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Is this atricle settled as the next wikiproject GA-drive collaboration? If yes, should that fact be advertised somewhere? (Or is it, and I missed it?) AndyJones 20:32, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Hello everyone. I've just uploaded a few new images of Hamlets thru the ages onto the Commons, in anticipation of development of the article.
I have a great full-page reproduction of a signed autograph of John Barrymore as Hamlet from 1922, which would make a good article image, but I can't work out if it's still in copyright (I guess I'd need to somehow find out who the photographer is; the book Shakespeare: The Globe and the World doesn't give a specific source for that image, saying all non-mentioned sources are from the Folger, DC. Maybe someone has an idea how to find the record there?) DionysosProteus 03:09, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Not sure if this will work...
Anyway, what I'm trying to do is to slap a sandbox version of an old synopsis from this article onto the talk page, in a pink box, so that I and others can mess around with it until we're satisfied that it can go onto the article itself. I've used an old one (approx April this year) so that it's free from any potential "copyright" taint (see discussions above). AndyJones 12:31, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I think we're both editing at the same time! :) I will break the synopsis up with sub-headings, which I think facilitates that. I don't propose to keep them in the final draft. DionysosProteus 17:18, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
The word-count is rising steadily... 886 at present. I'd like to hash out the rest of the plot first then look at cutting. Two things stuck me thinking while away; firstly, it's all very hero's journey at the moment; and secondly, the women seem to have been marginalized. These aren't really concerns, so much a niggles at the back of my head. The count is rising, but I was thinking about the image of the parent-child relation in Laertes and especially Ophelia in 1.3, since the latter sense of overbearing paranoid control (heavily interpreted) is part of the motivational structure for her madness later. DionysosProteus 18:58, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I see. It's not that significant to the core plot. DionysosProteus 22:55, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I think we can probably get away without reinforcing his title or seniority in 1.4 paragraph. Not so sure about the first para, though? What do you think? DionysosProteus 15:20, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Okaydoke. Apologies for the delete. DionysosProteus 18:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Does he really? Or is this left open to interpretation? Wrad 17:57, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Taking a break for a little while, having got a little through three. Was about to look at the long Hamlet to Horatio speech.
DionysosProteus 18:20, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
"Anyone can be creative, |
it's rewriting other people |
that's a challenge." |
Bertolt Brecht |
I've had a good bash at this, as has User:Wrad. I got as far as the end of act three. As time went on, though, I felt myself becoming more verbose. I've gone through the first three again, trying to be as harsh as I could bring myself to be. I've put elements that strike me as potentially expendable or offering opportunity for compression in square brackets. I'm sure there's more, too. I also added some comments on my reasoning behind those, in html brackets (invisible til edited). Sorry if that gets in anyone's way. The word count was 1,000, which is what initiated this last approach. What I found, though, was that even when expanding the outline to take cognizance of more plot elements (and being stricter about excluding everything except for present-tense events), cleaning up the copy led to an overall reduction in words. At least, it started out like that... Can I make a plea for the importance of all the meta-theatrical and meta-dramatic elements, which from a hero's journey POV can sometimes seem extraneous? The Player's Hecuba speech, the Speak the Speech, and the Clowns, I'm thinking of, especially. I know there's a tendency to treat the plays in an over-literary way, not attending to their status as theatre, so I wanted to flag that up early on. I also ditched that awful pre-Raphelite engraving; my reasoning was that it doesn't illustrate a scene (unless it's meant to be the nunnery, in which case it's a very idiosyncratic rendering); my impulse simply said 'yuk!' DionysosProteus 01:40, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I should have a Shakespearean expletive to hand for such moments. DionysosProteus 02:48, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
It's pithy, I'll give it that. The moibus-like self-referentiality, though, is dizzying.
Just finished an edit of the synopsis as a whole. It is, I think, much improved. However, as it stands, the word count is 1,050. The one on the article at present is 1,020. I think there's room for a snip or two, some of which I've outlined. Act three looks heavy, but then it is the keystone of the arc.
Having snipped away a fair amount, the word count is now at
905 words |
DionysosProteus 21:11, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I've wiki-linked the soliloquy bits to the relevant articles - To be and What a piece of work; are there any others floating around out there? I'm going to create a Speak the Speech one, at least. DionysosProteus 22:14, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I've just standerdized the entire article, according to the ouline on the project page. I have yet to add a list summary at Shakespeare on Screen, but does anyone see the need for a Hamlet on Screen?
I put what was under Analysis and critism under the subheading Themes and motifs. Obviously not all of it is themes and motifs, rather critical history, which was its former heading, but I was simply trying to follow the outline as closely as possible.
To the Adaptations and cultural refrences section, we still need literary versions and cultural refrences. In Analysis and critism we need a structure section, language section, other interpretations section. I'll try to find some literature on these subjects... Bardofcornish 01:07, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Started looking at act four synopsis. Looking at the text closely, I'm not sure we can say "Fearing for his own safety" as the motive for sending Hamlet abroad. He is, I don't doubt, but that looks like falling further down the scale of interpretation--description than the rest.
DionysosProteus 13:58, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Dear Andy,
Taken a look at the amendments you've made; they look good, though I don't think act one scene 2 is quite right.
The 'ceremony' and 'decree' were there doing double duty: firstly, to convey what we'd call the montage dramaturgy, with the collision between the scenes of dark, private, spooky into public, formal and bright (this contrast structures the opening of Macbeth too and a few others); secondly, the decree takes up the first half of Claudius' opening proclamation. Perhaps there is a better way to describe the precise sentiment, but the gestus is of a public audience with the monarch, a new status quo and Hamlet disrupting the formal symmetry (I can't remember which off the top of my head but either Gurr or Weimann talk about how that would have been visually supported through symmetrical-formal and dissonant blocking, like the Titus Andronicus drawing). Rather than only conveying the 'content', I think that a synopsis should indicate, or at least give a sense of through its construction (rather than explicitly state per se), the way that content is arranged formally; the plot rather than merely the story. Claudius' verbal mode sets the tone of the scene and presupposes a particular diagrammatic arrangement in space for the principals and a contrast in the main conflict's figure's performance modes (C is fourth wall formal public address, H is punning, in intimate contact with audience and on the borderline). It might also be desirable to flag up the beginning of the Fortinbras plot-line in his declaration.
The loss of Claudius' verbal mode has a knock-on effect of blurring the Claudius and Gertrude actions later in the scene. Claudius remains formal and rhetorical, reasoning with Hamlet in a very cool, disengaged and verbose manner; Gertrude is more intimate though she hardly speaks at all (9 lines against 41 from C directed to H). The sharp contrast in verbal modes between Claudius and Hamlet here initiates one of the structuring principles of the play. Without the sense of courtly formality, it all starts to sound like a bourgeois domestic drama (which is fine if you're reading as Freud, but not for anyone else). Most of Claudius' motivations that we hear about explicitly later in the play tend to focus on Hamlet's political threat.
Not sure that we need to specify that the Queen was his brother's wife having just specified that the throne was his brothers.
For Hamlet's soliloquy "too too solid/sullied flesh": I incorporated some previous text about this into its current formulation, but a little reluctantly (vents his frustration at C's usurpation); close scrutiny of the text, however, reveals that at this point in the play, there's really only one object of his frustration and that's mama. He mentions papa, but only to say how good he was compared to the present one, not to reflect on his loss. In light of this, I think that we should trim this down to "vents his frustration at his mother's hasty remarriage" or something along those lines. The rest is implied, no doubt, but not explicit.
