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| URL | https://www.suu.edu/podcasts/solutions-for-higher-education/59/ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Meta Title | Episode 59 - William Shakespeare's Hamlet - SUU | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Meta Description | Episode 59, Solutions for Higher Education podcast - Hamlet by William Shakespeare 06/25/2019 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Boilerpipe Text | Episode 59 - Summer Book Club Book 2: William Shakespeare's Hamlet
President Scott L Wyatt and Steve Meredith are joined by Dr. Joy Sterrantino to discuss the second book in the Summer Book Club: Hamlet. The trio discuss the upcoming performance of Hamlet by the
Utah Shakespeare Festival
, the complex relationships found within the story, and the overall themes woven into the story.
SUU Blog:
President Wyatt's Summer Book Picks for 2019
Full Transcript
Steve Meredith:
Hi again everyone, and welcome to Solutions to Higher Education, a podcast featuring Scott L Wyatt, the president of Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. Iām your host, Steve Meredith, and Iām joined in-studio today, as I always am, by President Wyatt. Hi, Scott.
Scott Wyatt:
Hello, Steve. Itās nice to be here with you today.
Meredith:
Another great day, beautiful June day as we are recording this, and you and I actually met last night in Salt Lake City for a really nice event. The university was recognizedā¦I think this is worth mentioning.
Wyatt:
I think itās good that weāre both still awake because it was a late night.
Meredith:
Yeah, it was a late night. [Laughs]
Wyatt:
Yeah, Best of State. SUU took home three Best of State awards including Best Educational Institution Award. Itās kind of a second year in a row actually, two years running. Out of all the educational institutions in Utah, thatās public, private, higher ed, public edā¦
Meredith:
Thatās great, thatās great. Next year we go for a āthree-peat.ā
Wyatt:
Yeah, weāll see what happens.
Meredith:
Anyway, it was a very nice evening and we donāt toot our own horn too much on this podcast, but I figured that was worth bringing up. So, today is our second book in our summer book club, and itās actually not just a book but itās a play, and probably, maybe Shakespeareās most famous play, or certainly amongst those.
Wyatt:
Yeah, and itā¦if itās Shakespeareās most significant play, we can probably take that a step further and say itās the most significant play. But, before we defend that statement, letās bring in our guest. So, Joy Sterrantino from our English department, literature professorā¦
Joy Sterrantino:
Hi.
Wyatt:
Is here with us today.
Sterrantino:
Hi, thank you. Glad to be here.
Wyatt:
Joyās graduate studies focusā¦you had a few areas of focus, and one was early English literature, which isā¦
Sterrantino:
Early modern literature is what they call it.
Wyatt:
Early modern.
Sterrantino:
Which is the language of that period.
Wyatt:
So, thatās Shakespeare, and what were your other areas?
Sterrantino:
Dystopian literature and composition, which is the classes we teach the 1010 and 2010 to make proper argumentative writing.
Wyatt:
Yeah, have students be successful in written communication skills.
Sterrantino:
Mhmm.
Wyatt:
Well, before we get into this play, I think we ought to defend the statement that this might be the most important play ever. I donāt know how you defend that, but I can say this much, that no play has ever been produced on Broadway more times than Hamlet. Hamlet has been produced by far more than any other play.
Meredith:
Really?
Wyatt:
So, if thatās a measure, and I think thatās probably a pretty good indication, this could be our most important play ever.
Sterrantino:
It could be. Iād have to give that more thought, but itās definitely not not the most important play. I mean, itās definitely up there if itās not the most important play.
Wyatt:
Yeah. Yeah, somebody somewhere on a podcast somewhere in the world today is making an argument play is the most important. Weāre talking about Hamlet in this summer book club because SUU has a very special Hamlet summer. The Utah Shakespeare Festival, which is part of Southern Utah University, our professional theater department separate from our academic theater department, but the Utah Shakespeare Festival is doing a creative, slightly new take on Hamlet and it opens on July 5th at 2:00pm.
Meredith:
Really?
Wyatt:
And I have my tickets purchased and Iām ready to go watch it. I donāt want to be a spoiler, so Iām not going to sayā¦
Meredith:
But itās different?
Wyatt:
But itās just a little bit different, a little bit different take.
Sterrantino:
And Iām excited about it. Itās going to be really neat.
Wyatt:
Yeah. I think I can say this without going too far: Ophelia has a slightly larger role.
Sterrantino:
Thatās enough to make me go.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Wyatt:
They havenāt changed any words.
Meredith:
So, the words are the same?
Wyatt:
Yeah. These plays, you know, everybody puts on these plays, but the way the director sets it up and the emphasis and the language and how they do things and how theyāre looking, you can have one paly that has kind of a different meaning just by presenting it differently. And this will have a meaning that I donāt know that anybodyās ever tried doing,
Sterrantino:
Iāve never heard of it.
Wyatt:
So, everybody needs to come and watch, itās going to be really fun.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Wyatt:
And read the play before you come watch it, of course.
Meredith:
Yeah. I was going to say, Iām glad theyāre not changing the words or updating them or excising them in any way because as I read this again, and Iād read it once before in high school or college and then I had seen the play a couple of times, and read it again this last week, Iām just astonished. Every single time, Iām astonished at how much of Hamlet is in our regular language.
Wyatt:
[Laughs]
Meredith:
I mean, if anybody stumbles across a skull, whatās the first thing you say? āAlas, poor Yorick!ā [All laugh] It justā¦there are soā¦
Wyatt:
Iāve never stumbled across a skull.
Sterrantino:
At the Halloween store.
Meredith:
Well, thatās right. [All laugh] Iām surprised with you, with your background. [Laughs]
Wyatt:
Iāve had skulls, but Iāve never stumbled across them. [Laughs]
Meredith:
Thatās right. But, I mean, āMethinks the lady doth protest too much.ā How many times have you heard that statement?
Wyatt:
Yeah.
Meredith:
And there are so many of these things that you say, āThatās either a proverb from the Bible or itās Shakespeare.ā And itās a pretty good coin flip as to which has had the most impact on the language, and this particular play especially.
Wyatt:
Yeah, Joy, what areā¦so, for those that have never read the play or seen it, weāre going to tell them right now that theyāve heardā¦
Sterrantino:
Oh, yeah.
Wyatt:
Quite a bit of them.
Sterrantino:
Thereās so many different things. The ones that you mentioned, thereās, āThis above all, to thine own self be true.ā
Wyatt:
Which is a great statement.
Meredith:
Yep.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, although itās funny because the person who says it, Polonius, he just kind of spouts off for long periods of time. [All laugh] But, heās telling his son all the things that he needs to be when he goes away back to college, essentially.
Meredith:
āNeither a borrower nor a lender be.ā
Wyatt:
Yeah, it is a pity that the person making the statement is an advisor to a tyrant.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, I donāt think that necessarily was a choice on his part, though. It just is kind ofā¦the job just kind of was fluid when the new king came in.
Wyatt:
Yeah, thatās probably right.
Sterrantino:
But, thereās also so many things, just the āTo be or not to beā speech, āThat is the question: Whether ātis nobler in the mind to suffer the arrows of outrageous fortune or take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing them to die, to sleep.ā Thereās also, āTo sleep: perchance to dream: ay, thereās the rub; for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come? For who would bear the whips and scorns of time?ā āThe undiscoverād country from who is born, no traveler returns, puzzles the will.ā So, all of those are just from that monologue, but thereās other things like, āThough this be madness, yet there is method in it.ā
Meredith:
Right.
Sterrantino:
āBrevity is the soul of wit.ā
Wyatt:
āBrevity is the soul of wit.ā
Meredith:
Yep.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, that one gets used a lot.
Wyatt:
Which really means, ābe short.ā [All laugh]
Meredith:
Itās funnier the shorter it is.
Wyatt:
Yeah. Great little lines.
Meredith:
I probably say, āThereās method to my madnessā five times a week. [Laughs]
Sterrantino:
Yeah, yeah. Itās true.
Meredith:
Usually when Iām trying to convince my wife of some cockamamie scheme or another, yes.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, in this case it was Polonius trying to figure out what was going on with Hamlet, and so, he was acting mad but there was logic to the madness. At least to Hamlet, and Polonius recognized that.
Meredith:
Hmm.
Wyatt:
Letās set this play up. Thereās about five major characters, or six. Joy, can you tell us Hamlet in a paragraph?
Sterrantino:
The whole play? Yeah, I probably can. So, are we worrying about spoilers at this point? I think weāre past that time period, we donāt need to worry about spoilers.
Wyatt:
Donāt worry about spoilers.
Sterrantino:
OK. Itās a tragedy, Shakespeareās tragedies donāt end well. So, King Hamlet is killed by his brother, but nobody realizes this, but King Hamletās ghost is at the beginning of the play askingā¦
Wyatt:
And his brother is Claudius.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, his brother is Claudius, and heāsā¦will only speak to Hamlet, his son, the son comes and essentially he tells him to avenge him and soā¦but they were also worried about the fact that the ghost might be not really his father because the devil can change the look and make it a positive or a pleasant one. So, Hamlet acts mad for a while to try to figure out whatās going on for real. And then he has a group of theater players come in to reenact the play, itās called Murder of Gonzago, but he changes enough of it that his father will recognize it. In the meantime, his fatherāor, his uncle, Iām sorryā¦
Wyatt:
This is a fascinating piece, isnāt it?
Sterrantino:
It is.
Wyatt:
His uncle, Claudius, is believed to haveāwe know he didābut Hamlet was told by his fatherās ghost, maybe, probablyā¦
Sterrantino:
Well, yeahā¦
Wyatt:
He marries Hamletās mother.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, and it was right after the father died, within a couple of months. In fact, thatās one of the big things that Hamlet has a fuss about is the fact that they use the, the way he put it was they used the food that was still warm from the funeral for the wedding.
Wyatt:
So, Claudius kills King Hamlet and then Claudius marriesā¦
Meredith:
His widow.
Wyatt:
His widow, Gertrude, who is Hamletāsā¦
Meredith:
Mother.
Wyatt:
Mother. The ghost comesā¦
Meredith:
Before heās even cold in the ground, yeah.
Wyatt:
The ghost comes and tells Hamlet what happened and to avenge him. Hamlet feigns insanity to try to figure out if itās true and goes about trying to get revenge.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, he has a troupe come in and reenact it to see what reaction Claudius has and the mother as well. And then, thereāsā¦
Wyatt:
And it works.
Sterrantino:
It does, it works. It totally freaks the king out and then thereās this whole thing where Claudius tries to kill Hamlet. He sends him away and asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to follow with a letter. They donāt realize the letter says, āOh, by the way, Norway just killed Hamlet while heās there.ā But he gets away with that, which is why we have the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Based on those two little, big characters.
Meredith:
Which is a very funny play.
Sterrantino:
I love that play so much. [All laugh] So, Hamlet comes back and thereās these plots, so, Laertes blamesā¦well, he did. Hamlet at one point ends up inadvertently killing Polonius thinking it is Claudius, Laertes finds out and so, he wants revenge, even though they were best friends and all this stuff. And then, Ophelia dies and thatās his sister, so heās mad about that too. And so, heās going to poison Hamlet with the poison on his sword when they are fencing. In the meantime, thereās poison in the wineā¦
Wyatt:
And just in case that doesnāt happenā¦
Sterrantino:
Yes, Claudius putsā¦
Wyatt:
The backupā¦
Sterrantino:
Poison in the wine for him also and says, āIf you win, you get this pearlā and puts it in the wine. But, of course, Hamletās not the one that drinks the wine, so, we end up with almost everybody dead at the end.
Wyatt:
Yeah, itā¦not the happiest of endings.
Meredith:
No. No, when you coat everything in poison, the party is going to end badly. Almost always.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, more or less, heās at the end just saying, āTell my storyā to the last survivor of that group of people.
Wyatt:
So, Joy, why do we care about this play? Why has this play been done more times than any other plays on Broadway and why is it that 400 years later weāre still talking about it?
Sterrantino:
Iām not entirely positive. It is fascinating because of this wholeā¦the ideas of loyalty to family, the idea of corrupt government, or even corruption within oneās own family and how do you deal with that? Hamlet hadā¦revenge was one of those things where you just had a dual in that period and that was accepted to do that, but this was complicated because the king was head of the church technically also, so that means that he was supposedly had the right from God to be the king, and so Hamlet wasnāt sure if he had the right to kill him in that respect, but at the same time, he needed to avenge his father, and what would we do in that situation? Which is the reason why I think we find this so interesting. And then his relationship with Ophelia gets damaged while heāsā¦because heās so busy trying to get the revenge. And just the reactions of the different people in the courtā¦I think itās really popular because we canā¦itās so complicated and so, we try to insert ourselves and say, āOK, if we were in this situation, what would we do?ā
Meredith:
Right. I even find myself thinking about Claudius. You know, heās a good villainā¦
Sterrantino:
Yeah.
Meredith:
He does villainous things, no question, but if you had recently been at war and if, as was the history of Europe, marriage and the joining of families was one of the ways that you held on to land and kingdoms and so forth, Iām sure in his mind, he could make a valid argument that, āThis marriage needs to take place now so that there seems to be stability at the top of the government in Denmark.ā
Sterrantino:
Yeah, Iām not sure how he justified poisoning his brotherā¦
Wyatt:
Right.
Meredith:
No, as I say, heās a terrible psychopath, Iām justā¦
Sterrantino:
But no, you could totally justify that because thatās what probably would have happened anyway.
Meredith:
āIf Iām going to do this, this would have happened anyway.ā
Sterrantino:
Right.
Meredith:
Itās aā¦the things that cause the people in these plays to do what they do are very interesting studies in human behavior, and I think thatās one of the reasons why itās stayed around so long.
Sterrantino:
Yeah. One of the most fascinating things for me personally is the way he treats Ophelia, because you get mixed messages. Thereās a love letter that Polonius reads because heās a nosy dad and he shouldnāt be reading that, but he does, that professes Hamletās love. He assumes Hamletās just trying to seduce her.
Meredith:
Right.
Sterrantino:
Tells her to stay away from him, which she doesnāt really want to do. And I think a lot of Opheliaās madness has to do with the fact that everybody is telling her what to do and not to do. She has no control over her life. And so, then Hamlet, who was professing to love her. Starts attacking her, essentially.
Meredith:
Right.
Sterrantino:
Verbally. āGet thee to a nunneryā is another really famous line. And I think some of that was feigned, I think some of that was the fact that he was so angry with his mother and the falseness of women. At that point, he was kind of making a blanket statement on all women.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Sterrantino:
And so, that got put on Ophelia as well. And so, she gets rejected and she goes mad, which is just this little side plot thatās terribly sad, and then when she does actually die, she drowns, Hamlet feels really remorseful. He has this beautiful lineā¦I think I actually have it written down, but itās this speech where he is like, essentially saying how much he loved Ophelia, and heās like, āA thousand brothers couldnāt make up the sum of my love.ā So, in the end, he reveals himself as, āNo, I really did love her.ā Andā¦
Meredith:
āI was acting crazy and thatās why I treated her that way.ā
Sterrantino:
Yeah, and I think thereās remorse in that statement because heās just like, āWell, maybe I took this a little too far.ā
Meredith:
Yeah.
Wyatt:
Thereās aā¦as we ask ourselves, āWhatās the relevance in this play?ā And thereās a great quote in here that we use, and Iāve heard it a ton of times, this is Claudius when heās praying, āMy words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.ā This is when heās having maybe one of those brief moments where heās actually thinking about what heās done.
Sterrantino:
Mhmm.
Wyatt:
Andā¦
Sterrantino:
Yeah, so he goes through the motions, but he realizes, āWell, it doesnāt really count because Iām not feeling it.ā
Wyatt:
Yeah, and he talks about how can he repent? And heās the king, he killed the king and took his place, married the kingās widow, so now heās in charge, and heās struggling with repenting of this event but maybe thereās nothing to repent of because he got away with it.
Sterrantino:
Hmm.
Wyatt:
And God didnāt punish him, he got what he wanted.
Sterrantino:
Well, yeah.
Wyatt:
And heās OK.
Sterrantino:
For now.
Wyatt:
For now. And soā¦
Meredith:
I read a couple of monographs aboutā¦
Wyatt:
Can a king do wrong?
Meredith:
Right.
Wyatt:
I mean, I remember this fromā¦thereās a lot of heads of state who would say that the president or the king or whoever can really do no wrong.
Meredith:
Right, the end always justifies the means, whatever they are.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, whatever.
Wyatt:
Well, if youāre in charge of the laws, then youāre outside of the laws.
Meredith:
Thatās right.
Wyatt:
And in America, as in most countries, we believe in the rule of the law, so even the head of state is obligated to stay within them. But, I think I remember theā¦when the Pentagon Papersā¦not the Pentagon Papers but the Watergate Scandal but Nixon made some comment about āThe president canāt do anything wrong.ā
Sterrantino:
Yeah. He was really bold about defending himself.
Wyatt:
If I do it, itās OK.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Wyatt:
And the list of people that would have said that around the world is a long list.
Meredith:
Over history, yeah.Ā
Sterrantino:
Yeah. Well, and itās more complicated even when thereās royalty because thereās this anointedā¦an anointing that physically takes place when someone becomes king or queen and they are representing God on earth, essentially.
Wyatt:
They have the divine right of God to rule.
Sterrantino:
Right.
Meredith:
Thatās right.
Sterrantino:
And so, that makes it seem like they wonāt do anything wrong. But clearly, thatās not what history tells us.
