he…
 
Yes, Laertes knows how to play the game.
 
And I liked that very much. But you are very much already in that – Hamlet is very much in that, not dressed like, not part of, because he’s a Prince. What did that decision about your place on that table lead to?
 
I moved actually, we’ve all moved a little bit with previews and seen what that stage pictures, what it does from out front and Claudius used to be there (makes a gesture to the back), and Gertrude used to be near the end and I was slightly nearer Mum than step-dad slash uncle. And I like where I’m now because I feel that I, this is very much a look at the play through the eyes of the idea of transgenerational trauma, so why do all the youth of the play end up dead as well as some others, but primarily, the youth really seem to suffer an incredible amount at the hands of the generation above.
 
Transgenerational trauma, transgenerational ideas’ve been brought up by the director. Can you tell us a little what this means to you?
 
Well, I mean looking at it within the last century and the late sixties, whether it be by the late men the angry men, this sort of youth movement of rebels, of terrorists, of people wanted to kick over what they thought was the new fascism, which was this dangerous conservatism, this sort of neo fascist conservatism to do with politics, money, economics in particular, and this rigidity where they could smell what was coming from beneath the floorboards, they could smell the dead bodies in the cruel space, they understood the playgrounds had been built over mass graves, that this kind of, this rigidity needed to be, forced to be, violently at times, to have its face shown for what it was. And they saw, especially America, and its, for impulses that you call cultural imperialism to fight the new fascism to fight. And it meant that within a generation there were people committing gross acts of violence to protest against what they thought were (…)
So it’s like how does that vibration, that thing passed itself on and…
 
So what, your starting point it’s here…
 
It’s the trauma, it’s the trauma that war’s celebrating. And there’s this new whitewash with Claudius, I mean he’s a brilliant king, Claudius, he’s fantastic, he’s got everything sorted, he’s dealing with what would have been a war in old Hamlet’s time, and that’s part of the transgenerational trauma that seeps into this play, it’s definitely what my father did. It’s slaying the old Fortinbras and those old wars, but also what Claudius who’s sort of managing very neatly, it’s not right, there’s a great deal of unrest that still hasn’t been dealt with. And this brilliant, this white, this sort of decorative death, this aviary of dead birds and antlers and, it’s all reflexive of that, it’s become decorative. But it’s real, these things lived and breathed and had sensory perception and were sentient beings and everything is reduced to this rigid state of “it’s going to be all right”. And there’s one person going “No it’s already absolutely screwed” and how can this be good, this is the most unstable castle, foundation, this marriage of disgusting alacrity between blood of my parent and dead parent’s brother. So, it filters through, I think in the beginning and, the positioning of where we are on this table has very much to do with seeing the youth of the court together, you have Ophelia, you have Laertes, and you have Hamlet. And their trajectories through the play are towards death.
 
But you start fencing from the very beginning with “a little more than kin a little less than kind”
 
I think so, but he does love him, like he says over Ophelia’s grave “I did love you once, what is the reason you used me thus? I did love you, ever” There’s no reason for what happens at the end of the play to happen other than what Claudius manipulates and, at the beginning the picture is of somebody who’s in a staple match but we don’t know why, he’s not working for the court Laertes, I don’t know what he’s thinking, he hasn’t told me, but the point is that he’s escaping this world but he’s playing the game. He’s honouring the king. He’s got his father’s permission, everything is in, but Hamlet can’t help himself, he’s addressed as a cousin, which is, every one’s a cousin to everyone, that’s just a term of endearment, that’s nothing to do with what the actual status is, and then a son, and it just pierces him and he’s not playing the game and dressing in a cake-white-wedding fantasy outfit to celebrate a marriage that he abhors, he’s wearing his father’s old jacket and I don’t think he’s trying to create a disturbance, but he is provoked by that and from then on it’s, he’s, you see he’s a complete outsider to this world.
 
But there are words from that first exchange between Claudius and Hamlet.
 
Yeah. And I tried so hard every night not to be –I think it’s the worst thing in the world when you introduce, because that is the traditional introduction, the first words he speaks that is *a little less than kin and more than kind  - no, the other way round. Better get it wrong now rather than on stage. The first words he speaks are A little more than kin and less than kind, I’m more than your cousin and I’m a lot less than your son and I try very hard not to be ???? with that, I’m talking to a king and I’m in a court, but at the same time I can’t let that go. And the next needle in my eye, or heart or any soft place of feeling that he cannot ignore is Gertrude saying Why seems this so particular with thee? There’s nothing seeming about this at all, this is who I am, this is how I feel, I’m your dead husband’s son and I’m grieving him because it was less than a m - two months ago that he was buried.
 
One of the things that Shakespeare does, and I think it’s fair to say that I would attribute everything, I go along with Harold Bloom, that Shakespeare is not only the greatest man we know, he’s probably the greatest man that we will ever know. But what it is, is that he makes great power of what he doesn’t say, for example Gertrude never says what a man your father was, do you realise how I’d like to tell you what a man your real fa – She never says that.
 