The It for the Ghost in 1.4 was clumsy, I agree, but was there for a purpose, so it may be worth unpacking that. By the end of Act Two Hamlet is still not sure whether he can trust the evidence of the ghost. He interrogates Horatio and sentries for some time in 1.2 (like a good Renaissance skeptic) about the ghost's precise appearance. The motivational logic for Hamlet's not acting immediately relies on this doubt (am I being tricked or being a coward?). That this apparition may not be dear old papa motivates much of his doubt, and the him / it gap tried to mark that in some way. My sense, too, is that it is grammatically correct to use It for a ghost, but that strays into murky theological territory. But that's all just by way of an explanation; I think the trim's fine.
DionysosProteus 12:17, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Aha, you've begun editing while I was typing this. Try to incorporate Horatio's skepticism in the initial situation, as that is the core of the dramatic conflict for the opening section, which is resolved by the surprise appearance of the ghost.
DionysosProteus
12:26, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Claudius feigning ignorance is there in the text, and links together the setup (Hamlet decides to feign madness) and payoff (the court tries to work out what's causing Hamlet's madness). Otherwise, the decision to get R&G to inform and to spy themselves appears unmotivated. DionysosProteus 12:29, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
No probs. I'll take a look later. DionysosProteus 13:09, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Just a quick question... the Character list describes Claudius as "elected" to the throne. What's the basis for that? Thanks, DionysosProteus 15:19, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Aha, many thanks. Despite the comment there re:web forums, I think it might be appropriate to have an explanatory footnote in the article about the succession. DionysosProteus 15:26, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, all that is quite interesting. I definitely think a note here or an explanation in one of the other Hamlet articles. DionysosProteus 19:42, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
I know we need to keep it punchy, but I have added a little. Some of it is style, I confess. I think it's desirable to narrate the dramatic logic underlying the events, which is most visible in sentence structures "this expectation but that happened" or "this cause so that effect" and the like, mainly because its this logic that makes it drama, rather than any other form of fiction. As a synopsis, too, using that logic feels like a better read - a narrative rather than a list of events. That's why I've reverted to a version of the show/tell dynamic - we settle down to hear the tale, when--surprise--ghost appears.
I couldn't avoid describing the ghost as It in the opening scene; sorry :). If it's any use, Marcellus does say "Question it Horatio" (1.1.45). It/he gets a more human tone in the description of 1.5; the point about H's skepticism is covered adequately in his motivations for the Mousetrap, I think.
I've tried to kill two birds with one stone in the second scene of act one. I take the point about the difference between analysis and description, but my points about this scene turn on how it feels in performance, not any critical evaluation, and for an inexperienced reader that feeling can be difficult to detect when studying the play-text in isolation. Very rarely, of course, a production goes against this dynamic ( Peter Brook's shamefully piss-poor production at the Young Vic did something like this); it's probably the memory of that that is making the previous edit feel too soapy to me. The second issue is again, perhaps, one of style, but I really dislike back-story in the description of a play. I know the parenthetical structure of the previous edit was long-winded, but it did at least frame the past in terms of present action. So I've attempted to combine the two by rendering the narration of the succession in terms of Claudius' formal opening proclamation (which is how the audience get most of the back-story). The formality of the scene is rendered, I hope, by the use of "proclaims" and "official mourning". It's a little more accurate than "decrees", too. I know Hamlet's promise is a little verbose, but it's more accurate, since he doesn't actually agree to anything. This edit for this scene is only six words longer than the previous one.
In act two, I've removed Gertrude, as she doesn't enlist R&G to do this, she just says, please stay at court and go see H now. I've also returned the title of the play to The Mousetrap, with the qualification of it being H's title. The reason I put this in in the first place wasn't because the play is important--because it clearly isn't--but because this title is - that scene is referred to in critical shorthand as 'the mousetrap scene'. I think it's important that someone can find where these famous scenes are in the play by referring to wikipedia's synopsis.
That's the reason why I've returned Hamlet's To Be or Not To Be to the description. It's perhaps the most famous scene in the play, so it really can't not be in there. The action is the plot, not merely the external events. It'd be like having a sports highlights segment that fails to show the crucial goal. I also clipped the description of Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia, as it seemed too interpretative; this is what he does, whether it's cruel or not is up to the actor & director and then audience to decide.
The rest is minor clipping and clarifying, I think. I changed 'arras' to 'tapestry' as its a more familiar word. The scene where "Claudius convinces Laertes that Hamlet is to blame" actually isn't described very well, as it opens with Laertes saying, yes, I know Hamlet did it; why didn't you take stronger measures? On reflection, though, this is not such a bad inaccuracy. Describing Ophelia's suicide as a suicidal action was designed to tie it in with the play's questioning of the nature of action ("to act, to do, to perform," as the gravedigger says), and whether her inaction (like Hamlet's hesitant inaction) is an action. This can be covered in analysis, though.
I miss the king's concluding Hamlet's not mad but malcontent, since it links the play into a wider generic structure, but that can be covered in analysis too.
There are two bits that I'm not sure about: the most important is the king's soliloquy before praying, which is a crucial scene, as it's the first real non-supernatural evidence we get that he really is guilty. He's confessing to us, and that revelation of information isn't captured by the synopsis yet. The second is less significant--the penultimate scene. After a play-full of his hesitant nail-biting, for the first time Hamlet is in his groove... it's from this position he goes to confront his destiny; his outlining of his 'case' against Claudius is kind of important in that regard; its his just cause for action (the pirates, btw, I don't think are very important). Oh yes, and one other thing... it kind of feels a little odd that the only scene in the play not to be narrated is 1.3. I know it's not terribly important, and is probably only there as a filler to cover the gap between Hamlet being told about ghost and then going to see it. But maybe we could stretch to a short sentence?
Anyhow, that's that. Not so much a trim as a slight restyle. The word count's not risen by much either - 18 extra words by my count.
By the way, is there any reason there are two Hamlet templates floating around out there--one for characters and another for crit and films etc.? Might be consider merging them?
I've had a little play with the Hamlet template. This is what I've come up with:
{{ Hamlet}}
The old one is preserved here:
{{ Hamlet old}}
Let me know what you think and if any changes are desirable.
Are we ready to put the sandbox synopsis onto the page? AndyJones 17:56, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
I really don't like the new one. I liked the grave digger picture. Anyone feel the same way? Wrad 04:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Another thing I don't like about actor-images in general is that they place too much emphasis on that one actor or performance. I think images of that nature should stay in the performances section, where they won't discriminate. Paintings, however, strictly portray the character, without favoring any one performance. Plus, they are in color, which is more attractive. I would just say, does Booth really represent Hamlet? I don't think so. But the grave digger picture did, with the skull, and with multiple characters present. A ghost image would, as well. I just don't want to favor any single character or actor. And I would prefer a color photo. Not everyone cares enough about Hamlet to go beyond the first picture, if it doesn't strike them as interesting, and Booth, frankly, looks pretty bored. Wrad 23:06, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to move the Booth image to the new Language section. It illustrates the "trappings and suits of woe" moment which is important in the establishment of Hamlet's rhetorical skill. Wrad 21:58, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
That image thing is a problem with the servers. Clearing its cache fixes (temporarily) DionysosProteus 14:54, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Our biggest problem with the GA drive on this article is that it has sooooooo many sub-pages: including several new ones we have created recently in the process of cleaning up and splitting out this main page. How do we feel about focusing for a while on the main Hamlet page, and getting it up to GA? (It's clearly got FA potential, but let's take one step at a time.)
Here are some of the items which I think ought to be on our to-do list. Feel free to add or amend this. Items 1-3 are on my personal to-do list and I'll start working on them. Beyond that it's things I hope someone else will take on.