Meredith:
I was saying, I read a couple of monographs and one of them was about the Christian themes that pervade through Hamlet and the writer was kind of comparing Oedipus to Hamlet and where thereās this strange relationship between mother and son and ultimately they end up in tragedy both, but he was saying the difference between the ancient Greeks essentially believed in fate and the Gods had determined your fate, so Oedipus could do nothing about it. He was fated to marry his mother and pluck his eyes out and so forth, but that Hamlet, and Shakespeare being a product of the Protestant reformation and just sort of Christianity generally, there is all sorts of discussion of repentance and morality and conscience and other things, and particularly personal choice. So, Hamlet could at any time have stopped from doing the things that he ultimately did, he just couldnāt make himself stop. Couldnāt keep from doing it. But it was that the Gods had fated that that was the case, it was that these were personal choices that he was making out of the sin of revenge.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, I donāt actually know if he felt like he had a choice.
Meredith:
Right.
Sterrantino:
But obviously there was a choice there, but when you bring up the ideals in Christianity when he had an opportunity to kill Claudius, but Claudius was in prayer.
Meredith:
Thatās right.
Sterrantino:
And at the time, the belief was if you were praying, your soul went straight to heaven. And so, not only did he want to kill him, he wanted to make sure that is not where his soul went.
Meredith:
Right. [Laughs]
Sterrantino:
And so, he waited to kill him until later.
Meredith:
One of theā¦I think one of the tragic little scenes in this is after the death of Ophelia, the discussion of whether or not she can be buried in holy ground.
Sterrantino:
Thatās right.
Meredith:
Because did she kill herself? If she did, sheās not entitled to Christian burial.
Wyatt:
Because she committed sin.
Meredith:
Yeah. So, those themes, those kind of renaissance Christian themes really pervade this, and I thought that was kind of interesting because if youā¦as you said, the will to avenge your fatherās death was so strong, Iām sure he felt as though he had no choice.
Sterrantino:
Well, and you know, if your fatherās ghost shows up and tells you to do thatā¦
Meredith:
Exactly.
Sterrantino:
How do you right with that? [All laugh]
Meredith:
Thatās right. If your father appears to you in your sleepā¦
Sterrantino:
If youāre sure that itās realā¦
Meredith:
Thatās right. The world is full of things where someone appeared to you in a dream or a sleep or a vision of some kind and told you to go do something and people go do it.
Sterrantino:
Right. And there were other witnesses.
Meredith:
Thatās right.
Sterrantino:
And so, it wasnāt just him having this vision on his own. And he made him swear, the fatherās ghost made him swear, which is binding.
Meredith:
Yep. Anyway, I just always thoughtā¦I thought that was kind of an interesting take on it.
Sterrantino:
Mhmm.
Meredith:
So, tell me this: when Hamlet brings in the other group of playersā¦
Sterrantino:
Mhmm.
Meredith:
To create, and you remember the title of the playā¦
Sterrantino:
Murder of Gonzago.
Meredith:
The Murder of Gonzago, and then he says, āIāve changed it, itās called the Mousetrap.ā
Sterrantino:
Mhmm.
Meredith:
At what point does it become obvious to his uncle that he is a real threat and that heās going to have to be killed? Is it kind of throughout or is itā¦because I kept wondering because Gertrude seems not really to be involved although thereās a little bit of nebulousness in her relationship with Hamlet.
Sterrantino:
Right.
Meredith:
And she seems really devoted to her new husband.
Sterrantino:
Yeah.
Meredith:
And I just, I wonder at what point Gertrude recognizes that her new husband is going to kill her son and I wonder if itās from the very first minute of the play that the kingā¦he already knows heās usurped this boys right probably to be the king anyway. Does he know heās going to have to kill him?
Sterrantino:
I donāt know.
Meredith:
Or is it that moment in the play where he kind of freaks out?
Sterrantino:
I actually think itās during the play that he freaks out because earlier he talks about Hamlet being his son, heās trying to be a father figure to him. And Iāve never read it as Gertrude knowing whatās going on.
Meredith:
Right, I agree.
Sterrantino:
So, during the play, the essentially act out the exact things. The king, I mean, the brother of the king puts poison in the kingās ear while heās sleeping, which is a habit that Hamletās father had, he always slept in the garden so they knew that, so at that point, I thinkā¦I donāt know that Gertrude knew what was going on at that point but I do think that Claudius was like, āWait a minute, thatās really too much of a coincidence.ā But then with the marrying the mother and stuff and eventually, it dawns on Gertrude, it dawns on Claudius and then what are they going to do about it? Well, I donāt know that sheā¦her, āWhat are we doing to do about it?ā Is different than Claudiusā.
Meredith:
Right.
Sterrantino:
Because then sheās essentially committed adultery and she has to deal with the fact that, āWow, my husband was murdered and by my new husbandā which just is a lot of information. There is a version of it, a movie version with Patrick Stewart being Claudius and then David Tennant is Hamlet and right beforeā¦or right at the end of the movie, thereās a part where Gertrude is toasting to her son, to Hamlet, and she picks up the goblet that has the poison in it and Claudius is like, āDonāt!ā And in that particular version it was so moving because you could her face recognize, āOh my gosh, this was meant for Hamlet which means itās poisonā and she purposely makes that decision to drink it. It wasnāt an accident.
Meredith:
Huh.
Sterrantino:
And Iāve seen versions, too, where she accidentally drunk it too, but in this case, she realized the whole enormity of everything, and she drank it on purpose, and it was just really moving.
Wyatt:
How can you live in a world where youāre married toā¦so, she must have figured it out by then.
Sterrantino:
It might have been, yeah.
Wyatt:
According to that version.
Sterrantino:
Mhmm.
Wyatt:
This reminds me of Machiavelli Prince becauseā¦slightly off topic, but relevant, Machiavelli was in the royal court, sent out to the country, lost his standing, was raising pigs or whatever it was that he was doing, he wanted to re-win favor, so he wrote the prince. And the prince was advice to government leaders and one of the things that he said was, āWhen you take over, youāve got to kill every heir to the throne.ā
Sterrantino:
Yeah.
Wyatt:
And thatās what Claudius is doing. Heās getting rid of every heir because ifā¦he was pretending like Hamlet was his son and heās going to take care of him.
Meredith:
Right.
Wyatt:
But, if youāre the kind of person that just killed to get power, then you assume that other people would kill to get power. And he canātā¦he canāt trust Hamlet.
Sterrantino:
Thatās true. Although thereās no indication that that was part of the plan until he figured out that Hamlet figured out what had happened. But, if we base it just on his personality and on his history, thereās a good chance that he was thinking about that beforehand. Itās just that we as an audience donāt realize it at that point, or until that point.
Meredith:
Or at least he always had it in his back pocket. āIf this kid ever figures this out, Iām going to have to whack him.ā
Sterrantino:
Yeah. Or, āIf he does anything thatās irritatingā more or less.
Meredith:
Yeah, yeah.
Wyatt:
The father of modern political science or however we would describe Machiavelli.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Sterrantino:
Mhmm.
Wyatt:
Was giving that advice and it probably was advice that was known and probably advice that people were doing, anyway.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Sterrantino:
Well, it comes up a lot in literature.
Wyatt:
Yeah.
Sterrantino:
Soā¦
Wyatt:
What else is interesting about this play? Thereās a line in hereā¦or, thereās a little discussion in this that I think is a really fun part which is about the worms.
Sterrantino:
Oh, the grave digger.
Wyatt:
And the fish.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, I think thatās a lovely part. The grave digger or the clown heās called sometimes isā¦his job is to dig a grave for Ophelia, but heās digging out an old grave, which may have to do with the fact that they donāt know if she can have a Christian burial or not, and so, heās bantering with Hamlet about this and the fact that the worms eat the body of the dead and then the fish eat the worms and then the king can feast upon the fish. So, by association, the king is feasting on dead bodies also.
Wyatt:
Well, and that the king will end up being the food for beggars.
Meredith:
Eventually dies andā¦
Sterrantino:
Right.
Meredith:
Thatās right.
Sterrantino:
Exactly. And so, itās both directions, yeah.
Wyatt:
Both directions. That ultimately, we become fertilizer or food.
Sterrantino:
Yeah. Yeah, which is something, I think, you canāt say that directly to the king but because itās in word play, and he wasnāt talking directly to the king anyway at that point, but it was in word play and he was just kind of making a funny observation and so you can get away with saying things like that.
Meredith:
So, a lot is made of Hamlet feigning madness, and then some scholars, I think, think that at some point, he actually really loses his mind for at least a portion of the play, or at the very least, he becomes so riveted, so fascinated by the idea of revenge that heās not thinking clearly and heās not really just going through the motions of pretending. And maybe heās just a great actor, but thereās an interesting part of his character, I think, that Iād like to get your insight on, which is that we hear him talk a lot. He seems like he is constantly, āTo be, or not to be.ā Heās constantly weighing life and death, heās constantlyā¦he seems almost paralyzed. Because if he wasā¦he becomes fairly early on convinced that this is the ghost of his fatherā¦
Sterrantino:
Yeah.
Meredith:
He should avenge his father. Well, just take the sword while heās asleep and chop his head off, right? And I think there are people, Laertes maybe, these are men of action who would do that. Instead, Hamlet, and of courseā¦well, part of itās a plot contrivance because that would be a 15 minute play otherwise instead of two and a half hours, but part of his character, part of his makeup seems to be this constant weighingā¦
Sterrantino:
Yeah.
Meredith:
Of things. And, of course, itās some of Shakespeareās most beautiful and most haunting writing, but ultimately, it makes him a character thatās inside himself all the time. Inside his head. We hear that a lot and we hear his thoughts in a way that maybe in a movie we might hear as a voice over almost.
Sterrantino:
Right.
Meredith:
We get inside this character. But he seems almost stymied into inaction by that and Iāve always wondered, people that lead lives of the mind.
Sterrantino:
Mhmm.
Meredith:
Areā¦theyāre really interesting to talk to, but ultimately nothing happens or ultimately you donāt get anything done. [All laugh] And thereās probably something to do with higher education here sometimes that Iām trying to make. [Laughs]
Sterrantino:
Thatās what I thought of. [Laughs]
Meredith:
But, I guess what Iām saying is thereāsā¦Iām always fascinated every time I see this play by how much we hear of him but how little he actually does. And then, when the action happens, boy, it really happens in a flurry, in a burst.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, yeah.
Meredith:
But really, the whole play is him interacting but really even less of that, just thinking about these tragic events that have led up to him and then weighing life versus death, weighing committing suicide versus being alive and all those things.
Sterrantino:
Yeah.
Meredith:
And Iāveā¦to me, to me that is one of the things that makes Hamlet such an interesting character, maybe so enduring, is because we really get in his mind in a way that we maybe donāt with other Shakespeare characters.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, I think thatās true. Because we see a lot of plays where somebody needs to be avenged and they go out and avenge them.
Meredith:
Right.
Sterrantino:
And thatās the end of the whole thing. But, yeah, in this one, he starts out melancholy before anyā¦well, obviously he lost his father, but it lingers more than I think it does maybe for most people, and that gets mentioned. But then, he shies away from it. He really didnāt want to have to kill anybody and I think thatās one reason that his fatherās ghost made him swear because he probably knew he wasnāt really had a strong enough will to do it because he wanted to do it. And then he hems and haws about it for a good portion of the play where heās not sure if he should do it, if it would be easier if he was just dead because heās so unhappy, but, of course, what is it exactlyā¦when he did the āWhat dreams may comeā so,
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, thereās the rub;
For [in] that sleep of death what dreams may come
When he have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: thereās the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and the scorns of time,
For oppressorās wrong, the proud manās contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the lawās delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?
(Saying he could just kill himself)
Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscoverād country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
So, if it were simple for him, if anything were simple for him, he would just kill himself. That would solve the problem.
Meredith:
Right.
Sterrantino:
He wouldnāt have to kill his uncle, he wouldnāt have to deal with his mother or anything of that, but, because his father, right at the beginning, makes him swear to do this vengeance but also the fact that heās saying, āIām also a cowardā which thatās a different debate whether itās cowardly or not to commit suicide, but from his own point of view, heās too cowardly to do that. And he really does feel to cowardly even to kill his uncle. But you mentioned a second ago whether he was feigning madness or became mad and I donāt know the answer to that. I believe that he absolutely feigns it, at least at the beginning, I think he gets really caught up in the revenge more than feigning madnessā¦or, not feigning madness, becoming mad, and I think itās only with the death of Ophelia how far he really took it. How much the effect of his actions effected other people, even people he loved. Because he clearly loved Ophelia, and then when she was dead, he was like, āOh, wow. I loved her so much.ā And I think in his mind heās thinking, āI should have been paying more attention to what I was doing to her but I was so busyā and this is not in the words of the play, this is me, āI was so busy getting revenge for my father that I did not realize that I had destroyed her.ā
Wyatt:
You know, the question aboutā¦that the two of you are talking about Joy and Steve and why is it taking Hamlet so long to figure out to do what he is supposed to do and is he a coward or not or whatever, Iā¦so, whatās great about Hamlet is that any opinion has been stated by some expert.
Sterrantino:
Mhmm.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Wyatt:
Because so many people have talked about it, so I donāt mean to say that this is true, but Iām inclined to believe that this play has nothing to do with revenge, it has everything to do with good government/bad government, because if it was about revenge, he could have just taken revenge. But weā¦
Meredith:
And also, humanā¦
Wyatt:
But we drag this out so longā¦
Meredith:
Thatās right.
Wyatt:
So that we can talk about human nature.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Wyatt:
The nature of governance and āDoes the rule of law apply to the leaders?ā And we have this horribly corrupt government where theyāre turning friends against friends, getting friends to spy against friends.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Wyatt:
Manipulating their own family members, like Ophelia, to play in their plot or to take advantage of them and this is one of the reasons why the play is so prominent among plays is that itās kind of a play for all times.
Meredith:
Yep.
Wyatt:
In that this is what we need to be careful of.
Meredith:
Well, and you can see yourself in Hamlet as he weighs those things if you were presented with the same, or similar, choices.
Sterrantino:
Right.
Meredith:
You can see that, you know, on the one hand, this and on the other hand, this. And I think that everybody goes through that process. Itās just that he does it so much and so beautifully in such, as you read that again, Iām just still astonished. āBare bodkin,ā āAy, thereās the rub.ā In just those ten lines you read there are things that we say all the time.
Sterrantino:
Yeah.
Meredith:
And itās justā¦itās indicative of the beauty of Shakespeareās writing the impact heās had on the English language, but also I think everybody can see themselves in that inability to make that decision and inability to make hard decisions.
Sterrantino:
Yeah. I mean, itās really hard to envision the fact, the idea ofā¦for us to say, āOh, what would I do if a ghost came and told me, if a family member came and told me that I needed to do this?ā Or really anybody else. I mean, it could be an angel or whatever. āWhat do I do about that when itās really against my nature to do so?ā So, yeah. I think thatās one of the main reasons that it does resonate with people because he struggles so much and so openly about that decision of what to do. About his own life, about Claudiusās life and then heās starting to lose trust in other people because of these things that have happened. Heās losing trust in his mother even though his mother didnāt mean to do anything wrong.
Meredith:
Right.
Sterrantino:
But obviously, from his point of view, she did do that by marrying so quickly.
Meredith:
And if you feel like you canāt even trust your own motherā¦
Sterrantino:
Yeah, thatās a problem.
Meredith:
That really would shake you to your foundations.
Sterrantino:
Well, yeah. And thatās, again, while he was attacking Ophelia, he essentially, well, OK, essentially said, āIf my motherā and again, these are not the words of the play, āIf I canāt trust my mother then all women must be corrupt and I just need to stay away from them.ā
Meredith:
Right.
Sterrantino:
āAnd theyāre all evil.ā Which is a huge jump, but heās a very emotional man and so, everything that he does is this huge emotional decision and emotional toll that it takes on him.
Wyatt:
āGet thee to a nunnery.ā
Sterrantino:
Yeah. He thought it would be better to live a chaste life rather than lie to somebody. Which we know that she didnāt actually do, but at that point, I actually thinkā¦because that was the part that threw me about, āWas he really being mad or not? Why would he hurt Ophelia?ā But, I think he was so hurt by his mother at that point that he took some of that out on her. So, I donāt think all of it was, āHey, Iām going to plan on hurting Ophelia.ā I think he was hurt and confused and angry and he took some of it out on her.
Meredith:
Yeah. There are some versions of the play and some experts Iāve heard opine that theyāve actually already been intimate, Hamlet and Ophelia, and that perhaps sheās even carrying a child and that this has led her to the fateful decision to kill herself, essentially. And thereās no indication in the textā¦
Sterrantino:
Right.
Meredith:
Of any of that, but as you said, President, every expert with a Ph.D. has weighed in on this play.
Wyatt:
Mhmm.
Meredith:
And there are some that have said, āYeah, heās mean to herā and I guess if she felt like she had no control over her life and she had a brother and a father that were really controlling and then the one man that she loved all the sudden turned on her, maybe that would make her so despondent, but perhaps there were also these other things that were not in the play.
Sterrantino:
Well, sure.
Meredith:
Or were not obvious in the play.
Wyatt:
And maybe somethingās going on thatā¦
Meredith:
Right.
Wyatt:
We canāt tell you.
Meredith:
Yeah, so you have to come see the other version of the play.
Wyatt:
So, you have to come watch it.
Meredith:
Thatās right.
Wyatt:
The new, improved Ophelia.
Meredith:
Thatās right.
Wyatt:
So, we have a friend who lives in Washington, D.C., taught Shakespeare at Georgetown University and served as a board member of the Shakespeare Theater there. His wife served on a Shakespeare board in another community and has a daughter serving in another one. So, thereās three and he comes out to Cedar City every summer with his family to watch plays here. What he would say is, if he was here, is that this is the best theater because you watch the play in the evening and then the next morning, you get to attend the seminar. We have a pre-play orientation, presentation, for those that choose, then the play, then the next morning you can sit and talk with an expert and others who watched the play the night before and discuss it. It makes it a complete interesting package.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Wyatt:
Where that if you watch a play in a big city at some theaterā¦
Sterrantino:
Well, even at the globe. They donāt do that at the globe.