It’s hugely powerful, because what was that marriage? Who was Gertrude before she married old Hamlet? Was she, as in our production, much younger and therefore probably been in an arranged marriage, a courtly arranged marriage which we’ve seen experienced over in our lifetime in the royal family and was it something that was therefore not of her own volition, somebody who, perhaps as a young woman came to a court and was loved but looked after rather like a daughter by this man? Not to say they didn’t have a conjugal relationship, but that it wasn’t something that Claudius gives her now which is the flaming youth that I accuse her of being been lost in; she’s of an age, and this is difficult, this is hard and sometimes it falls interestingly on young years and it sounds like I’m saying you can’t be in love because you’re over the hill in love and it’s not that at all, it’s saying you can’t be in love the head in the blood is tame and humble and waits upon the judgement, it wait – you’re not lost to lust is what that sentence means.
So why, you’re a grown woman, why are you now behaving like a teenager with this man who is a corrupt, murderous, villainous monster, a usurper and not worth anything of the dignity of your previous lord and to her, while that may internalise into her very soul and break her heart at a time of –this is a question for Anastasia- I imagine there is already a great joy and release in this marriage, she doesn’t look like she’s under any constraints with Claudius and this is a good thing, there’s a lot of physical attraction and ease, and I wonder how much maybe the previous marriage was one of convenience which really complicates the grief, complicates my loyalty to my father, and my understanding of what male/female relationships, parenting relationships are. I mean is this, this is how everything is misjudged and mistimed with Ophelia in the nunnery scene and so… That’s at least our view, our take on her. But you’re right, the beauty of it is she never says “no he wasn’t an extraordinary man”, maybe in her eyes he wasn’t, maybe he was all she ever knew, she was too young to know any different.
 
Well I think it lays out on you as well. You’re questioning, you’re sort of saying “Come on”.
 
Please look at what he was and what you’re with now.
 
And she’s not giving you that.
 
I think, well I think she does at the end, by the time she, when she’s pleading with me to stop and she’s saying Thy words are like daggers in my ear no more sweet Hamlet, she knows then. I’ve awoken some realisation in her that there was a dignity, and love, and a beauty, and an elegance to what they had which this new marriage not least because of what I’m accusing my uncle of in her face. It just doesn’t have its taint, it’s corrupt and it’s wrong and as a comparison he is not a patch on my father. But it is extraordinary how much word for word he takes from his interactions with the ghost, everything that old Hamlet says, is basically saying “he’s sh*t compared to me”. But he also at that moment, he’s so observant to that extraordinary experience, and it is an utter – you know, in the past, the ghost just comes out of Hamlet, recently Michael Sheen and past Richard Hess ground breaking approach of the role core, and I completely understand that sentiment because he carries every accusation through, even though he says but take not thy soul and thy mind against thy mother  or leave her to heaven, leave the thorns to prick at her bosom and basically leave her to her own guilt, it will come to her, and I don’t, that’s the one thing I don’t do that’s why he disappears again to go look [END OF PART II] in our era, even in this world which is slightly nearer our time.
It’s a constrained love, it’s a form of love, it’s the only form of parenting love he would have known, maybe there were nannies and other such but I think, what I’m saying is that the father would have been “oh, that’s very good, fantastic, I’ve seen him bath, now I’m going back and have that state dinner”. But still, there’s a complexity in losing his father which drives him through the whole of the play.
 


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I'd be lost without my blogger.
"It’s not a ‘gang’ show, it’s the Sherlock and John show. It’s about developing their characters and their relationship, and the characters drawn into their orbit.”  Steven Moffat



 
 

October 23, 2015 11:09 pm  #17


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

You might be on the side of angels, but you also are one.

Last edited by JP (October 23, 2015 11:11 pm)

 

October 23, 2015 11:25 pm  #18


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

aw, thanks dear
you're most welcome

Anyway, tomorrow (well...in a few hours, because apparently the machine has got to be reset), onto part III and IV -I hope I could do more, but I can't be sure, so i'm not going to make empty promises.
 

Last edited by Lilythiell (October 23, 2015 11:26 pm)


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd be lost without my blogger.
"It’s not a ‘gang’ show, it’s the Sherlock and John show. It’s about developing their characters and their relationship, and the characters drawn into their orbit.”  Steven Moffat



 
 

October 24, 2015 4:47 am  #19


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

. . .Wow!!   Great!


_________________________________________________________________________

We solve crimes, I blog about it, and he forgets his pants.  I wouldn't hold out too much hope!

Just this morning you were all tiny and small and made of clay!

I'm working my way up the greasy pole.  It's… very greasy.  And…  pole-shaped.
 

October 24, 2015 10:43 am  #20


Re: Hamlet interview for The South Bank Show

Wow, Lily thank you so much, too - I will make an ebook from these 


Eventually everyone will support Johnlock.   Independent OSAJ Affiliate

... but there may be some new players now. It’s okay. The East Wind takes us all in the end.
 

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