I was going to start with date and text, but my book is unable to cite any information not already cited, and then it gets too specific to give anything else, so I'm moving on until later. Wrad 00:49, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
A thought on the performance history and adaptations sections--Origanilly, both of the adaptation sections were in the performance history section untill I weeded it all out, with films being toward the end, so I think that the performance history does lead rather tidly into the next section. Thoughts?
Oh, and a complete bibliography of Hamlet adapations can be found at http://www.shaksper.net/archives/files/spinoff.biblio.html Bardofcornish 21:12, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
I think the analysis and criticism is getting a bit to long, but I don't have any experience with GA, so I could be wrong.
I've found a book refrenced online, that has what seems to be a very useful article about psychoanalytic critism of Hamlet. I'll have it out of the library by tomorrow night (24 hours). Bardofcornish 01:10, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
How do we feel about splicing up the "Date and text" section into sections? I know it's not mentioned in the outline on the project page, but I think it might make it a bit easier to digest? Bardofcornish 00:57, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello all.
Just passing through briefly, when I noticed the changes to the synopsis.
They're described in the history as "correcting errors", which is very strange, as I can't see any errors in the corrections (sentinel is a far more obscure synonym for sentry, for example).
All of the changes seemed to me to have made the description less precise, sometimes grammatically incorrect, unnecessarily elaborate (antic disposition, murder most foul and unnatural, etc.), and to have introduced an interpretive bias that the development process of the synopsis worked hard to exclude - Ophelia only 'appears' mad?; the sexually-suggestive nature of one or two lines of her songs is hardly the most significant part of her behaviour in that scene; that thing about the Ghost's identity again. The synopsis has been through a fairly rigorous process of collective editing and evaluation; we have looked at it pretty much sentence by sentence, and worked hard to make it concise, precise, factual and objective - the present form is the result. This doesn't mean that there are no further improvements possible, but they need to be discussed and approved here first.
By the way, sorry for my non-participation lately - real life troubling me again. Will be returning soon. BTW, something's gone awry with the R&J template?
DionysosProteus 14:36, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello again. The R&J has merged its film versions and film adaptations, so at least on my pc they spill out over into the picture.
Horatio's line - yes, hmmm... not so sure about that. He says he's more a roman than a dane and sees the poison left, but not sure that's the same thing. Anyhow seems a minor element in the action, there to motivate giving it to Hamlet. DionysosProteus 16:19, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
The lead needed to be expanded to summarize the article as a whole before GA, so I tried my hand at it. I don't know much about the performances, though, so someone else will have to do that paragraph. I also expect hammering this out will involve a lot of discussion. Wrad 17:19, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I've added a bit about performance history. I don't know whether we should expand it, or whether keeping it in one nice, tidy little package is desirable. Thoughts? Bardofcornish 21:26, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I reorganized the images so that the synopsis wouldn't be so cluttered. Also, the manual of style indicates that editors should not apply specific sizes to images without a compelling reason, so I removed most of those parameters. We could still use more images, though, to illustrate each major section better. Wrad 17:41, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Whew! I've got about everything done except the themes section. That was the hardest part of R&J, and it will probably be here as well. I've just got to tie everything together in the sections we have, and add one more, and then we've got it done. Wrad 04:07, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
The article states, several times, that - "Shakespeare wrote the role of Hamlet for Richard Burbage," - we know this for certain? What contemporary document backs this up? Did Burbage play the part in the so-called Ur-Hamlet as well? All of this seems like a real stretch. Smatprt 02:13, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Here [ [1]], the researchers at the British Library specifically say "probably". They recognize that it is not a verifiable "fact". I would hope that they would be reliable on this issue. The rest of their write-up is excellent, by the way. We ought to look to it to verfy what we have. Smatprt 05:58, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Apparently Tannenbaum had doubts too - "He’s fat, and scant of breath] Tannenbaum (n.d., pp. 378-9): <p. 378> “A line about which there has been much throwing about of brains is the Queen’s remark that ‘He’s fat and scant of breath’. A fat hamlet seems about as impossible as a lean Falstaff. Commentators have therefore proposed either to substitute ‘hot’ or ‘faint’ for ‘fat’, or to interpret ‘fat’ as meaning ‘not in good form’, ‘untrained’, or ‘perspiring’. Some have taken refuge in the conjecture that Shakspere was referring not to Hamlet’s physique tbut to that of Burbage, the first impersonator of the rôle. But I am not satisfied that Burbage was the first Hamlet or that Shakspere would have done violence to his creation by an unnecessary and indefensible reference to one of the physical caracteristics [sic] of the actor. Smatprt 06:17, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Is anyone still expanding this article? I see a message from Wrad about 5 days ago which could be interpreted as "nearly there". Is it time to switch to proofing-and-tidying mode? AndyJones 12:01, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
"Hamlet was the 4th most popular play during Shakespeares lifetime" - howzat? By what count? We know this how? This article seems to make some grand statements that are simply impossible to prove. Smatprt 14:03, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Also we have : "They suggest that Ophelia goes mad with guilt because when Hamlet kills her father he fulfills her sexual dreams to have Hamlet kill her father so they can be together." This is a bit rough... as is the whole "feminist" paragraph - a paragraph that is also a stretch in itself, but I guess all views (even the bizarre) must be represented. Smatprt 14:27, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
The sources section has gained a little since I last took a look at it. Apart from far too many commas and the like, which I'm about to purge, I can't follow the logic of the following addition:
“ | [...] Peter Alexander's case that Shakespeare himself was the author of the Ur-Hamlet, and that the later play is a reworking by the author of one of his own earliest works.[10][11]This belief was also held by Prof. Alfred Cairncross, who stated that "It may be assumed, until a new case can be shown to the contrary, that Shakespeare's Hamlet and no other is the play mentioned by Nash in 1589 and Henslowe in 1594."[12] This view is upheld by anti-Stratfordians, who believe that there was no Ur-Hamlet, and that the references are merely signs that the Shakespearean Hamlet was written earlier than the generally accepted date, and revised on numerous occasions. [13] | ” |
As far as I can tell, the logic goes like this:
Everyone appears to be agreeing with each other in this sequence--or at least, that's how they've been linked--yet it seems clear to me that (1) and (4) are very different positions. So I'm confused. Can anyone help me unpack this a little more clearly? DionysosProteus 21:42, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
I tried to disentangle the notes, but found them very difficult to follow. After some research - some people's names were wrong, it turns out - I've started to simplify the notes. The idea being that using the author-date system consistently will make it easy to locate a citation, without having a) to trawl back through the notes til you find the first use and b) keep repeating info about the same book (The Cambridge Guide, for instance). Will return to it tomorrow. DionysosProteus 03:46, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Of course, sorry. I've started, so you can see from the first ten notes or so. The author-date system means that in the bibliography section (or whatever its called), the entry is arranged Name, First Name. Date. Title. Then, in the footnotes, all you have to do is to cite the author's name, date and page number, according to Proteus (2007, 15). This means also that all of the articles from the Cambrdige guide don't have to have their biblio info repeated each time, so the notes will be shorter. Instead each article has a name date entry, like "This Essay" in Wells and Someone (2002, 23-45). I tried to follow some of the citations already there and it took me far too long to find, and sometimes unsuccessfully abandon the search, the relevant book. The author date system means that all the books are in one place and you know where to look for them. Just checking in before off to work, so a little rushed reply. Will be back later in the day. DionysosProteus 16:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
I've converted the Sources and Dates sections' notes into the author-date system. You can see what I mean about the articles in the Cambridge Guide by looking at Taylor's biblio info in the bibliography. DionysosProteus 01:58, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
I think there's a sourcing problem which will become a major one if we apply for FA: lots of sources without page references. I've just tried and failed to verify one of our statements. Sources need page refs. The statement that a big book says something somewhere just isn't good enough to a researcher using this page as a basic reference. AndyJones 18:41, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Right now, I think the only thing keeping us from GA is a solid copyedit and review of the Analysis section. After that, we can focus on FA if we want to. Anyway, once that's done, I'm nominating it for GA unless someone beats me to it. Wrad 18:40, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to work my way through a copy-edit to pick out what I can notice. I do have some material for the analysis section too, but don't hold back for that (unless it would be a problem to add it afterwards?). I'm also getting anal about the citations, so if there's more info anyone has on those, please add it (page numbers start/end for articles within collections of essays, for example, or ISBN numbers). DionysosProteus 22:40, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
I've just removed the section reinserted into the sources section on who wrote ur-Hamlet. I'm assuming you didn't notice the paragraph above, into which I had copy-edited the info. There was much repetition, and the debate is--metaphorically and, now, literally--a footnote to an article on Hamlet; that is to say, I have kept the information that that bit contained, but within the footnote to the sentence: "This latter idea—that Shakespeare himself wrote a now-lost version of Hamlet a decade earlier than the play we know—has attracted some support, while others dismiss it as groundless speculation." The footnote then specifies that support, in chronological order.