Wyatt:
You just go home.
Meredith:
Yeah, thatās right.
Sterrantino:
Yeah.
Wyatt:
You just go home. Itās over, you just go home. You donāt have a chance to really talk it through. This is the best place to watch a play.
Meredith:
Thatās a very cool part of what we do here.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, it is.
Wyatt:
Ophelia is, I think, the most sympathetic character in the play because sheās manipulated by her father, by the king, whatever happens with her and Hamlet. She falls in love with Hamlet and her dad and her brother remind her that sheās a lower class than Hamlet, that she should get away from him.
Sterrantino:
Well, because she'sāā¦they essentially think that Hamletās playing with her.
Meredith:
Right.
Sterrantino:
But even theā¦
Wyatt:
But even that, the daughter of a servant of the king is notā¦it doesnāt go anywhere if you fall in love with the kingās son.
Sterrantino:
Although, Polonius does apologize for that later when he reads the letter. Heās like, āOh, OK. I think he actually meant it. I didnāt realizeā¦ā
Meredith:
Yeah.
Sterrantino:
But, at the very first part where Ophelia comes in, Laertes lecturing her, then Polonius lectures her and makes him show her the letter, which Iā¦the privacy thing is just not an option for her. Yeah. So, you know. Thereās this whole background that we donāt know about where, I realize that women had very few rights in that time period, but at the same time, maybe her family was worse than most families. You donāt know that part of it either.
Meredith:
Right.
Sterrantino:
Again, we donāt know her background, but yeah. So, thereās just a lot of other people telling her who she is and what she needs to do.
Meredith:
Yeah. I think that is why sheās so sympathetic is because these wheels are set in motion and sheās really powerless, more or less, to stop any of it. Itās why Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is funny, too. These are these two, smallā¦
Sterrantino:
Big players.
Meredith:
Characters and now itās Hamlet told from their point of view and their kind of watching the whole thing unfold and saying, āWhat the heck is going on?ā
Sterrantino:
Yeah.
Meredith:
And itās kind of these absurdist comedy thing between these two goofy friends of Hamletās and so, there are those characters to whom the play happens.
Sterrantino:
Yeah.
Meredith:
And thatās kind of what I think about Ophelia. This whole thing is just happening to her and itā¦thereās nothing she can do about it.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, in a way, the whole play happened to everybody.
Meredith:
Yeah, right.
Sterrantino:
Thereās really nobody, I think, that actually has control over anything.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Sterrantino:
Because even Hamlet gets his revenge, but he died.
Meredith:
Right.
Sterrantino:
So, that didnāt go over as well as he was hoping.
Meredith:
Well, that was the whole thing about that Oedipus and the Greek fate versus free choice was, āDoes anybody in this play really have any choice?ā If your father came to you and said, āSwear an oath, youāve got to avenge my death.ā Well, that feels like the Gods to me. Feels like thatās taking your free will away.
Sterrantino:
Yeah.
Wyatt:
Yeah. Well, and this play hasā¦so, what we would say is, āRead this play.ā This is a great play to read.
Meredith:
Itās amazing.
Wyatt:
Read the play and then come watch it. But additionally, thereās a lot of other ways that somebody can be introduced to this play and one of them is to watch movies like The Lion King.
Sterrantino:
Yeah.
Wyatt:
Which is aā¦
Sterrantino:
Which is the retelling of Hamlet.
Wyatt:
Retelling the story.
Sterrantino:
Of course, itās not exact, right?
Wyatt:
Yeah, they changeā¦
Sterrantino:
But itās offā¦the main plot is there.
Meredith:
I saw a funny internet meme that down the left hand side was all the things that happened in Hamlet and on the right hand sideā¦the last thing was, in Hamlet, everybody dies, in Lion King, Elton John sings a song at the end, [All laugh]
Sterrantino:
Itās Disney, what do you want?
Meredith:
There you go.
Sterrantino:
Thatās funny.
Wyatt:
Yeah. All the characters are there. The ending is a little different.
Sterrantino:
Yeah.
Wyatt:
Not everyone dies in Lion King. Itās a Disney movie, so it has to have a happy ending.
Meredith:
Thatās right.
Sterrantino:
Yeah. But, for people who are intimidated by the language, and I get that, it gets easier, for one thing. But there are other ways to read it. Thereās No Fear Shakespeare and they have a website, even, where you can read the play and a modern interpretation of it. So, if you donāt know what some of the language means, which, thereās no reason why you would know that. So, at the time, that was the language they spoke, but we donāt speak early modern English anymore, except for in that circumstance, but there are ways to learn the language. But, even if you donāt get everything, the more you go to these plays, the more you start to understand. So, a lot of it is just exposing yourself to it and I know people are worried aboutā¦sometimes people are worried about feeling stupid.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Sterrantino:
Not being able to keep up, and thatās OK. If you donāt, you can always watch it again, or, again, with reading the book where you can slow down and look at it. One of the things that I teach my 1010s is I always teach them one of the plays from whatever Shakespeare Utah Shakespeare Festival is doing and we do the graphic novel of it.
Meredith:
Oh.
Sterrantino:
So, they have the visual and the words, which I think is a really good way to learn Shakespeare because you have context for the words, but you can also do it at your own pace, where with the play, you just want to tell the actors, āHang on! Iām not there yet!ā
Meredith:
Yeah.
Sterrantino:
āIām still trying to figure out what you said.ā
Meredith:
And reading the book, the struggle for me with the book, and I was glad what I thought was a really great annotated version of it that just had a running glossary.
Sterrantino:
Yeah.
Meredith:
But, I just thought to myself, āHoly mackerel, itās so much easier when you add the action to this.ā
Sterrantino:
Oh, yeah.
Wyatt:
Yeah.Ā
Meredith:
Itās so much easier. Because I just would think, āOK, I got about six words out of that previous paragraph and they were all ātheā and āand.āā [All laugh] So, Iām checking the glossary, Iām going to the bottom of the page every line three or four times.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, itās practice but thatās the way these plays were never meant to be read, that was not the intention. They were intended to be watched by a modern audience of their timeā¦
Meredith:
Right.
Sterrantino:
That would understand it. It was not this haughty thing just for kings and queens, which I think thereās a misinterpretation that some people think that thatās what Shakespeare was about, but it wasnāt. He had the groundlingsā¦I teach study abroad with Jeb Branin in London two weeks every May and we take them to Shakespeareās plays, and we have the students be groundlings. So, they stand up, right? And some of them were leaning straight against the play. That was the common people, you made sure that they could afford to go.
Meredith:
Hmm.
Sterrantino:
They understood the jokes, or even when it wasnāt a joke. Obviously there arenāt a lot of jokes in Hamlet, there are some, but he made sure that that was accessible to everybody. That was super important to Shakespeareās time.
Wyatt:
Yeah. And there are a lot of editions of Shakespeare. The one that I read was Folgerās Shakespeare.
Sterrantino:
Mhmm.
Wyatt:
And I read it on my Kindle.
Sterrantino:
Oh, yeah.
Wyatt:
Which made it very enjoyable because Iād hit something like, āBrevity is the soul of witā and Iād think, āOK what does that exactly mean?ā And Iād click on it and it says to me, āA wise speech, a few words carry the central meaning.ā It has nothing to do with wit in the sense that I think of whit.
Sterrantino:
Yeah, not the way we think of whit.
Wyatt:
Itās just saying, āMake your words brief and it will be more effective.ā
Sterrantino:
Which is exactly why that is funny in that play because Polonius just goes on and on and on about everything, but he says that. So, he knows the rules, he just doesnāt follow them.
Wyatt:
Yeah. But constantly through here, it was fun to click on a word and get the definition.
Meredith:
Yeah, the commonly used at that time definition.
Wyatt:
It kind of slowed me down because I found it fun to explore the language.
Sterrantino:
Well, itās so much easier than it used to be that way. So, you either had a version that had a glossary or annotations on the side, or you just had to kind of force your way through it and now, thereās all kinds of ways to learn Shakespeare. One of the reasons that I wanted to go into Shakespeare studies is because I thought, āI really want to know this language. I want to understand it and be able to go to the plays and get whatās going on no matter what it is.ā And that fascinated me. But it was harder to study it back without the internet.
Meredith:
Right.
Wyatt:
Yeah.
Sterrantino:
And without these easier versionsā¦
Wyatt:
So accessible.
Sterrantino:
Of the play to read, yeah. Like, No Fear Shakespeare is a really good one because itās modern wording on one side and the actual wording on the other side. And it was kind of this thing like, āWell, if you canāt figure it out, you shouldnāt be reading Shakespeareā which is not really true.
Wyatt:
It wasnāt Shakespeareās intent.
Sterrantino:
No, definitely not.
Meredith:
No, surely not.
Sterrantino:
Well, itās also funny because I had heard before, and I think I thought this when I was a kid, that āShakespeare would never make a dirty jokeā or whatever, which is all he does. [Laughs]
Meredith:
Wanna bet? [Laughs]
Sterrantino:
Yeah. You know, he wasnāt body. He was just very, very body and if he was doing things today, we donāt think about that very often, but if he was doing things today, theyād probably be rated R, there would probably be nudity, there probably would be a lot of language in it.
Wyatt:
Well, there is a lot of language in it.
Sterrantino:
Well, there is, we just donāt get the language.
Wyatt:
We donāt get it.
Sterrantino:
I actually think Shakespeare wouldnāt be taught in high school if the students understood what they were reading. But since they donāt, we donāt have to worry about that. But if it was put into modern terms, it might be a little iffy.
Wyatt:
Thereās a lot of phrases that we just let go over our heads because we donāt understand them.
Meredith:
Yeah. This is the argument I have with colleagues all the time in Classical music. In some cases, this was meant to be some special thing that was meant only for a special group of people, but 95% of these people were just trying to write hits.
Sterrantino:
Right.
Meredith:
Mozart was trying to write a hit, and he wanted it to be accessible for everyone. By the end of his life, heās lost most of his jobs.
Sterrantino:
Right.
Meredith:
Kind of drunk his way through most of the really good jobs in Europe at the time and was essentially writing operas on spec for whoever would produce them, and these things had to be hits so that he could feed Costanza and the kids. So, to imagine that, āWell, if you canāt understandā¦ā No, these were people working with the language of the time, these were people working with the music of their time trying to write popular entertainment. Itās just the fact that they happened to be towering intellects of all time that the stuff continues to be amazing and it amazes at the very most elite level, but also, who doesnātā¦who canāt whistle a Mozart theme?
Sterrantino:
Mhmm.
Meredith:
It appeals and thatās what he was trying to do. He was trying to write hits.
Sterrantino:
And Shakespeare was really successful. Thereās this myth that if youāre a playwright or in the arts, which is still a myth, that you canāt make a decent living, but he owned part of the Globe, he was really pretty well off. He did really well. He had the favor of Queen Elizabeth and then James I, and thereās always references to both of them in just about every play. So, you could look at Gertrude as the aging Elizabeth now. Of course, you would never say that outright because that would have made her unhappy, but he always had veiled references to things that were going on in society. This way, he could deny it if the king or queen were angry with him and said, āI canāt believe you said that about me!ā āOh, that wasnāt about you! That was just this other thing that I made up.ā But, yeah. So, he definitely was really successful at his time, too. It wasnāt just now.
Wyatt:
Yeah. And he takes liberties with the facts in his historical plays.
Sterrantino:
Sure.
Wyatt:
He takes a lot of liberties, but times havenāt changed much.
Sterrantino:
No. We think of Richard IIIĀ and the deformity supposedly that he had and that most of us grew up watching him always deformed, and then they found his skeleton a few years ago, he was not nearly that deformed. He wasnāt completely crippled at all, but there was this idea of that, and I think it was more symbolic than physical but it because a physical attribute as time went by.
Wyatt:
Well, everybody should come see the play and everybody should read it and think about what it means. And then, because Cedar City is the destination for the Utah Shakespeare Festival, most of those that come to see the play will stay overnight.
Sterrantino:
Mhmm.
Wyatt:
Spend a little bit of time here. Make sure that, if any of our listeners are coming to see Hamlet this summer, again, it opens on July 5th, stay overnight and then come the next morning and listen to the seminar. Not listen to the seminar but participate in the seminar.
Sterrantino:
Mhmm.
Wyatt:
The discussion about the play. Thatās what makes it so much fun.
Meredith:
And then call you or me and we can go to lunch. And weāll give them a tour of our palatial podcast studio. [All laugh]
Wyatt:
I had the opportunity to sit in on some of the tryouts and readings of this playā¦
Meredith:
Really?
Wyatt:
In anticipation of this summer, and to watch these professional actors go through some of the lines and then to have our artistic director, Brian Vaughn, say, āWould you take a slightly different approach to this?ā And instantly, they were a different person reading the same lines. And I thought, āWow, the magic of live theater.ā
Sterrantino:
Thatās true. And Shakespeare, in general, there have been plays Iāve watched dozens of times, and Iām like, āWow, I donāt even remember that partā because it was portrayed so differently.
Meredith:
Right.
Wyatt:
It was deemphasized.
Sterrantino:
Mhmm.
Meredith:
So, President, our third book for the summer is Tao Te Ching, the kind of founding book of Taoism, right?
Wyatt:
Yeah.
Meredith:
And you were telling me earlier when we were having a discussion about the fact that you are actually reading a couple of other books and here came some quotes.
Wyatt:
Yeah. So, Tao Te Ching is, Bryce Christensen from our English department is going to join us to discuss that and when I was talking to him about it, he mentioned that it is a fairly short book so it doesnāt take a long time to read it, but it does take a lifetime to think about it. So, this isnāt a hard read, but whatās been so interesting is that the book has never been really present in my mind thinking about it. But I read it quite a bit and ever since we decided it that this book was going to be part of our summer book club, I have read quotes from it in two other, random books.
Meredith:
All of the sudden you see it everywhere.
Wyatt:
And hereās one. This is a book called Atomic Habits.
Meredith:
Thatās a hot, best-selling book, Atomic Habits.
Wyatt:
Yeah. āMen are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.ā But this was in a book about how to form great habits and the idea that we donāt want our habits to become so hard, good or bad, that we become a disciple of death because dead things are not at all flexible.
Meredith:
Thatās right.
Wyatt:
Living thingsā¦
Meredith:
Thatās how we know they are dead, they snap in half.
Wyatt:
Thatās how we know they are dead. So, Iām super excited. I havenāt started reading this yet. I donāt know if you have, Steve.
Meredith:
Nope.
Wyatt:
I havenāt started reading but Iām excited to read this book. Again, itās a fairly quick read with a lot of thought. It just is interesting thought after interesting thought after interesting thought from a very old text. Far older than Shakespeare.
Meredith:
Right.
Wyatt:
Probably easier to read than Shakespeare.
Meredith:
Wellā¦
Wyatt:
The quotes that Iāve read have all been easier to understand.
Meredith:
But laden with meaning.
Wyatt:
Laden with meaning and a lifetime to think about it.
Meredith:
Cool, that will be fun. Iām looking forward to that. You've been listening to Solutions for Higher Education, a podcast featuring Scott L Wyatt, the president of Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. Weāve enjoyed our conversation today with Joy Sterrantino from our English faculty and weāve been discussing Hamlet, which is not only the worldās greatest play, but also going to be part of the Utah Shakespeare Festival beginning July 5th. We invite you to Cedar City to come and see a very special version of that play. We invite you to finish reading this play with us if you havenāt, and, as always, we appreciate you continuing to be our faithful listeners. Weāll be back again soon. Bye bye. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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# Episode 59 - Summer Book Club Book 2: William Shakespeare's Hamlet
President Scott L Wyatt and Steve Meredith are joined by Dr. Joy Sterrantino to discuss the second book in the Summer Book Club: Hamlet. The trio discuss the upcoming performance of Hamlet by the [Utah Shakespeare Festival](https://www.bard.org/), the complex relationships found within the story, and the overall themes woven into the story.
SUU Blog: [President Wyatt's Summer Book Picks for 2019](https://www.suu.edu/blog/2019/05/summer-book-club-presidents-podcast.html)
***
## Full Transcript
**Steve Meredith:** Hi again everyone, and welcome to Solutions to Higher Education, a podcast featuring Scott L Wyatt, the president of Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. Iām your host, Steve Meredith, and Iām joined in-studio today, as I always am, by President Wyatt. Hi, Scott.
**Scott Wyatt:** Hello, Steve. Itās nice to be here with you today.
**Meredith:** Another great day, beautiful June day as we are recording this, and you and I actually met last night in Salt Lake City for a really nice event. The university was recognizedā¦I think this is worth mentioning.
**Wyatt:** I think itās good that weāre both still awake because it was a late night.
**Meredith:** Yeah, it was a late night. \[Laughs\]
**Wyatt:** Yeah, Best of State. SUU took home three Best of State awards including Best Educational Institution Award. Itās kind of a second year in a row actually, two years running. Out of all the educational institutions in Utah, thatās public, private, higher ed, public edā¦
**Meredith:** Thatās great, thatās great. Next year we go for a āthree-peat.ā
**Wyatt:** Yeah, weāll see what happens.
**Meredith:** Anyway, it was a very nice evening and we donāt toot our own horn too much on this podcast, but I figured that was worth bringing up. So, today is our second book in our summer book club, and itās actually not just a book but itās a play, and probably, maybe Shakespeareās most famous play, or certainly amongst those.