I'm not attempting to shut down the exposition of that particular debate, but it belongs, I believe, in the Ur-Hamlet article; it is relevant to this article that there is a debate, but unnecessary to give a blow-by-blow account of it. Besides which, as it stood, it was a paragraph that, in logical terms, repeated the same information over and over again, only slightly rephrased each time.
The copy-edit railroad rolls on...
DionysosProteus 00:00, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Okay, so the bit's been reinstated, slightly amended, but still unsatisfactory to my eyes, so I'm moving it here as a request for a process of consensus-forming:
“ | Since no copy of the Ur-Hamlet has survived, however, it is impossible to compare its language and style with the known works of any candidate for its authorship; consequently, there is no direct evidence that Kyd wrote it, nor is there any evidence that the play was not an early version by Shakespeare himself. In this regard, a few orthodox Shakespeareans, including Eric Sams [1] and Harold Bloom [2], have accepted Peter Alexander's case that there was no "ur-Hamlet" and that the work we know today was rewritten by Shakespeare on several occasions between his first version in 1589 and the work published in the 2nd Quarto. This belief was also held by Alfred Cairncross, who stated that "It may be assumed, until a new case can be shown to the contrary, that Shakespeare's Hamlet and no other is the play mentioned by Nash in 1589 and Henslowe in 1594." [3] This view is upheld by anti-Stratfordians, who believe that the contemporary references are merely signs that the Shakespearean Hamlet was written earlier than the generally accepted date, and revised throughout the playwright's career. [4] Harold Jenkins, a well-respected editor of the play, dismisses this assertion as groundless. [5]Hamlet: Poem Unlimited, by Harold Bloom. 154 p. Riverhead Press, 2003 | ” |
}
Is someone able to look at the source for the sentence:
...and clarify whether it means:
I couldn't work that out and I think a reader needs to know which is meant. AndyJones 08:46, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure about this, but was reluctant to change a sourced sentence:
I think the issues here are:
"Feminist theorists argue that she goes mad with guilt because, when Hamlet kills her father, he has fulfilled her sexual desire to have Hamlet kill her father so they can be together." This line needs serious attention, yes? The whole section seems questionable to me, so I am loathe to make any changes other than deleting the whole paragraph - but every (almost) theory has its place, so I imagine it will remain. So can someone who gets this, clean it up? thanks. Smatprt 14:39, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
"The first two quartos did not divide the play into acts and scenes, and the First Folio only divided the first two acts, leaving the rest continuous. Modern scholars still question whether the scene divisions are correct or even a part of the original intent of the author at all."
This was taken out as Andy said he'd heard something different. Yes? We need to get to the bottom of it. It's pretty important. Wrad 18:31, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello all. I'm working my way through the Date section, and need citations for the dates that each of the major editions settle on. I only have Edwards (New Cambridge), who goes for mid-1601. It'd be good to have Arden 2, Arden 3 and Oxford at least. Would you be kind enough to check and add to the note if you have a copy? Ta, DionysosProteus 00:26, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
While having this conversation about what is "evidence" and what is conjecture, I found some interesting info and would be interested in what everyone thinks of this and how it should be acknowledged. It is an extract from the Rose Playhouse Receipts for early June 1594. According to Philip Johnson, "A restraint had closed the playhouses, but the Admiral’s Men (with whom Henslowe was involved) were permitted to share the theatre at Newington Butts, with the Chamberlain’s Men. Henslowe records all the performances by both companies and the receipts (rd).
In the name of god Amen begininge at newington my Lord Admeralle men & my Lorde chamberlenmen As ffolowethe 1594
3 of June 1594 Rd at heaster & ashweros viij s
4 of June 1594 Rd at the Jewe of malta x s
5 of June 1594 Rd at andronicous xij s
6 of June 1594 Rd at cvtlacke xj s
8 of June 1594 - ne -Rd at bellendon xvij s
9 of June 1594 Rd at hamlet viij s
10 of June 1594 Rd at heaster v s
11 of June 1594 Rd at the tamynge of A shrowe ix s
12 of June 1594 Rd at andronicous vij s
13 of June 1594 Rd at the Jewe iiij s
Two of the plays came from the Admiral’s repertoire - The Jew of Malta by Marlowe and Cutlack. The new play Bellendon was the Admiral’s, because it was next performed at The Rose exactly a week later, when it reopened. The other four were in the Chamberlain’s Men’s repertoire: Hester and Ahasuerus (a biblical drama), Titus Andronicus (“almost certainly Shakespeare’s”, writes Rutter, at its first mention in January 1594 when Sussex’s Men premiered it at The Rose), Hamlet and The Taming of a Shrew." (Document source - Documents of the Rose Playhouse, revised edition (1999), edited by Carol Chillington Rutter, Senior Lecturer in English at Warwick University, and published by Manchester University Press in The Revels Plays Companion Library.)
Smatprt
01:37, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
I've started to expand the psychoanalysis section. I've covered Freud's comments in The Interpretation of Dreams, but there's more on Hamlet in "Psychopathic Characters on the Stage" (1905/6), so I'm going to settle down with that. I've only mentioned Lacan so far. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of his essay on Hamlet, but only secondary sources commenting on it. If anyone else has the desire to investigate it directly (Ophelia is "O- phallus", apparently) it's "Desire and the interpretation of desire in Hamlet", in Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading Otherwise, ed. Shoshana Felman (Baltimore, 1982). I'll flesh out what my sources offer. Feminist section after that. DionysosProteus 01:43, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
I notice an odd effect of the layout. In the performances section, the 4th line of the Restoration section, the EDIT bits appear to be overlaying the text. I'm assuming this has something to do with the placement of the pictures. Anyone else see that, or is it something to do with my browser? DionysosProteus 02:42, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to have a play with that section to see if I can remove it. I vaguely remember that moving them slightly fixed a similar problem elsewhere ages ago. Apologies for the multiple edits that this will involve - it doesn't show up on Preview. DionysosProteus 14:02, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Oh! That was actually much easier than I anticipated. For future reference, it was caused by having two pictures next to each other. By moving the second down in the text to where it more or less actually begins to be displayed, the problem is avoided. DionysosProteus 14:08, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello. I have started to add infoboxes to Shakespeare's plays. I have done about 4 so far but for some reason can't get it to work on the Romeo and Juliet page. I will try again later. Also, if anybody has any information about a possible Shakespeare infobox then let me know as I don't know how to create infoboxes from scratch. Thanks. Wikiadam 16:57, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | → | Archive 10 |
Is this atricle settled as the next wikiproject GA-drive collaboration? If yes, should that fact be advertised somewhere? (Or is it, and I missed it?) AndyJones 20:32, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Hello everyone. I've just uploaded a few new images of Hamlets thru the ages onto the Commons, in anticipation of development of the article.