**Wyatt:** Yeah, and itā¦if itās Shakespeareās most significant play, we can probably take that a step further and say itās the most significant play. But, before we defend that statement, letās bring in our guest. So, Joy Sterrantino from our English department, literature professorā¦
**Joy Sterrantino:** Hi.
**Wyatt:** Is here with us today.
**Sterrantino:** Hi, thank you. Glad to be here.
**Wyatt:** Joyās graduate studies focusā¦you had a few areas of focus, and one was early English literature, which isā¦
**Sterrantino:** Early modern literature is what they call it.
**Wyatt:** Early modern.
**Sterrantino:** Which is the language of that period.
**Wyatt:** So, thatās Shakespeare, and what were your other areas?
**Sterrantino:** Dystopian literature and composition, which is the classes we teach the 1010 and 2010 to make proper argumentative writing.
**Wyatt:** Yeah, have students be successful in written communication skills.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Wyatt:** Well, before we get into this play, I think we ought to defend the statement that this might be the most important play ever. I donāt know how you defend that, but I can say this much, that no play has ever been produced on Broadway more times than Hamlet. Hamlet has been produced by far more than any other play.
**Meredith:** Really?
**Wyatt:** So, if thatās a measure, and I think thatās probably a pretty good indication, this could be our most important play ever.
**Sterrantino:** It could be. Iād have to give that more thought, but itās definitely not not the most important play. I mean, itās definitely up there if itās not the most important play.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. Yeah, somebody somewhere on a podcast somewhere in the world today is making an argument play is the most important. Weāre talking about Hamlet in this summer book club because SUU has a very special Hamlet summer. The Utah Shakespeare Festival, which is part of Southern Utah University, our professional theater department separate from our academic theater department, but the Utah Shakespeare Festival is doing a creative, slightly new take on Hamlet and it opens on July 5th at 2:00pm.
**Meredith:** Really?
**Wyatt:** And I have my tickets purchased and Iām ready to go watch it. I donāt want to be a spoiler, so Iām not going to sayā¦
**Meredith:** But itās different?
**Wyatt:** But itās just a little bit different, a little bit different take.
**Sterrantino:** And Iām excited about it. Itās going to be really neat.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. I think I can say this without going too far: Ophelia has a slightly larger role.
**Sterrantino:** Thatās enough to make me go.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** They havenāt changed any words.
**Meredith:** So, the words are the same?
**Wyatt:** Yeah. These plays, you know, everybody puts on these plays, but the way the director sets it up and the emphasis and the language and how they do things and how theyāre looking, you can have one paly that has kind of a different meaning just by presenting it differently. And this will have a meaning that I donāt know that anybodyās ever tried doing,
**Sterrantino:** Iāve never heard of it.
**Wyatt:** So, everybody needs to come and watch, itās going to be really fun.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** And read the play before you come watch it, of course.
**Meredith:** Yeah. I was going to say, Iām glad theyāre not changing the words or updating them or excising them in any way because as I read this again, and Iād read it once before in high school or college and then I had seen the play a couple of times, and read it again this last week, Iām just astonished. Every single time, Iām astonished at how much of Hamlet is in our regular language.
**Wyatt:** \[Laughs\]
**Meredith:** I mean, if anybody stumbles across a skull, whatās the first thing you say? āAlas, poor Yorick!ā \[All laugh\] It justā¦there are soā¦
**Wyatt:** Iāve never stumbled across a skull.
**Sterrantino:** At the Halloween store.
**Meredith:** Well, thatās right. \[All laugh\] Iām surprised with you, with your background. \[Laughs\]
**Wyatt:** Iāve had skulls, but Iāve never stumbled across them. \[Laughs\]
**Meredith:** Thatās right. But, I mean, āMethinks the lady doth protest too much.ā How many times have you heard that statement?
**Wyatt:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** And there are so many of these things that you say, āThatās either a proverb from the Bible or itās Shakespeare.ā And itās a pretty good coin flip as to which has had the most impact on the language, and this particular play especially.
**Wyatt:** Yeah, Joy, what areā¦so, for those that have never read the play or seen it, weāre going to tell them right now that theyāve heardā¦
**Sterrantino:** Oh, yeah.
**Wyatt:** Quite a bit of them.
**Sterrantino:** Thereās so many different things. The ones that you mentioned, thereās, āThis above all, to thine own self be true.ā
**Wyatt:** Which is a great statement.
**Meredith:** Yep.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, although itās funny because the person who says it, Polonius, he just kind of spouts off for long periods of time. \[All laugh\] But, heās telling his son all the things that he needs to be when he goes away back to college, essentially.
**Meredith:** āNeither a borrower nor a lender be.ā
**Wyatt:** Yeah, it is a pity that the person making the statement is an advisor to a tyrant.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, I donāt think that necessarily was a choice on his part, though. It just is kind ofā¦the job just kind of was fluid when the new king came in.
**Wyatt:** Yeah, thatās probably right.
**Sterrantino:** But, thereās also so many things, just the āTo be or not to beā speech, āThat is the question: Whether ātis nobler in the mind to suffer the arrows of outrageous fortune or take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing them to die, to sleep.ā Thereās also, āTo sleep: perchance to dream: ay, thereās the rub; for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come? For who would bear the whips and scorns of time?ā āThe undiscoverād country from who is born, no traveler returns, puzzles the will.ā So, all of those are just from that monologue, but thereās other things like, āThough this be madness, yet there is method in it.ā
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** āBrevity is the soul of wit.ā
**Wyatt:** āBrevity is the soul of wit.ā
**Meredith:** Yep.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, that one gets used a lot.
**Wyatt:** Which really means, ābe short.ā \[All laugh\]
**Meredith:** Itās funnier the shorter it is.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. Great little lines.
**Meredith:** I probably say, āThereās method to my madnessā five times a week. \[Laughs\]
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, yeah. Itās true.
**Meredith:** Usually when Iām trying to convince my wife of some cockamamie scheme or another, yes.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, in this case it was Polonius trying to figure out what was going on with Hamlet, and so, he was acting mad but there was logic to the madness. At least to Hamlet, and Polonius recognized that.
**Meredith:** Hmm.
**Wyatt:** Letās set this play up. Thereās about five major characters, or six. Joy, can you tell us Hamlet in a paragraph?
**Sterrantino:** The whole play? Yeah, I probably can. So, are we worrying about spoilers at this point? I think weāre past that time period, we donāt need to worry about spoilers.
**Wyatt:** Donāt worry about spoilers.
**Sterrantino:** OK. Itās a tragedy, Shakespeareās tragedies donāt end well. So, King Hamlet is killed by his brother, but nobody realizes this, but King Hamletās ghost is at the beginning of the play askingā¦
**Wyatt:** And his brother is Claudius.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, his brother is Claudius, and heāsā¦will only speak to Hamlet, his son, the son comes and essentially he tells him to avenge him and soā¦but they were also worried about the fact that the ghost might be not really his father because the devil can change the look and make it a positive or a pleasant one. So, Hamlet acts mad for a while to try to figure out whatās going on for real. And then he has a group of theater players come in to reenact the play, itās called Murder of Gonzago, but he changes enough of it that his father will recognize it. In the meantime, his fatherāor, his uncle, Iām sorryā¦
**Wyatt:** This is a fascinating piece, isnāt it?
**Sterrantino:** It is.
**Wyatt:** His uncle, Claudius, is believed to haveāwe know he didābut Hamlet was told by his fatherās ghost, maybe, probablyā¦
**Sterrantino:** Well, yeahā¦
**Wyatt:** He marries Hamletās mother.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, and it was right after the father died, within a couple of months. In fact, thatās one of the big things that Hamlet has a fuss about is the fact that they use the, the way he put it was they used the food that was still warm from the funeral for the wedding.
**Wyatt:** So, Claudius kills King Hamlet and then Claudius marriesā¦
**Meredith:** His widow.
**Wyatt:** His widow, Gertrude, who is Hamletāsā¦
**Meredith:** Mother.
**Wyatt:** Mother. The ghost comesā¦
**Meredith:** Before heās even cold in the ground, yeah.
**Wyatt:** The ghost comes and tells Hamlet what happened and to avenge him. Hamlet feigns insanity to try to figure out if itās true and goes about trying to get revenge.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, he has a troupe come in and reenact it to see what reaction Claudius has and the mother as well. And then, thereāsā¦
**Wyatt:** And it works.
**Sterrantino:** It does, it works. It totally freaks the king out and then thereās this whole thing where Claudius tries to kill Hamlet. He sends him away and asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to follow with a letter. They donāt realize the letter says, āOh, by the way, Norway just killed Hamlet while heās there.ā But he gets away with that, which is why we have the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Based on those two little, big characters.
**Meredith:** Which is a very funny play.
**Sterrantino:** I love that play so much. \[All laugh\] So, Hamlet comes back and thereās these plots, so, Laertes blamesā¦well, he did. Hamlet at one point ends up inadvertently killing Polonius thinking it is Claudius, Laertes finds out and so, he wants revenge, even though they were best friends and all this stuff. And then, Ophelia dies and thatās his sister, so heās mad about that too. And so, heās going to poison Hamlet with the poison on his sword when they are fencing. In the meantime, thereās poison in the wineā¦
**Wyatt:** And just in case that doesnāt happenā¦
**Sterrantino:** Yes, Claudius putsā¦
**Wyatt:** The backupā¦
**Sterrantino:** Poison in the wine for him also and says, āIf you win, you get this pearlā and puts it in the wine. But, of course, Hamletās not the one that drinks the wine, so, we end up with almost everybody dead at the end.
**Wyatt:** Yeah, itā¦not the happiest of endings.
**Meredith:** No. No, when you coat everything in poison, the party is going to end badly. Almost always.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, more or less, heās at the end just saying, āTell my storyā to the last survivor of that group of people.
**Wyatt:** So, Joy, why do we care about this play? Why has this play been done more times than any other plays on Broadway and why is it that 400 years later weāre still talking about it?
**Sterrantino:** Iām not entirely positive. It is fascinating because of this wholeā¦the ideas of loyalty to family, the idea of corrupt government, or even corruption within oneās own family and how do you deal with that? Hamlet hadā¦revenge was one of those things where you just had a dual in that period and that was accepted to do that, but this was complicated because the king was head of the church technically also, so that means that he was supposedly had the right from God to be the king, and so Hamlet wasnāt sure if he had the right to kill him in that respect, but at the same time, he needed to avenge his father, and what would we do in that situation? Which is the reason why I think we find this so interesting. And then his relationship with Ophelia gets damaged while heāsā¦because heās so busy trying to get the revenge. And just the reactions of the different people in the courtā¦I think itās really popular because we canā¦itās so complicated and so, we try to insert ourselves and say, āOK, if we were in this situation, what would we do?ā
**Meredith:** Right. I even find myself thinking about Claudius. You know, heās a good villainā¦
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** He does villainous things, no question, but if you had recently been at war and if, as was the history of Europe, marriage and the joining of families was one of the ways that you held on to land and kingdoms and so forth, Iām sure in his mind, he could make a valid argument that, āThis marriage needs to take place now so that there seems to be stability at the top of the government in Denmark.ā
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, Iām not sure how he justified poisoning his brotherā¦
**Wyatt:** Right.
**Meredith:** No, as I say, heās a terrible psychopath, Iām justā¦
**Sterrantino:** But no, you could totally justify that because thatās what probably would have happened anyway.
**Meredith:** āIf Iām going to do this, this would have happened anyway.ā
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** Itās aā¦the things that cause the people in these plays to do what they do are very interesting studies in human behavior, and I think thatās one of the reasons why itās stayed around so long.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. One of the most fascinating things for me personally is the way he treats Ophelia, because you get mixed messages. Thereās a love letter that Polonius reads because heās a nosy dad and he shouldnāt be reading that, but he does, that professes Hamletās love. He assumes Hamletās just trying to seduce her.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** Tells her to stay away from him, which she doesnāt really want to do. And I think a lot of Opheliaās madness has to do with the fact that everybody is telling her what to do and not to do. She has no control over her life. And so, then Hamlet, who was professing to love her. Starts attacking her, essentially.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** Verbally. āGet thee to a nunneryā is another really famous line. And I think some of that was feigned, I think some of that was the fact that he was so angry with his mother and the falseness of women. At that point, he was kind of making a blanket statement on all women.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** And so, that got put on Ophelia as well. And so, she gets rejected and she goes mad, which is just this little side plot thatās terribly sad, and then when she does actually die, she drowns, Hamlet feels really remorseful. He has this beautiful lineā¦I think I actually have it written down, but itās this speech where he is like, essentially saying how much he loved Ophelia, and heās like, āA thousand brothers couldnāt make up the sum of my love.ā So, in the end, he reveals himself as, āNo, I really did love her.ā Andā¦
**Meredith:** āI was acting crazy and thatās why I treated her that way.ā
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, and I think thereās remorse in that statement because heās just like, āWell, maybe I took this a little too far.ā
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** Thereās aā¦as we ask ourselves, āWhatās the relevance in this play?ā And thereās a great quote in here that we use, and Iāve heard it a ton of times, this is Claudius when heās praying, āMy words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.ā This is when heās having maybe one of those brief moments where heās actually thinking about what heās done.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Wyatt:** Andā¦
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, so he goes through the motions, but he realizes, āWell, it doesnāt really count because Iām not feeling it.ā
**Wyatt:** Yeah, and he talks about how can he repent? And heās the king, he killed the king and took his place, married the kingās widow, so now heās in charge, and heās struggling with repenting of this event but maybe thereās nothing to repent of because he got away with it.
**Sterrantino:** Hmm.
**Wyatt:** And God didnāt punish him, he got what he wanted.
**Sterrantino:** Well, yeah.
**Wyatt:** And heās OK.
**Sterrantino:** For now.
**Wyatt:** For now. And soā¦
**Meredith:** I read a couple of monographs aboutā¦
**Wyatt:** Can a king do wrong?
**Meredith:** Right.
**Wyatt:** I mean, I remember this fromā¦thereās a lot of heads of state who would say that the president or the king or whoever can really do no wrong.
**Meredith:** Right, the end always justifies the means, whatever they are.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, whatever.
**Wyatt:** Well, if youāre in charge of the laws, then youāre outside of the laws.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Wyatt:** And in America, as in most countries, we believe in the rule of the law, so even the head of state is obligated to stay within them. But, I think I remember theā¦when the Pentagon Papersā¦not the Pentagon Papers but the Watergate Scandal but Nixon made some comment about āThe president canāt do anything wrong.ā
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. He was really bold about defending himself.
**Wyatt:** If I do it, itās OK.
**Meredith:**Yeah.
**Wyatt:** And the list of people that would have said that around the world is a long list.
**Meredith:** Over history, yeah.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. Well, and itās more complicated even when thereās royalty because thereās this anointedā¦an anointing that physically takes place when someone becomes king or queen and they are representing God on earth, essentially.
**Wyatt:** They have the divine right of God to rule.
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Sterrantino:** And so, that makes it seem like they wonāt do anything wrong. But clearly, thatās not what history tells us.
**Meredith:** I was saying, I read a couple of monographs and one of them was about the Christian themes that pervade through Hamlet and the writer was kind of comparing Oedipus to Hamlet and where thereās this strange relationship between mother and son and ultimately they end up in tragedy both, but he was saying the difference between the ancient Greeks essentially believed in fate and the Gods had determined your fate, so Oedipus could do nothing about it. He was fated to marry his mother and pluck his eyes out and so forth, but that Hamlet, and Shakespeare being a product of the Protestant reformation and just sort of Christianity generally, there is all sorts of discussion of repentance and morality and conscience and other things, and particularly personal choice. So, Hamlet could at any time have stopped from doing the things that he ultimately did, he just couldnāt make himself stop. Couldnāt keep from doing it. But it was that the Gods had fated that that was the case, it was that these were personal choices that he was making out of the sin of revenge.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, I donāt actually know if he felt like he had a choice.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** But obviously there was a choice there, but when you bring up the ideals in Christianity when he had an opportunity to kill Claudius, but Claudius was in prayer.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Sterrantino:** And at the time, the belief was if you were praying, your soul went straight to heaven. And so, not only did he want to kill him, he wanted to make sure that is not where his soul went.
**Meredith:** Right. \[Laughs\]
**Sterrantino:** And so, he waited to kill him until later.
**Meredith:** One of theā¦I think one of the tragic little scenes in this is after the death of Ophelia, the discussion of whether or not she can be buried in holy ground.
**Sterrantino:** Thatās right.
**Meredith:** Because did she kill herself? If she did, sheās not entitled to Christian burial.
**Wyatt:** Because she committed sin.
**Meredith:** Yeah. So, those themes, those kind of renaissance Christian themes really pervade this, and I thought that was kind of interesting because if youā¦as you said, the will to avenge your fatherās death was so strong, Iām sure he felt as though he had no choice.
**Sterrantino:** Well, and you know, if your fatherās ghost shows up and tells you to do thatā¦
**Meredith:** Exactly.
**Sterrantino:** How do you right with that? \[All laugh\]
**Meredith:** Thatās right. If your father appears to you in your sleepā¦
**Sterrantino:** If youāre sure that itās realā¦
**Meredith:** Thatās right. The world is full of things where someone appeared to you in a dream or a sleep or a vision of some kind and told you to go do something and people go do it.
**Sterrantino:** Right. And there were other witnesses.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Sterrantino:** And so, it wasnāt just him having this vision on his own. And he made him swear, the fatherās ghost made him swear, which is binding.
**Meredith:** Yep. Anyway, I just always thoughtā¦I thought that was kind of an interesting take on it.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** So, tell me this: when Hamlet brings in the other group of playersā¦
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** To create, and you remember the title of the playā¦
**Sterrantino:** Murder of Gonzago.
**Meredith:** The Murder of Gonzago, and then he says, āIāve changed it, itās called the Mousetrap.ā
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** At what point does it become obvious to his uncle that he is a real threat and that heās going to have to be killed? Is it kind of throughout or is itā¦because I kept wondering because Gertrude seems not really to be involved although thereās a little bit of nebulousness in her relationship with Hamlet.
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** And she seems really devoted to her new husband.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** And I just, I wonder at what point Gertrude recognizes that her new husband is going to kill her son and I wonder if itās from the very first minute of the play that the kingā¦he already knows heās usurped this boys right probably to be the king anyway. Does he know heās going to have to kill him?
**Sterrantino:** I donāt know.
**Meredith:** Or is it that moment in the play where he kind of freaks out?
**Sterrantino:** I actually think itās during the play that he freaks out because earlier he talks about Hamlet being his son, heās trying to be a father figure to him. And Iāve never read it as Gertrude knowing whatās going on.
**Meredith:** Right, I agree.
**Sterrantino:** So, during the play, the essentially act out the exact things. The king, I mean, the brother of the king puts poison in the kingās ear while heās sleeping, which is a habit that Hamletās father had, he always slept in the garden so they knew that, so at that point, I thinkā¦I donāt know that Gertrude knew what was going on at that point but I do think that Claudius was like, āWait a minute, thatās really too much of a coincidence.ā But then with the marrying the mother and stuff and eventually, it dawns on Gertrude, it dawns on Claudius and then what are they going to do about it? Well, I donāt know that sheā¦her, āWhat are we doing to do about it?ā Is different than Claudiusā.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** Because then sheās essentially committed adultery and she has to deal with the fact that, āWow, my husband was murdered and by my new husbandā which just is a lot of information. There is a version of it, a movie version with Patrick Stewart being Claudius and then David Tennant is Hamlet and right beforeā¦or right at the end of the movie, thereās a part where Gertrude is toasting to her son, to Hamlet, and she picks up the goblet that has the poison in it and Claudius is like, āDonāt!ā And in that particular version it was so moving because you could her face recognize, āOh my gosh, this was meant for Hamlet which means itās poisonā and she purposely makes that decision to drink it. It wasnāt an accident.
**Meredith:** Huh.
**Sterrantino:** And Iāve seen versions, too, where she accidentally drunk it too, but in this case, she realized the whole enormity of everything, and she drank it on purpose, and it was just really moving.
**Wyatt:** How can you live in a world where youāre married toā¦so, she must have figured it out by then.
**Sterrantino:** It might have been, yeah.
**Wyatt:** According to that version.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Wyatt:** This reminds me of Machiavelli Prince becauseā¦slightly off topic, but relevant, Machiavelli was in the royal court, sent out to the country, lost his standing, was raising pigs or whatever it was that he was doing, he wanted to re-win favor, so he wrote the prince. And the prince was advice to government leaders and one of the things that he said was, āWhen you take over, youāve got to kill every heir to the throne.ā
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** And thatās what Claudius is doing. Heās getting rid of every heir because ifā¦he was pretending like Hamlet was his son and heās going to take care of him.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Wyatt:** But, if youāre the kind of person that just killed to get power, then you assume that other people would kill to get power. And he canātā¦he canāt trust Hamlet.
**Sterrantino:** Thatās true. Although thereās no indication that that was part of the plan until he figured out that Hamlet figured out what had happened. But, if we base it just on his personality and on his history, thereās a good chance that he was thinking about that beforehand. Itās just that we as an audience donāt realize it at that point, or until that point.
**Meredith:** Or at least he always had it in his back pocket. āIf this kid ever figures this out, Iām going to have to whack him.ā
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. Or, āIf he does anything thatās irritatingā more or less.
**Meredith:** Yeah, yeah.
**Wyatt:** The father of modern political science or however we would describe Machiavelli.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Wyatt:** Was giving that advice and it probably was advice that was known and probably advice that people were doing, anyway.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** Well, it comes up a lot in literature.
**Wyatt:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** Soā¦
**Wyatt:** What else is interesting about this play? Thereās a line in hereā¦or, thereās a little discussion in this that I think is a really fun part which is about the worms.
**Sterrantino:** Oh, the grave digger.
**Wyatt:** And the fish.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, I think thatās a lovely part. The grave digger or the clown heās called sometimes isā¦his job is to dig a grave for Ophelia, but heās digging out an old grave, which may have to do with the fact that they donāt know if she can have a Christian burial or not, and so, heās bantering with Hamlet about this and the fact that the worms eat the body of the dead and then the fish eat the worms and then the king can feast upon the fish. So, by association, the king is feasting on dead bodies also.
**Wyatt:** Well, and that the king will end up being the food for beggars.
**Meredith:** Eventually dies andā¦
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Sterrantino:** Exactly. And so, itās both directions, yeah.
**Wyatt:** Both directions. That ultimately, we become fertilizer or food.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. Yeah, which is something, I think, you canāt say that directly to the king but because itās in word play, and he wasnāt talking directly to the king anyway at that point, but it was in word play and he was just kind of making a funny observation and so you can get away with saying things like that.
**Meredith:** So, a lot is made of Hamlet feigning madness, and then some scholars, I think, think that at some point, he actually really loses his mind for at least a portion of the play, or at the very least, he becomes so riveted, so fascinated by the idea of revenge that heās not thinking clearly and heās not really just going through the motions of pretending. And maybe heās just a great actor, but thereās an interesting part of his character, I think, that Iād like to get your insight on, which is that we hear him talk a lot. He seems like he is constantly, āTo be, or not to be.ā Heās constantly weighing life and death, heās constantlyā¦he seems almost paralyzed. Because if he wasā¦he becomes fairly early on convinced that this is the ghost of his fatherā¦
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** He should avenge his father. Well, just take the sword while heās asleep and chop his head off, right? And I think there are people, Laertes maybe, these are men of action who would do that. Instead, Hamlet, and of courseā¦well, part of itās a plot contrivance because that would be a 15 minute play otherwise instead of two and a half hours, but part of his character, part of his makeup seems to be this constant weighingā¦
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** Of things. And, of course, itās some of Shakespeareās most beautiful and most haunting writing, but ultimately, it makes him a character thatās inside himself all the time. Inside his head. We hear that a lot and we hear his thoughts in a way that maybe in a movie we might hear as a voice over almost.
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** We get inside this character. But he seems almost stymied into inaction by that and Iāve always wondered, people that lead lives of the mind.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** Areā¦theyāre really interesting to talk to, but ultimately nothing happens or ultimately you donāt get anything done. \[All laugh\] And thereās probably something to do with higher education here sometimes that Iām trying to make. \[Laughs\]
**Sterrantino:** Thatās what I thought of. \[Laughs\]
**Meredith:** But, I guess what Iām saying is thereāsā¦Iām always fascinated every time I see this play by how much we hear of him but how little he actually does. And then, when the action happens, boy, it really happens in a flurry, in a burst.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, yeah.
**Meredith:** But really, the whole play is him interacting but really even less of that, just thinking about these tragic events that have led up to him and then weighing life versus death, weighing committing suicide versus being alive and all those things.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** And Iāveā¦to me, to me that is one of the things that makes Hamlet such an interesting character, maybe so enduring, is because we really get in his mind in a way that we maybe donāt with other Shakespeare characters.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, I think thatās true. Because we see a lot of plays where somebody needs to be avenged and they go out and avenge them.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** And thatās the end of the whole thing. But, yeah, in this one, he starts out melancholy before anyā¦well, obviously he lost his father, but it lingers more than I think it does maybe for most people, and that gets mentioned. But then, he shies away from it. He really didnāt want to have to kill anybody and I think thatās one reason that his fatherās ghost made him swear because he probably knew he wasnāt really had a strong enough will to do it because he wanted to do it. And then he hems and haws about it for a good portion of the play where heās not sure if he should do it, if it would be easier if he was just dead because heās so unhappy, but, of course, what is it exactlyā¦when he did the āWhat dreams may comeā so,
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, thereās the rub;
For \[in\] that sleep of death what dreams may come
When he have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: thereās the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and the scorns of time,
For oppressorās wrong, the proud manās contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the lawās delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?
(Saying he could just kill himself)
Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscoverād country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
So, if it were simple for him, if anything were simple for him, he would just kill himself. That would solve the problem.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** He wouldnāt have to kill his uncle, he wouldnāt have to deal with his mother or anything of that, but, because his father, right at the beginning, makes him swear to do this vengeance but also the fact that heās saying, āIām also a cowardā which thatās a different debate whether itās cowardly or not to commit suicide, but from his own point of view, heās too cowardly to do that. And he really does feel to cowardly even to kill his uncle. But you mentioned a second ago whether he was feigning madness or became mad and I donāt know the answer to that. I believe that he absolutely feigns it, at least at the beginning, I think he gets really caught up in the revenge more than feigning madnessā¦or, not feigning madness, becoming mad, and I think itās only with the death of Ophelia how far he really took it. How much the effect of his actions effected other people, even people he loved. Because he clearly loved Ophelia, and then when she was dead, he was like, āOh, wow. I loved her so much.ā And I think in his mind heās thinking, āI should have been paying more attention to what I was doing to her but I was so busyā and this is not in the words of the play, this is me, āI was so busy getting revenge for my father that I did not realize that I had destroyed her.ā
**Wyatt:** You know, the question aboutā¦that the two of you are talking about Joy and Steve and why is it taking Hamlet so long to figure out to do what he is supposed to do and is he a coward or not or whatever, Iā¦so, whatās great about Hamlet is that any opinion has been stated by some expert.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** Because so many people have talked about it, so I donāt mean to say that this is true, but Iām inclined to believe that this play has nothing to do with revenge, it has everything to do with good government/bad government, because if it was about revenge, he could have just taken revenge. But weā¦
**Meredith:** And also, humanā¦
**Wyatt:** But we drag this out so longā¦
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Wyatt:** So that we can talk about human nature.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** The nature of governance and āDoes the rule of law apply to the leaders?ā And we have this horribly corrupt government where theyāre turning friends against friends, getting friends to spy against friends.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** Manipulating their own family members, like Ophelia, to play in their plot or to take advantage of them and this is one of the reasons why the play is so prominent among plays is that itās kind of a play for all times.
**Meredith:** Yep.
**Wyatt:** In that this is what we need to be careful of.
**Meredith:** Well, and you can see yourself in Hamlet as he weighs those things if you were presented with the same, or similar, choices.
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** You can see that, you know, on the one hand, this and on the other hand, this. And I think that everybody goes through that process. Itās just that he does it so much and so beautifully in such, as you read that again, Iām just still astonished. āBare bodkin,ā āAy, thereās the rub.ā In just those ten lines you read there are things that we say all the time.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** And itās justā¦itās indicative of the beauty of Shakespeareās writing the impact heās had on the English language, but also I think everybody can see themselves in that inability to make that decision and inability to make hard decisions.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. I mean, itās really hard to envision the fact, the idea ofā¦for us to say, āOh, what would I do if a ghost came and told me, if a family member came and told me that I needed to do this?ā Or really anybody else. I mean, it could be an angel or whatever. āWhat do I do about that when itās really against my nature to do so?ā So, yeah. I think thatās one of the main reasons that it does resonate with people because he struggles so much and so openly about that decision of what to do. About his own life, about Claudiusās life and then heās starting to lose trust in other people because of these things that have happened. Heās losing trust in his mother even though his mother didnāt mean to do anything wrong.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** But obviously, from his point of view, she did do that by marrying so quickly.
**Meredith:** And if you feel like you canāt even trust your own motherā¦
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, thatās a problem.
**Meredith:** That really would shake you to your foundations.
**Sterrantino:** Well, yeah. And thatās, again, while he was attacking Ophelia, he essentially, well, OK, essentially said, āIf my motherā and again, these are not the words of the play, āIf I canāt trust my mother then all women must be corrupt and I just need to stay away from them.ā
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** āAnd theyāre all evil.ā Which is a huge jump, but heās a very emotional man and so, everything that he does is this huge emotional decision and emotional toll that it takes on him.
**Wyatt:** āGet thee to a nunnery.ā
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. He thought it would be better to live a chaste life rather than lie to somebody. Which we know that she didnāt actually do, but at that point, I actually thinkā¦because that was the part that threw me about, āWas he really being mad or not? Why would he hurt Ophelia?ā But, I think he was so hurt by his mother at that point that he took some of that out on her. So, I donāt think all of it was, āHey, Iām going to plan on hurting Ophelia.ā I think he was hurt and confused and angry and he took some of it out on her.
**Meredith:** Yeah. There are some versions of the play and some experts Iāve heard opine that theyāve actually already been intimate, Hamlet and Ophelia, and that perhaps sheās even carrying a child and that this has led her to the fateful decision to kill herself, essentially. And thereās no indication in the textā¦
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** Of any of that, but as you said, President, every expert with a Ph.D. has weighed in on this play.
**Wyatt:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** And there are some that have said, āYeah, heās mean to herā and I guess if she felt like she had no control over her life and she had a brother and a father that were really controlling and then the one man that she loved all the sudden turned on her, maybe that would make her so despondent, but perhaps there were also these other things that were not in the play.
**Sterrantino:** Well, sure.
**Meredith:** Or were not obvious in the play.
**Wyatt:** And maybe somethingās going on thatā¦
**Meredith:** Right.
**Wyatt:** We canāt tell you.
**Meredith:** Yeah, so you have to come see the other version of the play.
**Wyatt:** So, you have to come watch it.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Wyatt:** The new, improved Ophelia.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Wyatt:** So, we have a friend who lives in Washington, D.C., taught Shakespeare at Georgetown University and served as a board member of the Shakespeare Theater there. His wife served on a Shakespeare board in another community and has a daughter serving in another one. So, thereās three and he comes out to Cedar City every summer with his family to watch plays here. What he would say is, if he was here, is that this is the best theater because you watch the play in the evening and then the next morning, you get to attend the seminar. We have a pre-play orientation, presentation, for those that choose, then the play, then the next morning you can sit and talk with an expert and others who watched the play the night before and discuss it. It makes it a complete interesting package.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** Where that if you watch a play in a big city at some theaterā¦
**Sterrantino:** Well, even at the globe. They donāt do that at the globe.
**Wyatt:** You just go home.
**Meredith:** Yeah, thatās right.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** You just go home. Itās over, you just go home. You donāt have a chance to really talk it through. This is the best place to watch a play.
**Meredith:** Thatās a very cool part of what we do here.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, it is.
**Wyatt:** Ophelia is, I think, the most sympathetic character in the play because sheās manipulated by her father, by the king, whatever happens with her and Hamlet. She falls in love with Hamlet and her dad and her brother remind her that sheās a lower class than Hamlet, that she should get away from him.
**Sterrantino:** Well, because she'sāā¦they essentially think that Hamletās playing with her.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** But even theā¦
**Wyatt:** But even that, the daughter of a servant of the king is notā¦it doesnāt go anywhere if you fall in love with the kingās son.
**Sterrantino:** Although, Polonius does apologize for that later when he reads the letter. Heās like, āOh, OK. I think he actually meant it. I didnāt realizeā¦ā
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** But, at the very first part where Ophelia comes in, Laertes lecturing her, then Polonius lectures her and makes him show her the letter, which Iā¦the privacy thing is just not an option for her. Yeah. So, you know. Thereās this whole background that we donāt know about where, I realize that women had very few rights in that time period, but at the same time, maybe her family was worse than most families. You donāt know that part of it either.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** Again, we donāt know her background, but yeah. So, thereās just a lot of other people telling her who she is and what she needs to do.
**Meredith:** Yeah. I think that is why sheās so sympathetic is because these wheels are set in motion and sheās really powerless, more or less, to stop any of it. Itās why Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is funny, too. These are these two, smallā¦
**Sterrantino:** Big players.
**Meredith:** Characters and now itās Hamlet told from their point of view and their kind of watching the whole thing unfold and saying, āWhat the heck is going on?ā
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** And itās kind of these absurdist comedy thing between these two goofy friends of Hamletās and so, there are those characters to whom the play happens.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** And thatās kind of what I think about Ophelia. This whole thing is just happening to her and itā¦thereās nothing she can do about it.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, in a way, the whole play happened to everybody.
**Meredith:** Yeah, right.
**Sterrantino:** Thereās really nobody, I think, that actually has control over anything.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** Because even Hamlet gets his revenge, but he died.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** So, that didnāt go over as well as he was hoping.
**Meredith:** Well, that was the whole thing about that Oedipus and the Greek fate versus free choice was, āDoes anybody in this play really have any choice?ā If your father came to you and said, āSwear an oath, youāve got to avenge my death.ā Well, that feels like the Gods to me. Feels like thatās taking your free will away.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. Well, and this play hasā¦so, what we would say is, āRead this play.ā This is a great play to read.
**Meredith:** Itās amazing.
**Wyatt:** Read the play and then come watch it. But additionally, thereās a lot of other ways that somebody can be introduced to this play and one of them is to watch movies like The Lion King.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** Which is aā¦
**Sterrantino:** Which is the retelling of Hamlet.
**Wyatt:** Retelling the story.
**Sterrantino:** Of course, itās not exact, right?
**Wyatt:** Yeah, they changeā¦
**Sterrantino:** But itās offā¦the main plot is there.
**Meredith:** I saw a funny internet meme that down the left hand side was all the things that happened in Hamlet and on the right hand sideā¦the last thing was, in Hamlet, everybody dies, in Lion King, Elton John sings a song at the end, \[All laugh\]
**Sterrantino:** Itās Disney, what do you want?
**Meredith:** There you go.
**Sterrantino:** Thatās funny.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. All the characters are there. The ending is a little different.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** Not everyone dies in Lion King. Itās a Disney movie, so it has to have a happy ending.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. But, for people who are intimidated by the language, and I get that, it gets easier, for one thing. But there are other ways to read it. Thereās No Fear Shakespeare and they have a website, even, where you can read the play and a modern interpretation of it. So, if you donāt know what some of the language means, which, thereās no reason why you would know that. So, at the time, that was the language they spoke, but we donāt speak early modern English anymore, except for in that circumstance, but there are ways to learn the language. But, even if you donāt get everything, the more you go to these plays, the more you start to understand. So, a lot of it is just exposing yourself to it and I know people are worried aboutā¦sometimes people are worried about feeling stupid.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** Not being able to keep up, and thatās OK. If you donāt, you can always watch it again, or, again, with reading the book where you can slow down and look at it. One of the things that I teach my 1010s is I always teach them one of the plays from whatever Shakespeare Utah Shakespeare Festival is doing and we do the graphic novel of it.