I have a great full-page reproduction of a signed autograph of John Barrymore as Hamlet from 1922, which would make a good article image, but I can't work out if it's still in copyright (I guess I'd need to somehow find out who the photographer is; the book Shakespeare: The Globe and the World doesn't give a specific source for that image, saying all non-mentioned sources are from the Folger, DC. Maybe someone has an idea how to find the record there?) DionysosProteus 03:09, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Not sure if this will work...
Anyway, what I'm trying to do is to slap a sandbox version of an old synopsis from this article onto the talk page, in a pink box, so that I and others can mess around with it until we're satisfied that it can go onto the article itself. I've used an old one (approx April this year) so that it's free from any potential "copyright" taint (see discussions above). AndyJones 12:31, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I think we're both editing at the same time! :) I will break the synopsis up with sub-headings, which I think facilitates that. I don't propose to keep them in the final draft. DionysosProteus 17:18, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
The word-count is rising steadily... 886 at present. I'd like to hash out the rest of the plot first then look at cutting. Two things stuck me thinking while away; firstly, it's all very hero's journey at the moment; and secondly, the women seem to have been marginalized. These aren't really concerns, so much a niggles at the back of my head. The count is rising, but I was thinking about the image of the parent-child relation in Laertes and especially Ophelia in 1.3, since the latter sense of overbearing paranoid control (heavily interpreted) is part of the motivational structure for her madness later. DionysosProteus 18:58, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I see. It's not that significant to the core plot. DionysosProteus 22:55, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I think we can probably get away without reinforcing his title or seniority in 1.4 paragraph. Not so sure about the first para, though? What do you think? DionysosProteus 15:20, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Okaydoke. Apologies for the delete. DionysosProteus 18:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Does he really? Or is this left open to interpretation? Wrad 17:57, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Taking a break for a little while, having got a little through three. Was about to look at the long Hamlet to Horatio speech.
DionysosProteus 18:20, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
"Anyone can be creative, |
it's rewriting other people |
that's a challenge." |
Bertolt Brecht |
I've had a good bash at this, as has User:Wrad. I got as far as the end of act three. As time went on, though, I felt myself becoming more verbose. I've gone through the first three again, trying to be as harsh as I could bring myself to be. I've put elements that strike me as potentially expendable or offering opportunity for compression in square brackets. I'm sure there's more, too. I also added some comments on my reasoning behind those, in html brackets (invisible til edited). Sorry if that gets in anyone's way. The word count was 1,000, which is what initiated this last approach. What I found, though, was that even when expanding the outline to take cognizance of more plot elements (and being stricter about excluding everything except for present-tense events), cleaning up the copy led to an overall reduction in words. At least, it started out like that... Can I make a plea for the importance of all the meta-theatrical and meta-dramatic elements, which from a hero's journey POV can sometimes seem extraneous? The Player's Hecuba speech, the Speak the Speech, and the Clowns, I'm thinking of, especially. I know there's a tendency to treat the plays in an over-literary way, not attending to their status as theatre, so I wanted to flag that up early on. I also ditched that awful pre-Raphelite engraving; my reasoning was that it doesn't illustrate a scene (unless it's meant to be the nunnery, in which case it's a very idiosyncratic rendering); my impulse simply said 'yuk!' DionysosProteus 01:40, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I should have a Shakespearean expletive to hand for such moments. DionysosProteus 02:48, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
It's pithy, I'll give it that. The moibus-like self-referentiality, though, is dizzying.
Just finished an edit of the synopsis as a whole. It is, I think, much improved. However, as it stands, the word count is 1,050. The one on the article at present is 1,020. I think there's room for a snip or two, some of which I've outlined. Act three looks heavy, but then it is the keystone of the arc.
Having snipped away a fair amount, the word count is now at
905 words |
DionysosProteus 21:11, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I've wiki-linked the soliloquy bits to the relevant articles - To be and What a piece of work; are there any others floating around out there? I'm going to create a Speak the Speech one, at least. DionysosProteus 22:14, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I've just standerdized the entire article, according to the ouline on the project page. I have yet to add a list summary at Shakespeare on Screen, but does anyone see the need for a Hamlet on Screen?
I put what was under Analysis and critism under the subheading Themes and motifs. Obviously not all of it is themes and motifs, rather critical history, which was its former heading, but I was simply trying to follow the outline as closely as possible.
To the Adaptations and cultural refrences section, we still need literary versions and cultural refrences. In Analysis and critism we need a structure section, language section, other interpretations section. I'll try to find some literature on these subjects... Bardofcornish 01:07, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Started looking at act four synopsis. Looking at the text closely, I'm not sure we can say "Fearing for his own safety" as the motive for sending Hamlet abroad. He is, I don't doubt, but that looks like falling further down the scale of interpretation--description than the rest.
DionysosProteus 13:58, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Dear Andy,
Taken a look at the amendments you've made; they look good, though I don't think act one scene 2 is quite right.
The 'ceremony' and 'decree' were there doing double duty: firstly, to convey what we'd call the montage dramaturgy, with the collision between the scenes of dark, private, spooky into public, formal and bright (this contrast structures the opening of Macbeth too and a few others); secondly, the decree takes up the first half of Claudius' opening proclamation. Perhaps there is a better way to describe the precise sentiment, but the gestus is of a public audience with the monarch, a new status quo and Hamlet disrupting the formal symmetry (I can't remember which off the top of my head but either Gurr or Weimann talk about how that would have been visually supported through symmetrical-formal and dissonant blocking, like the Titus Andronicus drawing). Rather than only conveying the 'content', I think that a synopsis should indicate, or at least give a sense of through its construction (rather than explicitly state per se), the way that content is arranged formally; the plot rather than merely the story. Claudius' verbal mode sets the tone of the scene and presupposes a particular diagrammatic arrangement in space for the principals and a contrast in the main conflict's figure's performance modes (C is fourth wall formal public address, H is punning, in intimate contact with audience and on the borderline). It might also be desirable to flag up the beginning of the Fortinbras plot-line in his declaration.
The loss of Claudius' verbal mode has a knock-on effect of blurring the Claudius and Gertrude actions later in the scene. Claudius remains formal and rhetorical, reasoning with Hamlet in a very cool, disengaged and verbose manner; Gertrude is more intimate though she hardly speaks at all (9 lines against 41 from C directed to H). The sharp contrast in verbal modes between Claudius and Hamlet here initiates one of the structuring principles of the play. Without the sense of courtly formality, it all starts to sound like a bourgeois domestic drama (which is fine if you're reading as Freud, but not for anyone else). Most of Claudius' motivations that we hear about explicitly later in the play tend to focus on Hamlet's political threat.
Not sure that we need to specify that the Queen was his brother's wife having just specified that the throne was his brothers.
For Hamlet's soliloquy "too too solid/sullied flesh": I incorporated some previous text about this into its current formulation, but a little reluctantly (vents his frustration at C's usurpation); close scrutiny of the text, however, reveals that at this point in the play, there's really only one object of his frustration and that's mama. He mentions papa, but only to say how good he was compared to the present one, not to reflect on his loss. In light of this, I think that we should trim this down to "vents his frustration at his mother's hasty remarriage" or something along those lines. The rest is implied, no doubt, but not explicit.