**Meredith:** Oh.
**Sterrantino:** So, they have the visual and the words, which I think is a really good way to learn Shakespeare because you have context for the words, but you can also do it at your own pace, where with the play, you just want to tell the actors, āHang on! Iām not there yet!ā
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** āIām still trying to figure out what you said.ā
**Meredith:** And reading the book, the struggle for me with the book, and I was glad what I thought was a really great annotated version of it that just had a running glossary.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** But, I just thought to myself, āHoly mackerel, itās so much easier when you add the action to this.ā
**Sterrantino:** Oh, yeah.
**Wyatt:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** Itās so much easier. Because I just would think, āOK, I got about six words out of that previous paragraph and they were all ātheā and āand.āā \[All laugh\] So, Iām checking the glossary, Iām going to the bottom of the page every line three or four times.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, itās practice but thatās the way these plays were never meant to be read, that was not the intention. They were intended to be watched by a modern audience of their timeā¦
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** That would understand it. It was not this haughty thing just for kings and queens, which I think thereās a misinterpretation that some people think that thatās what Shakespeare was about, but it wasnāt. He had the groundlingsā¦I teach study abroad with Jeb Branin in London two weeks every May and we take them to Shakespeareās plays, and we have the students be groundlings. So, they stand up, right? And some of them were leaning straight against the play. That was the common people, you made sure that they could afford to go.
**Meredith:** Hmm.
**Sterrantino:** They understood the jokes, or even when it wasnāt a joke. Obviously there arenāt a lot of jokes in Hamlet, there are some, but he made sure that that was accessible to everybody. That was super important to Shakespeareās time.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. And there are a lot of editions of Shakespeare. The one that I read was Folgerās Shakespeare.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Wyatt:** And I read it on my Kindle.
**Sterrantino:** Oh, yeah.
**Wyatt:** Which made it very enjoyable because Iād hit something like, āBrevity is the soul of witā and Iād think, āOK what does that exactly mean?ā And Iād click on it and it says to me, āA wise speech, a few words carry the central meaning.ā It has nothing to do with wit in the sense that I think of whit.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, not the way we think of whit.
**Wyatt:** Itās just saying, āMake your words brief and it will be more effective.ā
**Sterrantino:** Which is exactly why that is funny in that play because Polonius just goes on and on and on about everything, but he says that. So, he knows the rules, he just doesnāt follow them.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. But constantly through here, it was fun to click on a word and get the definition.
**Meredith:** Yeah, the commonly used at that time definition.
**Wyatt:** It kind of slowed me down because I found it fun to explore the language.
**Sterrantino:** Well, itās so much easier than it used to be that way. So, you either had a version that had a glossary or annotations on the side, or you just had to kind of force your way through it and now, thereās all kinds of ways to learn Shakespeare. One of the reasons that I wanted to go into Shakespeare studies is because I thought, āI really want to know this language. I want to understand it and be able to go to the plays and get whatās going on no matter what it is.ā And that fascinated me. But it was harder to study it back without the internet.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Wyatt:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** And without these easier versionsā¦
**Wyatt:** So accessible.
**Sterrantino:** Of the play to read, yeah. Like, No Fear Shakespeare is a really good one because itās modern wording on one side and the actual wording on the other side. And it was kind of this thing like, āWell, if you canāt figure it out, you shouldnāt be reading Shakespeareā which is not really true.
**Wyatt:** It wasnāt Shakespeareās intent.
**Sterrantino:** No, definitely not.
**Meredith:** No, surely not.
**Sterrantino:** Well, itās also funny because I had heard before, and I think I thought this when I was a kid, that āShakespeare would never make a dirty jokeā or whatever, which is all he does. \[Laughs\]
**Meredith:** Wanna bet? \[Laughs\]
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. You know, he wasnāt body. He was just very, very body and if he was doing things today, we donāt think about that very often, but if he was doing things today, theyād probably be rated R, there would probably be nudity, there probably would be a lot of language in it.
**Wyatt:** Well, there is a lot of language in it.
**Sterrantino:** Well, there is, we just donāt get the language.
**Wyatt:** We donāt get it.
**Sterrantino:** I actually think Shakespeare wouldnāt be taught in high school if the students understood what they were reading. But since they donāt, we donāt have to worry about that. But if it was put into modern terms, it might be a little iffy.
**Wyatt:** Thereās a lot of phrases that we just let go over our heads because we donāt understand them.
**Meredith:** Yeah. This is the argument I have with colleagues all the time in Classical music. In some cases, this was meant to be some special thing that was meant only for a special group of people, but 95% of these people were just trying to write hits.
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** Mozart was trying to write a hit, and he wanted it to be accessible for everyone. By the end of his life, heās lost most of his jobs.
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** Kind of drunk his way through most of the really good jobs in Europe at the time and was essentially writing operas on spec for whoever would produce them, and these things had to be hits so that he could feed Costanza and the kids. So, to imagine that, āWell, if you canāt understandā¦ā No, these were people working with the language of the time, these were people working with the music of their time trying to write popular entertainment. Itās just the fact that they happened to be towering intellects of all time that the stuff continues to be amazing and it amazes at the very most elite level, but also, who doesnātā¦who canāt whistle a Mozart theme?
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** It appeals and thatās what he was trying to do. He was trying to write hits.
**Sterrantino:** And Shakespeare was really successful. Thereās this myth that if youāre a playwright or in the arts, which is still a myth, that you canāt make a decent living, but he owned part of the Globe, he was really pretty well off. He did really well. He had the favor of Queen Elizabeth and then James I, and thereās always references to both of them in just about every play. So, you could look at Gertrude as the aging Elizabeth now. Of course, you would never say that outright because that would have made her unhappy, but he always had veiled references to things that were going on in society. This way, he could deny it if the king or queen were angry with him and said, āI canāt believe you said that about me!ā āOh, that wasnāt about you! That was just this other thing that I made up.ā But, yeah. So, he definitely was really successful at his time, too. It wasnāt just now.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. And he takes liberties with the facts in his historical plays.
**Sterrantino:** Sure.
**Wyatt:** He takes a lot of liberties, but times havenāt changed much.
**Sterrantino:** No. We think of Richard III and the deformity supposedly that he had and that most of us grew up watching him always deformed, and then they found his skeleton a few years ago, he was not nearly that deformed. He wasnāt completely crippled at all, but there was this idea of that, and I think it was more symbolic than physical but it because a physical attribute as time went by.
**Wyatt:** Well, everybody should come see the play and everybody should read it and think about what it means. And then, because Cedar City is the destination for the Utah Shakespeare Festival, most of those that come to see the play will stay overnight.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Wyatt:** Spend a little bit of time here. Make sure that, if any of our listeners are coming to see Hamlet this summer, again, it opens on July 5th, stay overnight and then come the next morning and listen to the seminar. Not listen to the seminar but participate in the seminar.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Wyatt:** The discussion about the play. Thatās what makes it so much fun.
**Meredith:** And then call you or me and we can go to lunch. And weāll give them a tour of our palatial podcast studio. \[All laugh\]
**Wyatt:** I had the opportunity to sit in on some of the tryouts and readings of this playā¦
**Meredith:** Really?
**Wyatt:** In anticipation of this summer, and to watch these professional actors go through some of the lines and then to have our artistic director, Brian Vaughn, say, āWould you take a slightly different approach to this?ā And instantly, they were a different person reading the same lines. And I thought, āWow, the magic of live theater.ā
**Sterrantino:** Thatās true. And Shakespeare, in general, there have been plays Iāve watched dozens of times, and Iām like, āWow, I donāt even remember that partā because it was portrayed so differently.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Wyatt:** It was deemphasized.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** So, President, our third book for the summer is Tao Te Ching, the kind of founding book of Taoism, right?
**Wyatt:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** And you were telling me earlier when we were having a discussion about the fact that you are actually reading a couple of other books and here came some quotes.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. So, Tao Te Ching is, Bryce Christensen from our English department is going to join us to discuss that and when I was talking to him about it, he mentioned that it is a fairly short book so it doesnāt take a long time to read it, but it does take a lifetime to think about it. So, this isnāt a hard read, but whatās been so interesting is that the book has never been really present in my mind thinking about it. But I read it quite a bit and ever since we decided it that this book was going to be part of our summer book club, I have read quotes from it in two other, random books.
**Meredith:** All of the sudden you see it everywhere.
**Wyatt:** And hereās one. This is a book called Atomic Habits.
**Meredith:** Thatās a hot, best-selling book, Atomic Habits.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. āMen are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.ā But this was in a book about how to form great habits and the idea that we donāt want our habits to become so hard, good or bad, that we become a disciple of death because dead things are not at all flexible.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Wyatt:** Living thingsā¦
**Meredith:** Thatās how we know they are dead, they snap in half.
**Wyatt:** Thatās how we know they are dead. So, Iām super excited. I havenāt started reading this yet. I donāt know if you have, Steve.
**Meredith:** Nope.
**Wyatt:** I havenāt started reading but Iām excited to read this book. Again, itās a fairly quick read with a lot of thought. It just is interesting thought after interesting thought after interesting thought from a very old text. Far older than Shakespeare.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Wyatt:** Probably easier to read than Shakespeare.
**Meredith:** Wellā¦
**Wyatt:** The quotes that Iāve read have all been easier to understand.
**Meredith:** But laden with meaning.
**Wyatt:** Laden with meaning and a lifetime to think about it.
**Meredith:** Cool, that will be fun. Iām looking forward to that. You've been listening to Solutions for Higher Education, a podcast featuring Scott L Wyatt, the president of Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. Weāve enjoyed our conversation today with Joy Sterrantino from our English faculty and weāve been discussing Hamlet, which is not only the worldās greatest play, but also going to be part of the Utah Shakespeare Festival beginning July 5th. We invite you to Cedar City to come and see a very special version of that play. We invite you to finish reading this play with us if you havenāt, and, as always, we appreciate you continuing to be our faithful listeners. Weāll be back again soon. Bye bye.
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| Readable Markdown | ## Episode 59 - Summer Book Club Book 2: William Shakespeare's Hamlet
President Scott L Wyatt and Steve Meredith are joined by Dr. Joy Sterrantino to discuss the second book in the Summer Book Club: Hamlet. The trio discuss the upcoming performance of Hamlet by the [Utah Shakespeare Festival](https://www.bard.org/), the complex relationships found within the story, and the overall themes woven into the story.
SUU Blog: [President Wyatt's Summer Book Picks for 2019](https://www.suu.edu/blog/2019/05/summer-book-club-presidents-podcast.html)
***
## Full Transcript
**Steve Meredith:** Hi again everyone, and welcome to Solutions to Higher Education, a podcast featuring Scott L Wyatt, the president of Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. Iām your host, Steve Meredith, and Iām joined in-studio today, as I always am, by President Wyatt. Hi, Scott.
**Scott Wyatt:** Hello, Steve. Itās nice to be here with you today.
**Meredith:** Another great day, beautiful June day as we are recording this, and you and I actually met last night in Salt Lake City for a really nice event. The university was recognizedā¦I think this is worth mentioning.
**Wyatt:** I think itās good that weāre both still awake because it was a late night.
**Meredith:** Yeah, it was a late night. \[Laughs\]
**Wyatt:** Yeah, Best of State. SUU took home three Best of State awards including Best Educational Institution Award. Itās kind of a second year in a row actually, two years running. Out of all the educational institutions in Utah, thatās public, private, higher ed, public edā¦
**Meredith:** Thatās great, thatās great. Next year we go for a āthree-peat.ā
**Wyatt:** Yeah, weāll see what happens.
**Meredith:** Anyway, it was a very nice evening and we donāt toot our own horn too much on this podcast, but I figured that was worth bringing up. So, today is our second book in our summer book club, and itās actually not just a book but itās a play, and probably, maybe Shakespeareās most famous play, or certainly amongst those.
**Wyatt:** Yeah, and itā¦if itās Shakespeareās most significant play, we can probably take that a step further and say itās the most significant play. But, before we defend that statement, letās bring in our guest. So, Joy Sterrantino from our English department, literature professorā¦
**Joy Sterrantino:** Hi.
**Wyatt:** Is here with us today.
**Sterrantino:** Hi, thank you. Glad to be here.
**Wyatt:** Joyās graduate studies focusā¦you had a few areas of focus, and one was early English literature, which isā¦
**Sterrantino:** Early modern literature is what they call it.
**Wyatt:** Early modern.
**Sterrantino:** Which is the language of that period.
**Wyatt:** So, thatās Shakespeare, and what were your other areas?
**Sterrantino:** Dystopian literature and composition, which is the classes we teach the 1010 and 2010 to make proper argumentative writing.
**Wyatt:** Yeah, have students be successful in written communication skills.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Wyatt:** Well, before we get into this play, I think we ought to defend the statement that this might be the most important play ever. I donāt know how you defend that, but I can say this much, that no play has ever been produced on Broadway more times than Hamlet. Hamlet has been produced by far more than any other play.
**Meredith:** Really?
**Wyatt:** So, if thatās a measure, and I think thatās probably a pretty good indication, this could be our most important play ever.
**Sterrantino:** It could be. Iād have to give that more thought, but itās definitely not not the most important play. I mean, itās definitely up there if itās not the most important play.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. Yeah, somebody somewhere on a podcast somewhere in the world today is making an argument play is the most important. Weāre talking about Hamlet in this summer book club because SUU has a very special Hamlet summer. The Utah Shakespeare Festival, which is part of Southern Utah University, our professional theater department separate from our academic theater department, but the Utah Shakespeare Festival is doing a creative, slightly new take on Hamlet and it opens on July 5th at 2:00pm.
**Meredith:** Really?
**Wyatt:** And I have my tickets purchased and Iām ready to go watch it. I donāt want to be a spoiler, so Iām not going to sayā¦
**Meredith:** But itās different?
**Wyatt:** But itās just a little bit different, a little bit different take.
**Sterrantino:** And Iām excited about it. Itās going to be really neat.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. I think I can say this without going too far: Ophelia has a slightly larger role.
**Sterrantino:** Thatās enough to make me go.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** They havenāt changed any words.
**Meredith:** So, the words are the same?
**Wyatt:** Yeah. These plays, you know, everybody puts on these plays, but the way the director sets it up and the emphasis and the language and how they do things and how theyāre looking, you can have one paly that has kind of a different meaning just by presenting it differently. And this will have a meaning that I donāt know that anybodyās ever tried doing,
**Sterrantino:** Iāve never heard of it.
**Wyatt:** So, everybody needs to come and watch, itās going to be really fun.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** And read the play before you come watch it, of course.
**Meredith:** Yeah. I was going to say, Iām glad theyāre not changing the words or updating them or excising them in any way because as I read this again, and Iād read it once before in high school or college and then I had seen the play a couple of times, and read it again this last week, Iām just astonished. Every single time, Iām astonished at how much of Hamlet is in our regular language.
**Wyatt:** \[Laughs\]
**Meredith:** I mean, if anybody stumbles across a skull, whatās the first thing you say? āAlas, poor Yorick!ā \[All laugh\] It justā¦there are soā¦
**Wyatt:** Iāve never stumbled across a skull.
**Sterrantino:** At the Halloween store.
**Meredith:** Well, thatās right. \[All laugh\] Iām surprised with you, with your background. \[Laughs\]
**Wyatt:** Iāve had skulls, but Iāve never stumbled across them. \[Laughs\]
**Meredith:** Thatās right. But, I mean, āMethinks the lady doth protest too much.ā How many times have you heard that statement?
**Wyatt:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** And there are so many of these things that you say, āThatās either a proverb from the Bible or itās Shakespeare.ā And itās a pretty good coin flip as to which has had the most impact on the language, and this particular play especially.
**Wyatt:** Yeah, Joy, what areā¦so, for those that have never read the play or seen it, weāre going to tell them right now that theyāve heardā¦
**Sterrantino:** Oh, yeah.
**Wyatt:** Quite a bit of them.
**Sterrantino:** Thereās so many different things. The ones that you mentioned, thereās, āThis above all, to thine own self be true.ā
**Wyatt:** Which is a great statement.
**Meredith:** Yep.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, although itās funny because the person who says it, Polonius, he just kind of spouts off for long periods of time. \[All laugh\] But, heās telling his son all the things that he needs to be when he goes away back to college, essentially.
**Meredith:** āNeither a borrower nor a lender be.ā
**Wyatt:** Yeah, it is a pity that the person making the statement is an advisor to a tyrant.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, I donāt think that necessarily was a choice on his part, though. It just is kind ofā¦the job just kind of was fluid when the new king came in.
**Wyatt:** Yeah, thatās probably right.
**Sterrantino:** But, thereās also so many things, just the āTo be or not to beā speech, āThat is the question: Whether ātis nobler in the mind to suffer the arrows of outrageous fortune or take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing them to die, to sleep.ā Thereās also, āTo sleep: perchance to dream: ay, thereās the rub; for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come? For who would bear the whips and scorns of time?ā āThe undiscoverād country from who is born, no traveler returns, puzzles the will.ā So, all of those are just from that monologue, but thereās other things like, āThough this be madness, yet there is method in it.ā
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** āBrevity is the soul of wit.ā
**Wyatt:** āBrevity is the soul of wit.ā
**Meredith:** Yep.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, that one gets used a lot.
**Wyatt:** Which really means, ābe short.ā \[All laugh\]
**Meredith:** Itās funnier the shorter it is.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. Great little lines.
**Meredith:** I probably say, āThereās method to my madnessā five times a week. \[Laughs\]
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, yeah. Itās true.