The It for the Ghost in 1.4 was clumsy, I agree, but was there for a purpose, so it may be worth unpacking that. By the end of Act Two Hamlet is still not sure whether he can trust the evidence of the ghost. He interrogates Horatio and sentries for some time in 1.2 (like a good Renaissance skeptic) about the ghost's precise appearance. The motivational logic for Hamlet's not acting immediately relies on this doubt (am I being tricked or being a coward?). That this apparition may not be dear old papa motivates much of his doubt, and the him / it gap tried to mark that in some way. My sense, too, is that it is grammatically correct to use It for a ghost, but that strays into murky theological territory. But that's all just by way of an explanation; I think the trim's fine.
DionysosProteus 12:17, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Aha, you've begun editing while I was typing this. Try to incorporate Horatio's skepticism in the initial situation, as that is the core of the dramatic conflict for the opening section, which is resolved by the surprise appearance of the ghost.
DionysosProteus
12:26, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Claudius feigning ignorance is there in the text, and links together the setup (Hamlet decides to feign madness) and payoff (the court tries to work out what's causing Hamlet's madness). Otherwise, the decision to get R&G to inform and to spy themselves appears unmotivated. DionysosProteus 12:29, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
No probs. I'll take a look later. DionysosProteus 13:09, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Just a quick question... the Character list describes Claudius as "elected" to the throne. What's the basis for that? Thanks, DionysosProteus 15:19, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Aha, many thanks. Despite the comment there re:web forums, I think it might be appropriate to have an explanatory footnote in the article about the succession. DionysosProteus 15:26, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, all that is quite interesting. I definitely think a note here or an explanation in one of the other Hamlet articles. DionysosProteus 19:42, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
I know we need to keep it punchy, but I have added a little. Some of it is style, I confess. I think it's desirable to narrate the dramatic logic underlying the events, which is most visible in sentence structures "this expectation but that happened" or "this cause so that effect" and the like, mainly because its this logic that makes it drama, rather than any other form of fiction. As a synopsis, too, using that logic feels like a better read - a narrative rather than a list of events. That's why I've reverted to a version of the show/tell dynamic - we settle down to hear the tale, when--surprise--ghost appears.
I couldn't avoid describing the ghost as It in the opening scene; sorry :). If it's any use, Marcellus does say "Question it Horatio" (1.1.45). It/he gets a more human tone in the description of 1.5; the point about H's skepticism is covered adequately in his motivations for the Mousetrap, I think.
I've tried to kill two birds with one stone in the second scene of act one. I take the point about the difference between analysis and description, but my points about this scene turn on how it feels in performance, not any critical evaluation, and for an inexperienced reader that feeling can be difficult to detect when studying the play-text in isolation. Very rarely, of course, a production goes against this dynamic ( Peter Brook's shamefully piss-poor production at the Young Vic did something like this); it's probably the memory of that that is making the previous edit feel too soapy to me. The second issue is again, perhaps, one of style, but I really dislike back-story in the description of a play. I know the parenthetical structure of the previous edit was long-winded, but it did at least frame the past in terms of present action. So I've attempted to combine the two by rendering the narration of the succession in terms of Claudius' formal opening proclamation (which is how the audience get most of the back-story). The formality of the scene is rendered, I hope, by the use of "proclaims" and "official mourning". It's a little more accurate than "decrees", too. I know Hamlet's promise is a little verbose, but it's more accurate, since he doesn't actually agree to anything. This edit for this scene is only six words longer than the previous one.
In act two, I've removed Gertrude, as she doesn't enlist R&G to do this, she just says, please stay at court and go see H now. I've also returned the title of the play to The Mousetrap, with the qualification of it being H's title. The reason I put this in in the first place wasn't because the play is important--because it clearly isn't--but because this title is - that scene is referred to in critical shorthand as 'the mousetrap scene'. I think it's important that someone can find where these famous scenes are in the play by referring to wikipedia's synopsis.
That's the reason why I've returned Hamlet's To Be or Not To Be to the description. It's perhaps the most famous scene in the play, so it really can't not be in there. The action is the plot, not merely the external events. It'd be like having a sports highlights segment that fails to show the crucial goal. I also clipped the description of Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia, as it seemed too interpretative; this is what he does, whether it's cruel or not is up to the actor & director and then audience to decide.
The rest is minor clipping and clarifying, I think. I changed 'arras' to 'tapestry' as its a more familiar word. The scene where "Claudius convinces Laertes that Hamlet is to blame" actually isn't described very well, as it opens with Laertes saying, yes, I know Hamlet did it; why didn't you take stronger measures? On reflection, though, this is not such a bad inaccuracy. Describing Ophelia's suicide as a suicidal action was designed to tie it in with the play's questioning of the nature of action ("to act, to do, to perform," as the gravedigger says), and whether her inaction (like Hamlet's hesitant inaction) is an action. This can be covered in analysis, though.
I miss the king's concluding Hamlet's not mad but malcontent, since it links the play into a wider generic structure, but that can be covered in analysis too.
There are two bits that I'm not sure about: the most important is the king's soliloquy before praying, which is a crucial scene, as it's the first real non-supernatural evidence we get that he really is guilty. He's confessing to us, and that revelation of information isn't captured by the synopsis yet. The second is less significant--the penultimate scene. After a play-full of his hesitant nail-biting, for the first time Hamlet is in his groove... it's from this position he goes to confront his destiny; his outlining of his 'case' against Claudius is kind of important in that regard; its his just cause for action (the pirates, btw, I don't think are very important). Oh yes, and one other thing... it kind of feels a little odd that the only scene in the play not to be narrated is 1.3. I know it's not terribly important, and is probably only there as a filler to cover the gap between Hamlet being told about ghost and then going to see it. But maybe we could stretch to a short sentence?
Anyhow, that's that. Not so much a trim as a slight restyle. The word count's not risen by much either - 18 extra words by my count.
By the way, is there any reason there are two Hamlet templates floating around out there--one for characters and another for crit and films etc.? Might be consider merging them?
I've had a little play with the Hamlet template. This is what I've come up with:
{{ Hamlet}}
The old one is preserved here:
{{ Hamlet old}}
Let me know what you think and if any changes are desirable.
Are we ready to put the sandbox synopsis onto the page? AndyJones 17:56, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
I really don't like the new one. I liked the grave digger picture. Anyone feel the same way? Wrad 04:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Another thing I don't like about actor-images in general is that they place too much emphasis on that one actor or performance. I think images of that nature should stay in the performances section, where they won't discriminate. Paintings, however, strictly portray the character, without favoring any one performance. Plus, they are in color, which is more attractive. I would just say, does Booth really represent Hamlet? I don't think so. But the grave digger picture did, with the skull, and with multiple characters present. A ghost image would, as well. I just don't want to favor any single character or actor. And I would prefer a color photo. Not everyone cares enough about Hamlet to go beyond the first picture, if it doesn't strike them as interesting, and Booth, frankly, looks pretty bored. Wrad 23:06, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to move the Booth image to the new Language section. It illustrates the "trappings and suits of woe" moment which is important in the establishment of Hamlet's rhetorical skill. Wrad 21:58, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
That image thing is a problem with the servers. Clearing its cache fixes (temporarily) DionysosProteus 14:54, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Our biggest problem with the GA drive on this article is that it has sooooooo many sub-pages: including several new ones we have created recently in the process of cleaning up and splitting out this main page. How do we feel about focusing for a while on the main Hamlet page, and getting it up to GA? (It's clearly got FA potential, but let's take one step at a time.)
Here are some of the items which I think ought to be on our to-do list. Feel free to add or amend this. Items 1-3 are on my personal to-do list and I'll start working on them. Beyond that it's things I hope someone else will take on.
I was going to start with date and text, but my book is unable to cite any information not already cited, and then it gets too specific to give anything else, so I'm moving on until later. Wrad 00:49, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
A thought on the performance history and adaptations sections--Origanilly, both of the adaptation sections were in the performance history section untill I weeded it all out, with films being toward the end, so I think that the performance history does lead rather tidly into the next section. Thoughts?
Oh, and a complete bibliography of Hamlet adapations can be found at http://www.shaksper.net/archives/files/spinoff.biblio.html Bardofcornish 21:12, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
I think the analysis and criticism is getting a bit to long, but I don't have any experience with GA, so I could be wrong.
I've found a book refrenced online, that has what seems to be a very useful article about psychoanalytic critism of Hamlet. I'll have it out of the library by tomorrow night (24 hours). Bardofcornish 01:10, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
How do we feel about splicing up the "Date and text" section into sections? I know it's not mentioned in the outline on the project page, but I think it might make it a bit easier to digest? Bardofcornish 00:57, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello all.
Just passing through briefly, when I noticed the changes to the synopsis.
They're described in the history as "correcting errors", which is very strange, as I can't see any errors in the corrections (sentinel is a far more obscure synonym for sentry, for example).
All of the changes seemed to me to have made the description less precise, sometimes grammatically incorrect, unnecessarily elaborate (antic disposition, murder most foul and unnatural, etc.), and to have introduced an interpretive bias that the development process of the synopsis worked hard to exclude - Ophelia only 'appears' mad?; the sexually-suggestive nature of one or two lines of her songs is hardly the most significant part of her behaviour in that scene; that thing about the Ghost's identity again. The synopsis has been through a fairly rigorous process of collective editing and evaluation; we have looked at it pretty much sentence by sentence, and worked hard to make it concise, precise, factual and objective - the present form is the result. This doesn't mean that there are no further improvements possible, but they need to be discussed and approved here first.
By the way, sorry for my non-participation lately - real life troubling me again. Will be returning soon. BTW, something's gone awry with the R&J template?
DionysosProteus 14:36, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello again. The R&J has merged its film versions and film adaptations, so at least on my pc they spill out over into the picture.
Horatio's line - yes, hmmm... not so sure about that. He says he's more a roman than a dane and sees the poison left, but not sure that's the same thing. Anyhow seems a minor element in the action, there to motivate giving it to Hamlet. DionysosProteus 16:19, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
The lead needed to be expanded to summarize the article as a whole before GA, so I tried my hand at it. I don't know much about the performances, though, so someone else will have to do that paragraph. I also expect hammering this out will involve a lot of discussion. Wrad 17:19, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I've added a bit about performance history. I don't know whether we should expand it, or whether keeping it in one nice, tidy little package is desirable. Thoughts? Bardofcornish 21:26, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I reorganized the images so that the synopsis wouldn't be so cluttered. Also, the manual of style indicates that editors should not apply specific sizes to images without a compelling reason, so I removed most of those parameters. We could still use more images, though, to illustrate each major section better. Wrad 17:41, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Whew! I've got about everything done except the themes section. That was the hardest part of R&J, and it will probably be here as well. I've just got to tie everything together in the sections we have, and add one more, and then we've got it done. Wrad 04:07, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
The article states, several times, that - "Shakespeare wrote the role of Hamlet for Richard Burbage," - we know this for certain? What contemporary document backs this up? Did Burbage play the part in the so-called Ur-Hamlet as well? All of this seems like a real stretch. Smatprt 02:13, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Here [ [1]], the researchers at the British Library specifically say "probably". They recognize that it is not a verifiable "fact". I would hope that they would be reliable on this issue. The rest of their write-up is excellent, by the way. We ought to look to it to verfy what we have. Smatprt 05:58, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Apparently Tannenbaum had doubts too - "He’s fat, and scant of breath] Tannenbaum (n.d., pp. 378-9): <p. 378> “A line about which there has been much throwing about of brains is the Queen’s remark that ‘He’s fat and scant of breath’. A fat hamlet seems about as impossible as a lean Falstaff. Commentators have therefore proposed either to substitute ‘hot’ or ‘faint’ for ‘fat’, or to interpret ‘fat’ as meaning ‘not in good form’, ‘untrained’, or ‘perspiring’. Some have taken refuge in the conjecture that Shakspere was referring not to Hamlet’s physique tbut to that of Burbage, the first impersonator of the rôle. But I am not satisfied that Burbage was the first Hamlet or that Shakspere would have done violence to his creation by an unnecessary and indefensible reference to one of the physical caracteristics [sic] of the actor. Smatprt 06:17, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Is anyone still expanding this article? I see a message from Wrad about 5 days ago which could be interpreted as "nearly there". Is it time to switch to proofing-and-tidying mode? AndyJones 12:01, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
"Hamlet was the 4th most popular play during Shakespeares lifetime" - howzat? By what count? We know this how? This article seems to make some grand statements that are simply impossible to prove. Smatprt 14:03, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Also we have : "They suggest that Ophelia goes mad with guilt because when Hamlet kills her father he fulfills her sexual dreams to have Hamlet kill her father so they can be together." This is a bit rough... as is the whole "feminist" paragraph - a paragraph that is also a stretch in itself, but I guess all views (even the bizarre) must be represented. Smatprt 14:27, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
The sources section has gained a little since I last took a look at it. Apart from far too many commas and the like, which I'm about to purge, I can't follow the logic of the following addition:
“ | [...] Peter Alexander's case that Shakespeare himself was the author of the Ur-Hamlet, and that the later play is a reworking by the author of one of his own earliest works.[10][11]This belief was also held by Prof. Alfred Cairncross, who stated that "It may be assumed, until a new case can be shown to the contrary, that Shakespeare's Hamlet and no other is the play mentioned by Nash in 1589 and Henslowe in 1594."[12] This view is upheld by anti-Stratfordians, who believe that there was no Ur-Hamlet, and that the references are merely signs that the Shakespearean Hamlet was written earlier than the generally accepted date, and revised on numerous occasions. [13] | ” |
As far as I can tell, the logic goes like this:
Everyone appears to be agreeing with each other in this sequence--or at least, that's how they've been linked--yet it seems clear to me that (1) and (4) are very different positions. So I'm confused. Can anyone help me unpack this a little more clearly? DionysosProteus 21:42, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
I tried to disentangle the notes, but found them very difficult to follow. After some research - some people's names were wrong, it turns out - I've started to simplify the notes. The idea being that using the author-date system consistently will make it easy to locate a citation, without having a) to trawl back through the notes til you find the first use and b) keep repeating info about the same book (The Cambridge Guide, for instance). Will return to it tomorrow. DionysosProteus 03:46, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Of course, sorry. I've started, so you can see from the first ten notes or so. The author-date system means that in the bibliography section (or whatever its called), the entry is arranged Name, First Name. Date. Title. Then, in the footnotes, all you have to do is to cite the author's name, date and page number, according to Proteus (2007, 15). This means also that all of the articles from the Cambrdige guide don't have to have their biblio info repeated each time, so the notes will be shorter. Instead each article has a name date entry, like "This Essay" in Wells and Someone (2002, 23-45). I tried to follow some of the citations already there and it took me far too long to find, and sometimes unsuccessfully abandon the search, the relevant book. The author date system means that all the books are in one place and you know where to look for them. Just checking in before off to work, so a little rushed reply. Will be back later in the day. DionysosProteus 16:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
I've converted the Sources and Dates sections' notes into the author-date system. You can see what I mean about the articles in the Cambridge Guide by looking at Taylor's biblio info in the bibliography. DionysosProteus 01:58, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
I think there's a sourcing problem which will become a major one if we apply for FA: lots of sources without page references. I've just tried and failed to verify one of our statements. Sources need page refs. The statement that a big book says something somewhere just isn't good enough to a researcher using this page as a basic reference. AndyJones 18:41, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Right now, I think the only thing keeping us from GA is a solid copyedit and review of the Analysis section. After that, we can focus on FA if we want to. Anyway, once that's done, I'm nominating it for GA unless someone beats me to it. Wrad 18:40, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to work my way through a copy-edit to pick out what I can notice. I do have some material for the analysis section too, but don't hold back for that (unless it would be a problem to add it afterwards?). I'm also getting anal about the citations, so if there's more info anyone has on those, please add it (page numbers start/end for articles within collections of essays, for example, or ISBN numbers). DionysosProteus 22:40, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
I've just removed the section reinserted into the sources section on who wrote ur-Hamlet. I'm assuming you didn't notice the paragraph above, into which I had copy-edited the info. There was much repetition, and the debate is--metaphorically and, now, literally--a footnote to an article on Hamlet; that is to say, I have kept the information that that bit contained, but within the footnote to the sentence: "This latter idea—that Shakespeare himself wrote a now-lost version of Hamlet a decade earlier than the play we know—has attracted some support, while others dismiss it as groundless speculation." The footnote then specifies that support, in chronological order.