**Meredith:** Usually when Iām trying to convince my wife of some cockamamie scheme or another, yes.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, in this case it was Polonius trying to figure out what was going on with Hamlet, and so, he was acting mad but there was logic to the madness. At least to Hamlet, and Polonius recognized that.
**Meredith:** Hmm.
**Wyatt:** Letās set this play up. Thereās about five major characters, or six. Joy, can you tell us Hamlet in a paragraph?
**Sterrantino:** The whole play? Yeah, I probably can. So, are we worrying about spoilers at this point? I think weāre past that time period, we donāt need to worry about spoilers.
**Wyatt:** Donāt worry about spoilers.
**Sterrantino:** OK. Itās a tragedy, Shakespeareās tragedies donāt end well. So, King Hamlet is killed by his brother, but nobody realizes this, but King Hamletās ghost is at the beginning of the play askingā¦
**Wyatt:** And his brother is Claudius.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, his brother is Claudius, and heāsā¦will only speak to Hamlet, his son, the son comes and essentially he tells him to avenge him and soā¦but they were also worried about the fact that the ghost might be not really his father because the devil can change the look and make it a positive or a pleasant one. So, Hamlet acts mad for a while to try to figure out whatās going on for real. And then he has a group of theater players come in to reenact the play, itās called Murder of Gonzago, but he changes enough of it that his father will recognize it. In the meantime, his fatherāor, his uncle, Iām sorryā¦
**Wyatt:** This is a fascinating piece, isnāt it?
**Sterrantino:** It is.
**Wyatt:** His uncle, Claudius, is believed to haveāwe know he didābut Hamlet was told by his fatherās ghost, maybe, probablyā¦
**Sterrantino:** Well, yeahā¦
**Wyatt:** He marries Hamletās mother.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, and it was right after the father died, within a couple of months. In fact, thatās one of the big things that Hamlet has a fuss about is the fact that they use the, the way he put it was they used the food that was still warm from the funeral for the wedding.
**Wyatt:** So, Claudius kills King Hamlet and then Claudius marriesā¦
**Meredith:** His widow.
**Wyatt:** His widow, Gertrude, who is Hamletāsā¦
**Meredith:** Mother.
**Wyatt:** Mother. The ghost comesā¦
**Meredith:** Before heās even cold in the ground, yeah.
**Wyatt:** The ghost comes and tells Hamlet what happened and to avenge him. Hamlet feigns insanity to try to figure out if itās true and goes about trying to get revenge.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, he has a troupe come in and reenact it to see what reaction Claudius has and the mother as well. And then, thereāsā¦
**Wyatt:** And it works.
**Sterrantino:** It does, it works. It totally freaks the king out and then thereās this whole thing where Claudius tries to kill Hamlet. He sends him away and asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to follow with a letter. They donāt realize the letter says, āOh, by the way, Norway just killed Hamlet while heās there.ā But he gets away with that, which is why we have the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Based on those two little, big characters.
**Meredith:** Which is a very funny play.
**Sterrantino:** I love that play so much. \[All laugh\] So, Hamlet comes back and thereās these plots, so, Laertes blamesā¦well, he did. Hamlet at one point ends up inadvertently killing Polonius thinking it is Claudius, Laertes finds out and so, he wants revenge, even though they were best friends and all this stuff. And then, Ophelia dies and thatās his sister, so heās mad about that too. And so, heās going to poison Hamlet with the poison on his sword when they are fencing. In the meantime, thereās poison in the wineā¦
**Wyatt:** And just in case that doesnāt happenā¦
**Sterrantino:** Yes, Claudius putsā¦
**Wyatt:** The backupā¦
**Sterrantino:** Poison in the wine for him also and says, āIf you win, you get this pearlā and puts it in the wine. But, of course, Hamletās not the one that drinks the wine, so, we end up with almost everybody dead at the end.
**Wyatt:** Yeah, itā¦not the happiest of endings.
**Meredith:** No. No, when you coat everything in poison, the party is going to end badly. Almost always.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, more or less, heās at the end just saying, āTell my storyā to the last survivor of that group of people.
**Wyatt:** So, Joy, why do we care about this play? Why has this play been done more times than any other plays on Broadway and why is it that 400 years later weāre still talking about it?
**Sterrantino:** Iām not entirely positive. It is fascinating because of this wholeā¦the ideas of loyalty to family, the idea of corrupt government, or even corruption within oneās own family and how do you deal with that? Hamlet hadā¦revenge was one of those things where you just had a dual in that period and that was accepted to do that, but this was complicated because the king was head of the church technically also, so that means that he was supposedly had the right from God to be the king, and so Hamlet wasnāt sure if he had the right to kill him in that respect, but at the same time, he needed to avenge his father, and what would we do in that situation? Which is the reason why I think we find this so interesting. And then his relationship with Ophelia gets damaged while heāsā¦because heās so busy trying to get the revenge. And just the reactions of the different people in the courtā¦I think itās really popular because we canā¦itās so complicated and so, we try to insert ourselves and say, āOK, if we were in this situation, what would we do?ā
**Meredith:** Right. I even find myself thinking about Claudius. You know, heās a good villainā¦
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** He does villainous things, no question, but if you had recently been at war and if, as was the history of Europe, marriage and the joining of families was one of the ways that you held on to land and kingdoms and so forth, Iām sure in his mind, he could make a valid argument that, āThis marriage needs to take place now so that there seems to be stability at the top of the government in Denmark.ā
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, Iām not sure how he justified poisoning his brotherā¦
**Wyatt:** Right.
**Meredith:** No, as I say, heās a terrible psychopath, Iām justā¦
**Sterrantino:** But no, you could totally justify that because thatās what probably would have happened anyway.
**Meredith:** āIf Iām going to do this, this would have happened anyway.ā
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** Itās aā¦the things that cause the people in these plays to do what they do are very interesting studies in human behavior, and I think thatās one of the reasons why itās stayed around so long.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. One of the most fascinating things for me personally is the way he treats Ophelia, because you get mixed messages. Thereās a love letter that Polonius reads because heās a nosy dad and he shouldnāt be reading that, but he does, that professes Hamletās love. He assumes Hamletās just trying to seduce her.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** Tells her to stay away from him, which she doesnāt really want to do. And I think a lot of Opheliaās madness has to do with the fact that everybody is telling her what to do and not to do. She has no control over her life. And so, then Hamlet, who was professing to love her. Starts attacking her, essentially.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** Verbally. āGet thee to a nunneryā is another really famous line. And I think some of that was feigned, I think some of that was the fact that he was so angry with his mother and the falseness of women. At that point, he was kind of making a blanket statement on all women.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** And so, that got put on Ophelia as well. And so, she gets rejected and she goes mad, which is just this little side plot thatās terribly sad, and then when she does actually die, she drowns, Hamlet feels really remorseful. He has this beautiful lineā¦I think I actually have it written down, but itās this speech where he is like, essentially saying how much he loved Ophelia, and heās like, āA thousand brothers couldnāt make up the sum of my love.ā So, in the end, he reveals himself as, āNo, I really did love her.ā Andā¦
**Meredith:** āI was acting crazy and thatās why I treated her that way.ā
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, and I think thereās remorse in that statement because heās just like, āWell, maybe I took this a little too far.ā
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** Thereās aā¦as we ask ourselves, āWhatās the relevance in this play?ā And thereās a great quote in here that we use, and Iāve heard it a ton of times, this is Claudius when heās praying, āMy words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.ā This is when heās having maybe one of those brief moments where heās actually thinking about what heās done.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Wyatt:** Andā¦
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, so he goes through the motions, but he realizes, āWell, it doesnāt really count because Iām not feeling it.ā
**Wyatt:** Yeah, and he talks about how can he repent? And heās the king, he killed the king and took his place, married the kingās widow, so now heās in charge, and heās struggling with repenting of this event but maybe thereās nothing to repent of because he got away with it.
**Sterrantino:** Hmm.
**Wyatt:** And God didnāt punish him, he got what he wanted.
**Sterrantino:** Well, yeah.
**Wyatt:** And heās OK.
**Sterrantino:** For now.
**Wyatt:** For now. And soā¦
**Meredith:** I read a couple of monographs aboutā¦
**Wyatt:** Can a king do wrong?
**Meredith:** Right.
**Wyatt:** I mean, I remember this fromā¦thereās a lot of heads of state who would say that the president or the king or whoever can really do no wrong.
**Meredith:** Right, the end always justifies the means, whatever they are.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, whatever.
**Wyatt:** Well, if youāre in charge of the laws, then youāre outside of the laws.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Wyatt:** And in America, as in most countries, we believe in the rule of the law, so even the head of state is obligated to stay within them. But, I think I remember theā¦when the Pentagon Papersā¦not the Pentagon Papers but the Watergate Scandal but Nixon made some comment about āThe president canāt do anything wrong.ā
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. He was really bold about defending himself.
**Wyatt:** If I do it, itās OK.
**Meredith:**Yeah.
**Wyatt:** And the list of people that would have said that around the world is a long list.
**Meredith:** Over history, yeah.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. Well, and itās more complicated even when thereās royalty because thereās this anointedā¦an anointing that physically takes place when someone becomes king or queen and they are representing God on earth, essentially.
**Wyatt:** They have the divine right of God to rule.
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Sterrantino:** And so, that makes it seem like they wonāt do anything wrong. But clearly, thatās not what history tells us.
**Meredith:** I was saying, I read a couple of monographs and one of them was about the Christian themes that pervade through Hamlet and the writer was kind of comparing Oedipus to Hamlet and where thereās this strange relationship between mother and son and ultimately they end up in tragedy both, but he was saying the difference between the ancient Greeks essentially believed in fate and the Gods had determined your fate, so Oedipus could do nothing about it. He was fated to marry his mother and pluck his eyes out and so forth, but that Hamlet, and Shakespeare being a product of the Protestant reformation and just sort of Christianity generally, there is all sorts of discussion of repentance and morality and conscience and other things, and particularly personal choice. So, Hamlet could at any time have stopped from doing the things that he ultimately did, he just couldnāt make himself stop. Couldnāt keep from doing it. But it was that the Gods had fated that that was the case, it was that these were personal choices that he was making out of the sin of revenge.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, I donāt actually know if he felt like he had a choice.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** But obviously there was a choice there, but when you bring up the ideals in Christianity when he had an opportunity to kill Claudius, but Claudius was in prayer.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Sterrantino:** And at the time, the belief was if you were praying, your soul went straight to heaven. And so, not only did he want to kill him, he wanted to make sure that is not where his soul went.
**Meredith:** Right. \[Laughs\]
**Sterrantino:** And so, he waited to kill him until later.
**Meredith:** One of theā¦I think one of the tragic little scenes in this is after the death of Ophelia, the discussion of whether or not she can be buried in holy ground.
**Sterrantino:** Thatās right.
**Meredith:** Because did she kill herself? If she did, sheās not entitled to Christian burial.
**Wyatt:** Because she committed sin.
**Meredith:** Yeah. So, those themes, those kind of renaissance Christian themes really pervade this, and I thought that was kind of interesting because if youā¦as you said, the will to avenge your fatherās death was so strong, Iām sure he felt as though he had no choice.
**Sterrantino:** Well, and you know, if your fatherās ghost shows up and tells you to do thatā¦
**Meredith:** Exactly.
**Sterrantino:** How do you right with that? \[All laugh\]
**Meredith:** Thatās right. If your father appears to you in your sleepā¦
**Sterrantino:** If youāre sure that itās realā¦
**Meredith:** Thatās right. The world is full of things where someone appeared to you in a dream or a sleep or a vision of some kind and told you to go do something and people go do it.
**Sterrantino:** Right. And there were other witnesses.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Sterrantino:** And so, it wasnāt just him having this vision on his own. And he made him swear, the fatherās ghost made him swear, which is binding.
**Meredith:** Yep. Anyway, I just always thoughtā¦I thought that was kind of an interesting take on it.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** So, tell me this: when Hamlet brings in the other group of playersā¦
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** To create, and you remember the title of the playā¦
**Sterrantino:** Murder of Gonzago.
**Meredith:** The Murder of Gonzago, and then he says, āIāve changed it, itās called the Mousetrap.ā
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** At what point does it become obvious to his uncle that he is a real threat and that heās going to have to be killed? Is it kind of throughout or is itā¦because I kept wondering because Gertrude seems not really to be involved although thereās a little bit of nebulousness in her relationship with Hamlet.
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** And she seems really devoted to her new husband.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** And I just, I wonder at what point Gertrude recognizes that her new husband is going to kill her son and I wonder if itās from the very first minute of the play that the kingā¦he already knows heās usurped this boys right probably to be the king anyway. Does he know heās going to have to kill him?
**Sterrantino:** I donāt know.
**Meredith:** Or is it that moment in the play where he kind of freaks out?
**Sterrantino:** I actually think itās during the play that he freaks out because earlier he talks about Hamlet being his son, heās trying to be a father figure to him. And Iāve never read it as Gertrude knowing whatās going on.
**Meredith:** Right, I agree.
**Sterrantino:** So, during the play, the essentially act out the exact things. The king, I mean, the brother of the king puts poison in the kingās ear while heās sleeping, which is a habit that Hamletās father had, he always slept in the garden so they knew that, so at that point, I thinkā¦I donāt know that Gertrude knew what was going on at that point but I do think that Claudius was like, āWait a minute, thatās really too much of a coincidence.ā But then with the marrying the mother and stuff and eventually, it dawns on Gertrude, it dawns on Claudius and then what are they going to do about it? Well, I donāt know that sheā¦her, āWhat are we doing to do about it?ā Is different than Claudiusā.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** Because then sheās essentially committed adultery and she has to deal with the fact that, āWow, my husband was murdered and by my new husbandā which just is a lot of information. There is a version of it, a movie version with Patrick Stewart being Claudius and then David Tennant is Hamlet and right beforeā¦or right at the end of the movie, thereās a part where Gertrude is toasting to her son, to Hamlet, and she picks up the goblet that has the poison in it and Claudius is like, āDonāt!ā And in that particular version it was so moving because you could her face recognize, āOh my gosh, this was meant for Hamlet which means itās poisonā and she purposely makes that decision to drink it. It wasnāt an accident.
**Meredith:** Huh.
**Sterrantino:** And Iāve seen versions, too, where she accidentally drunk it too, but in this case, she realized the whole enormity of everything, and she drank it on purpose, and it was just really moving.
**Wyatt:** How can you live in a world where youāre married toā¦so, she must have figured it out by then.
**Sterrantino:** It might have been, yeah.
**Wyatt:** According to that version.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Wyatt:** This reminds me of Machiavelli Prince becauseā¦slightly off topic, but relevant, Machiavelli was in the royal court, sent out to the country, lost his standing, was raising pigs or whatever it was that he was doing, he wanted to re-win favor, so he wrote the prince. And the prince was advice to government leaders and one of the things that he said was, āWhen you take over, youāve got to kill every heir to the throne.ā
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** And thatās what Claudius is doing. Heās getting rid of every heir because ifā¦he was pretending like Hamlet was his son and heās going to take care of him.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Wyatt:** But, if youāre the kind of person that just killed to get power, then you assume that other people would kill to get power. And he canātā¦he canāt trust Hamlet.
**Sterrantino:** Thatās true. Although thereās no indication that that was part of the plan until he figured out that Hamlet figured out what had happened. But, if we base it just on his personality and on his history, thereās a good chance that he was thinking about that beforehand. Itās just that we as an audience donāt realize it at that point, or until that point.
**Meredith:** Or at least he always had it in his back pocket. āIf this kid ever figures this out, Iām going to have to whack him.ā
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. Or, āIf he does anything thatās irritatingā more or less.
**Meredith:** Yeah, yeah.
**Wyatt:** The father of modern political science or however we would describe Machiavelli.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Wyatt:** Was giving that advice and it probably was advice that was known and probably advice that people were doing, anyway.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** Well, it comes up a lot in literature.
**Wyatt:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** Soā¦
**Wyatt:** What else is interesting about this play? Thereās a line in hereā¦or, thereās a little discussion in this that I think is a really fun part which is about the worms.
**Sterrantino:** Oh, the grave digger.
**Wyatt:** And the fish.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, I think thatās a lovely part. The grave digger or the clown heās called sometimes isā¦his job is to dig a grave for Ophelia, but heās digging out an old grave, which may have to do with the fact that they donāt know if she can have a Christian burial or not, and so, heās bantering with Hamlet about this and the fact that the worms eat the body of the dead and then the fish eat the worms and then the king can feast upon the fish. So, by association, the king is feasting on dead bodies also.
**Wyatt:** Well, and that the king will end up being the food for beggars.
**Meredith:** Eventually dies andā¦
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Sterrantino:** Exactly. And so, itās both directions, yeah.
**Wyatt:** Both directions. That ultimately, we become fertilizer or food.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. Yeah, which is something, I think, you canāt say that directly to the king but because itās in word play, and he wasnāt talking directly to the king anyway at that point, but it was in word play and he was just kind of making a funny observation and so you can get away with saying things like that.
**Meredith:** So, a lot is made of Hamlet feigning madness, and then some scholars, I think, think that at some point, he actually really loses his mind for at least a portion of the play, or at the very least, he becomes so riveted, so fascinated by the idea of revenge that heās not thinking clearly and heās not really just going through the motions of pretending. And maybe heās just a great actor, but thereās an interesting part of his character, I think, that Iād like to get your insight on, which is that we hear him talk a lot. He seems like he is constantly, āTo be, or not to be.ā Heās constantly weighing life and death, heās constantlyā¦he seems almost paralyzed. Because if he wasā¦he becomes fairly early on convinced that this is the ghost of his fatherā¦
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** He should avenge his father. Well, just take the sword while heās asleep and chop his head off, right? And I think there are people, Laertes maybe, these are men of action who would do that. Instead, Hamlet, and of courseā¦well, part of itās a plot contrivance because that would be a 15 minute play otherwise instead of two and a half hours, but part of his character, part of his makeup seems to be this constant weighingā¦
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** Of things. And, of course, itās some of Shakespeareās most beautiful and most haunting writing, but ultimately, it makes him a character thatās inside himself all the time. Inside his head. We hear that a lot and we hear his thoughts in a way that maybe in a movie we might hear as a voice over almost.