I'm not attempting to shut down the exposition of that particular debate, but it belongs, I believe, in the Ur-Hamlet article; it is relevant to this article that there is a debate, but unnecessary to give a blow-by-blow account of it. Besides which, as it stood, it was a paragraph that, in logical terms, repeated the same information over and over again, only slightly rephrased each time.
The copy-edit railroad rolls on...
DionysosProteus 00:00, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Okay, so the bit's been reinstated, slightly amended, but still unsatisfactory to my eyes, so I'm moving it here as a request for a process of consensus-forming:
“ | Since no copy of the Ur-Hamlet has survived, however, it is impossible to compare its language and style with the known works of any candidate for its authorship; consequently, there is no direct evidence that Kyd wrote it, nor is there any evidence that the play was not an early version by Shakespeare himself. In this regard, a few orthodox Shakespeareans, including Eric Sams [1] and Harold Bloom [2], have accepted Peter Alexander's case that there was no "ur-Hamlet" and that the work we know today was rewritten by Shakespeare on several occasions between his first version in 1589 and the work published in the 2nd Quarto. This belief was also held by Alfred Cairncross, who stated that "It may be assumed, until a new case can be shown to the contrary, that Shakespeare's Hamlet and no other is the play mentioned by Nash in 1589 and Henslowe in 1594." [3] This view is upheld by anti-Stratfordians, who believe that the contemporary references are merely signs that the Shakespearean Hamlet was written earlier than the generally accepted date, and revised throughout the playwright's career. [4] Harold Jenkins, a well-respected editor of the play, dismisses this assertion as groundless. [5]Hamlet: Poem Unlimited, by Harold Bloom. 154 p. Riverhead Press, 2003 | ” |
}
Is someone able to look at the source for the sentence:
...and clarify whether it means:
I couldn't work that out and I think a reader needs to know which is meant. AndyJones 08:46, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure about this, but was reluctant to change a sourced sentence:
I think the issues here are:
"Feminist theorists argue that she goes mad with guilt because, when Hamlet kills her father, he has fulfilled her sexual desire to have Hamlet kill her father so they can be together." This line needs serious attention, yes? The whole section seems questionable to me, so I am loathe to make any changes other than deleting the whole paragraph - but every (almost) theory has its place, so I imagine it will remain. So can someone who gets this, clean it up? thanks. Smatprt 14:39, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
"The first two quartos did not divide the play into acts and scenes, and the First Folio only divided the first two acts, leaving the rest continuous. Modern scholars still question whether the scene divisions are correct or even a part of the original intent of the author at all."
This was taken out as Andy said he'd heard something different. Yes? We need to get to the bottom of it. It's pretty important. Wrad 18:31, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello all. I'm working my way through the Date section, and need citations for the dates that each of the major editions settle on. I only have Edwards (New Cambridge), who goes for mid-1601. It'd be good to have Arden 2, Arden 3 and Oxford at least. Would you be kind enough to check and add to the note if you have a copy? Ta, DionysosProteus 00:26, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
While having this conversation about what is "evidence" and what is conjecture, I found some interesting info and would be interested in what everyone thinks of this and how it should be acknowledged. It is an extract from the Rose Playhouse Receipts for early June 1594. According to Philip Johnson, "A restraint had closed the playhouses, but the Admiral’s Men (with whom Henslowe was involved) were permitted to share the theatre at Newington Butts, with the Chamberlain’s Men. Henslowe records all the performances by both companies and the receipts (rd).
In the name of god Amen begininge at newington my Lord Admeralle men & my Lorde chamberlenmen As ffolowethe 1594
3 of June 1594 Rd at heaster & ashweros viij s
4 of June 1594 Rd at the Jewe of malta x s
5 of June 1594 Rd at andronicous xij s
6 of June 1594 Rd at cvtlacke xj s
8 of June 1594 - ne -Rd at bellendon xvij s
9 of June 1594 Rd at hamlet viij s
10 of June 1594 Rd at heaster v s
11 of June 1594 Rd at the tamynge of A shrowe ix s
12 of June 1594 Rd at andronicous vij s
13 of June 1594 Rd at the Jewe iiij s
Two of the plays came from the Admiral’s repertoire - The Jew of Malta by Marlowe and Cutlack. The new play Bellendon was the Admiral’s, because it was next performed at The Rose exactly a week later, when it reopened. The other four were in the Chamberlain’s Men’s repertoire: Hester and Ahasuerus (a biblical drama), Titus Andronicus (“almost certainly Shakespeare’s”, writes Rutter, at its first mention in January 1594 when Sussex’s Men premiered it at The Rose), Hamlet and The Taming of a Shrew." (Document source - Documents of the Rose Playhouse, revised edition (1999), edited by Carol Chillington Rutter, Senior Lecturer in English at Warwick University, and published by Manchester University Press in The Revels Plays Companion Library.)
Smatprt
01:37, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
I've started to expand the psychoanalysis section. I've covered Freud's comments in The Interpretation of Dreams, but there's more on Hamlet in "Psychopathic Characters on the Stage" (1905/6), so I'm going to settle down with that. I've only mentioned Lacan so far. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of his essay on Hamlet, but only secondary sources commenting on it. If anyone else has the desire to investigate it directly (Ophelia is "O- phallus", apparently) it's "Desire and the interpretation of desire in Hamlet", in Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading Otherwise, ed. Shoshana Felman (Baltimore, 1982). I'll flesh out what my sources offer. Feminist section after that. DionysosProteus 01:43, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
I notice an odd effect of the layout. In the performances section, the 4th line of the Restoration section, the EDIT bits appear to be overlaying the text. I'm assuming this has something to do with the placement of the pictures. Anyone else see that, or is it something to do with my browser? DionysosProteus 02:42, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to have a play with that section to see if I can remove it. I vaguely remember that moving them slightly fixed a similar problem elsewhere ages ago. Apologies for the multiple edits that this will involve - it doesn't show up on Preview. DionysosProteus 14:02, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Oh! That was actually much easier than I anticipated. For future reference, it was caused by having two pictures next to each other. By moving the second down in the text to where it more or less actually begins to be displayed, the problem is avoided. DionysosProteus 14:08, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello. I have started to add infoboxes to Shakespeare's plays. I have done about 4 so far but for some reason can't get it to work on the Romeo and Juliet page. I will try again later. Also, if anybody has any information about a possible Shakespeare infobox then let me know as I don't know how to create infoboxes from scratch. Thanks. Wikiadam 16:57, 22 October 2007 (UTC)