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** We get inside this character. But he seems almost stymied into inaction by that and Iāve always wondered, people that lead lives of the mind.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** Areā¦theyāre really interesting to talk to, but ultimately nothing happens or ultimately you donāt get anything done. \[All laugh\] And thereās probably something to do with higher education here sometimes that Iām trying to make. \[Laughs\]
**Sterrantino:** Thatās what I thought of. \[Laughs\]
**Meredith:** But, I guess what Iām saying is thereāsā¦Iām always fascinated every time I see this play by how much we hear of him but how little he actually does. And then, when the action happens, boy, it really happens in a flurry, in a burst.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, yeah.
**Meredith:** But really, the whole play is him interacting but really even less of that, just thinking about these tragic events that have led up to him and then weighing life versus death, weighing committing suicide versus being alive and all those things.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** And Iāveā¦to me, to me that is one of the things that makes Hamlet such an interesting character, maybe so enduring, is because we really get in his mind in a way that we maybe donāt with other Shakespeare characters.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, I think thatās true. Because we see a lot of plays where somebody needs to be avenged and they go out and avenge them.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** And thatās the end of the whole thing. But, yeah, in this one, he starts out melancholy before anyā¦well, obviously he lost his father, but it lingers more than I think it does maybe for most people, and that gets mentioned. But then, he shies away from it. He really didnāt want to have to kill anybody and I think thatās one reason that his fatherās ghost made him swear because he probably knew he wasnāt really had a strong enough will to do it because he wanted to do it. And then he hems and haws about it for a good portion of the play where heās not sure if he should do it, if it would be easier if he was just dead because heās so unhappy, but, of course, what is it exactlyā¦when he did the āWhat dreams may comeā so,
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, thereās the rub;
For \[in\] that sleep of death what dreams may come
When he have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: thereās the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and the scorns of time,
For oppressorās wrong, the proud manās contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the lawās delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?
(Saying he could just kill himself)
Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscoverād country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
So, if it were simple for him, if anything were simple for him, he would just kill himself. That would solve the problem.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** He wouldnāt have to kill his uncle, he wouldnāt have to deal with his mother or anything of that, but, because his father, right at the beginning, makes him swear to do this vengeance but also the fact that heās saying, āIām also a cowardā which thatās a different debate whether itās cowardly or not to commit suicide, but from his own point of view, heās too cowardly to do that. And he really does feel to cowardly even to kill his uncle. But you mentioned a second ago whether he was feigning madness or became mad and I donāt know the answer to that. I believe that he absolutely feigns it, at least at the beginning, I think he gets really caught up in the revenge more than feigning madnessā¦or, not feigning madness, becoming mad, and I think itās only with the death of Ophelia how far he really took it. How much the effect of his actions effected other people, even people he loved. Because he clearly loved Ophelia, and then when she was dead, he was like, āOh, wow. I loved her so much.ā And I think in his mind heās thinking, āI should have been paying more attention to what I was doing to her but I was so busyā and this is not in the words of the play, this is me, āI was so busy getting revenge for my father that I did not realize that I had destroyed her.ā
**Wyatt:** You know, the question aboutā¦that the two of you are talking about Joy and Steve and why is it taking Hamlet so long to figure out to do what he is supposed to do and is he a coward or not or whatever, Iā¦so, whatās great about Hamlet is that any opinion has been stated by some expert.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** Because so many people have talked about it, so I donāt mean to say that this is true, but Iām inclined to believe that this play has nothing to do with revenge, it has everything to do with good government/bad government, because if it was about revenge, he could have just taken revenge. But weā¦
**Meredith:** And also, humanā¦
**Wyatt:** But we drag this out so longā¦
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Wyatt:** So that we can talk about human nature.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** The nature of governance and āDoes the rule of law apply to the leaders?ā And we have this horribly corrupt government where theyāre turning friends against friends, getting friends to spy against friends.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** Manipulating their own family members, like Ophelia, to play in their plot or to take advantage of them and this is one of the reasons why the play is so prominent among plays is that itās kind of a play for all times.
**Meredith:** Yep.
**Wyatt:** In that this is what we need to be careful of.
**Meredith:** Well, and you can see yourself in Hamlet as he weighs those things if you were presented with the same, or similar, choices.
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** You can see that, you know, on the one hand, this and on the other hand, this. And I think that everybody goes through that process. Itās just that he does it so much and so beautifully in such, as you read that again, Iām just still astonished. āBare bodkin,ā āAy, thereās the rub.ā In just those ten lines you read there are things that we say all the time.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** And itās justā¦itās indicative of the beauty of Shakespeareās writing the impact heās had on the English language, but also I think everybody can see themselves in that inability to make that decision and inability to make hard decisions.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. I mean, itās really hard to envision the fact, the idea ofā¦for us to say, āOh, what would I do if a ghost came and told me, if a family member came and told me that I needed to do this?ā Or really anybody else. I mean, it could be an angel or whatever. āWhat do I do about that when itās really against my nature to do so?ā So, yeah. I think thatās one of the main reasons that it does resonate with people because he struggles so much and so openly about that decision of what to do. About his own life, about Claudiusās life and then heās starting to lose trust in other people because of these things that have happened. Heās losing trust in his mother even though his mother didnāt mean to do anything wrong.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** But obviously, from his point of view, she did do that by marrying so quickly.
**Meredith:** And if you feel like you canāt even trust your own motherā¦
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, thatās a problem.
**Meredith:** That really would shake you to your foundations.
**Sterrantino:** Well, yeah. And thatās, again, while he was attacking Ophelia, he essentially, well, OK, essentially said, āIf my motherā and again, these are not the words of the play, āIf I canāt trust my mother then all women must be corrupt and I just need to stay away from them.ā
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** āAnd theyāre all evil.ā Which is a huge jump, but heās a very emotional man and so, everything that he does is this huge emotional decision and emotional toll that it takes on him.
**Wyatt:** āGet thee to a nunnery.ā
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. He thought it would be better to live a chaste life rather than lie to somebody. Which we know that she didnāt actually do, but at that point, I actually thinkā¦because that was the part that threw me about, āWas he really being mad or not? Why would he hurt Ophelia?ā But, I think he was so hurt by his mother at that point that he took some of that out on her. So, I donāt think all of it was, āHey, Iām going to plan on hurting Ophelia.ā I think he was hurt and confused and angry and he took some of it out on her.
**Meredith:** Yeah. There are some versions of the play and some experts Iāve heard opine that theyāve actually already been intimate, Hamlet and Ophelia, and that perhaps sheās even carrying a child and that this has led her to the fateful decision to kill herself, essentially. And thereās no indication in the textā¦
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** Of any of that, but as you said, President, every expert with a Ph.D. has weighed in on this play.
**Wyatt:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** And there are some that have said, āYeah, heās mean to herā and I guess if she felt like she had no control over her life and she had a brother and a father that were really controlling and then the one man that she loved all the sudden turned on her, maybe that would make her so despondent, but perhaps there were also these other things that were not in the play.
**Sterrantino:** Well, sure.
**Meredith:** Or were not obvious in the play.
**Wyatt:** And maybe somethingās going on thatā¦
**Meredith:** Right.
**Wyatt:** We canāt tell you.
**Meredith:** Yeah, so you have to come see the other version of the play.
**Wyatt:** So, you have to come watch it.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Wyatt:** The new, improved Ophelia.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Wyatt:** So, we have a friend who lives in Washington, D.C., taught Shakespeare at Georgetown University and served as a board member of the Shakespeare Theater there. His wife served on a Shakespeare board in another community and has a daughter serving in another one. So, thereās three and he comes out to Cedar City every summer with his family to watch plays here. What he would say is, if he was here, is that this is the best theater because you watch the play in the evening and then the next morning, you get to attend the seminar. We have a pre-play orientation, presentation, for those that choose, then the play, then the next morning you can sit and talk with an expert and others who watched the play the night before and discuss it. It makes it a complete interesting package.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** Where that if you watch a play in a big city at some theaterā¦
**Sterrantino:** Well, even at the globe. They donāt do that at the globe.
**Wyatt:** You just go home.
**Meredith:** Yeah, thatās right.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** You just go home. Itās over, you just go home. You donāt have a chance to really talk it through. This is the best place to watch a play.
**Meredith:** Thatās a very cool part of what we do here.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, it is.
**Wyatt:** Ophelia is, I think, the most sympathetic character in the play because sheās manipulated by her father, by the king, whatever happens with her and Hamlet. She falls in love with Hamlet and her dad and her brother remind her that sheās a lower class than Hamlet, that she should get away from him.
**Sterrantino:** Well, because she'sāā¦they essentially think that Hamletās playing with her.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** But even theā¦
**Wyatt:** But even that, the daughter of a servant of the king is notā¦it doesnāt go anywhere if you fall in love with the kingās son.
**Sterrantino:** Although, Polonius does apologize for that later when he reads the letter. Heās like, āOh, OK. I think he actually meant it. I didnāt realizeā¦ā
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** But, at the very first part where Ophelia comes in, Laertes lecturing her, then Polonius lectures her and makes him show her the letter, which Iā¦the privacy thing is just not an option for her. Yeah. So, you know. Thereās this whole background that we donāt know about where, I realize that women had very few rights in that time period, but at the same time, maybe her family was worse than most families. You donāt know that part of it either.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** Again, we donāt know her background, but yeah. So, thereās just a lot of other people telling her who she is and what she needs to do.
**Meredith:** Yeah. I think that is why sheās so sympathetic is because these wheels are set in motion and sheās really powerless, more or less, to stop any of it. Itās why Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is funny, too. These are these two, smallā¦
**Sterrantino:** Big players.
**Meredith:** Characters and now itās Hamlet told from their point of view and their kind of watching the whole thing unfold and saying, āWhat the heck is going on?ā
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** And itās kind of these absurdist comedy thing between these two goofy friends of Hamletās and so, there are those characters to whom the play happens.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** And thatās kind of what I think about Ophelia. This whole thing is just happening to her and itā¦thereās nothing she can do about it.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, in a way, the whole play happened to everybody.
**Meredith:** Yeah, right.
**Sterrantino:** Thereās really nobody, I think, that actually has control over anything.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** Because even Hamlet gets his revenge, but he died.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** So, that didnāt go over as well as he was hoping.
**Meredith:** Well, that was the whole thing about that Oedipus and the Greek fate versus free choice was, āDoes anybody in this play really have any choice?ā If your father came to you and said, āSwear an oath, youāve got to avenge my death.ā Well, that feels like the Gods to me. Feels like thatās taking your free will away.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. Well, and this play hasā¦so, what we would say is, āRead this play.ā This is a great play to read.
**Meredith:** Itās amazing.
**Wyatt:** Read the play and then come watch it. But additionally, thereās a lot of other ways that somebody can be introduced to this play and one of them is to watch movies like The Lion King.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** Which is aā¦
**Sterrantino:** Which is the retelling of Hamlet.
**Wyatt:** Retelling the story.
**Sterrantino:** Of course, itās not exact, right?
**Wyatt:** Yeah, they changeā¦
**Sterrantino:** But itās offā¦the main plot is there.
**Meredith:** I saw a funny internet meme that down the left hand side was all the things that happened in Hamlet and on the right hand sideā¦the last thing was, in Hamlet, everybody dies, in Lion King, Elton John sings a song at the end, \[All laugh\]
**Sterrantino:** Itās Disney, what do you want?
**Meredith:** There you go.
**Sterrantino:** Thatās funny.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. All the characters are there. The ending is a little different.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Wyatt:** Not everyone dies in Lion King. Itās a Disney movie, so it has to have a happy ending.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. But, for people who are intimidated by the language, and I get that, it gets easier, for one thing. But there are other ways to read it. Thereās No Fear Shakespeare and they have a website, even, where you can read the play and a modern interpretation of it. So, if you donāt know what some of the language means, which, thereās no reason why you would know that. So, at the time, that was the language they spoke, but we donāt speak early modern English anymore, except for in that circumstance, but there are ways to learn the language. But, even if you donāt get everything, the more you go to these plays, the more you start to understand. So, a lot of it is just exposing yourself to it and I know people are worried aboutā¦sometimes people are worried about feeling stupid.
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** Not being able to keep up, and thatās OK. If you donāt, you can always watch it again, or, again, with reading the book where you can slow down and look at it. One of the things that I teach my 1010s is I always teach them one of the plays from whatever Shakespeare Utah Shakespeare Festival is doing and we do the graphic novel of it.
**Meredith:** Oh.
**Sterrantino:** So, they have the visual and the words, which I think is a really good way to learn Shakespeare because you have context for the words, but you can also do it at your own pace, where with the play, you just want to tell the actors, āHang on! Iām not there yet!ā
**Meredith:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** āIām still trying to figure out what you said.ā
**Meredith:** And reading the book, the struggle for me with the book, and I was glad what I thought was a really great annotated version of it that just had a running glossary.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** But, I just thought to myself, āHoly mackerel, itās so much easier when you add the action to this.ā
**Sterrantino:** Oh, yeah.
**Wyatt:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** Itās so much easier. Because I just would think, āOK, I got about six words out of that previous paragraph and they were all ātheā and āand.āā \[All laugh\] So, Iām checking the glossary, Iām going to the bottom of the page every line three or four times.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, itās practice but thatās the way these plays were never meant to be read, that was not the intention. They were intended to be watched by a modern audience of their timeā¦
**Meredith:** Right.
**Sterrantino:** That would understand it. It was not this haughty thing just for kings and queens, which I think thereās a misinterpretation that some people think that thatās what Shakespeare was about, but it wasnāt. He had the groundlingsā¦I teach study abroad with Jeb Branin in London two weeks every May and we take them to Shakespeareās plays, and we have the students be groundlings. So, they stand up, right? And some of them were leaning straight against the play. That was the common people, you made sure that they could afford to go.
**Meredith:** Hmm.
**Sterrantino:** They understood the jokes, or even when it wasnāt a joke. Obviously there arenāt a lot of jokes in Hamlet, there are some, but he made sure that that was accessible to everybody. That was super important to Shakespeareās time.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. And there are a lot of editions of Shakespeare. The one that I read was Folgerās Shakespeare.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Wyatt:** And I read it on my Kindle.
**Sterrantino:** Oh, yeah.
**Wyatt:** Which made it very enjoyable because Iād hit something like, āBrevity is the soul of witā and Iād think, āOK what does that exactly mean?ā And Iād click on it and it says to me, āA wise speech, a few words carry the central meaning.ā It has nothing to do with wit in the sense that I think of whit.
**Sterrantino:** Yeah, not the way we think of whit.
**Wyatt:** Itās just saying, āMake your words brief and it will be more effective.ā
**Sterrantino:** Which is exactly why that is funny in that play because Polonius just goes on and on and on about everything, but he says that. So, he knows the rules, he just doesnāt follow them.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. But constantly through here, it was fun to click on a word and get the definition.
**Meredith:** Yeah, the commonly used at that time definition.
**Wyatt:** It kind of slowed me down because I found it fun to explore the language.
**Sterrantino:** Well, itās so much easier than it used to be that way. So, you either had a version that had a glossary or annotations on the side, or you just had to kind of force your way through it and now, thereās all kinds of ways to learn Shakespeare. One of the reasons that I wanted to go into Shakespeare studies is because I thought, āI really want to know this language. I want to understand it and be able to go to the plays and get whatās going on no matter what it is.ā And that fascinated me. But it was harder to study it back without the internet.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Wyatt:** Yeah.
**Sterrantino:** And without these easier versionsā¦
**Wyatt:** So accessible.
**Sterrantino:** Of the play to read, yeah. Like, No Fear Shakespeare is a really good one because itās modern wording on one side and the actual wording on the other side. And it was kind of this thing like, āWell, if you canāt figure it out, you shouldnāt be reading Shakespeareā which is not really true.
**Wyatt:** It wasnāt Shakespeareās intent.
**Sterrantino:** No, definitely not.
**Meredith:** No, surely not.
**Sterrantino:** Well, itās also funny because I had heard before, and I think I thought this when I was a kid, that āShakespeare would never make a dirty jokeā or whatever, which is all he does. \[Laughs\]
**Meredith:** Wanna bet? \[Laughs\]
**Sterrantino:** Yeah. You know, he wasnāt body. He was just very, very body and if he was doing things today, we donāt think about that very often, but if he was doing things today, theyād probably be rated R, there would probably be nudity, there probably would be a lot of language in it.
**Wyatt:** Well, there is a lot of language in it.
**Sterrantino:** Well, there is, we just donāt get the language.
**Wyatt:** We donāt get it.
**Sterrantino:** I actually think Shakespeare wouldnāt be taught in high school if the students understood what they were reading. But since they donāt, we donāt have to worry about that. But if it was put into modern terms, it might be a little iffy.
**Wyatt:** Thereās a lot of phrases that we just let go over our heads because we donāt understand them.
**Meredith:** Yeah. This is the argument I have with colleagues all the time in Classical music. In some cases, this was meant to be some special thing that was meant only for a special group of people, but 95% of these people were just trying to write hits.
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** Mozart was trying to write a hit, and he wanted it to be accessible for everyone. By the end of his life, heās lost most of his jobs.
**Sterrantino:** Right.
**Meredith:** Kind of drunk his way through most of the really good jobs in Europe at the time and was essentially writing operas on spec for whoever would produce them, and these things had to be hits so that he could feed Costanza and the kids. So, to imagine that, āWell, if you canāt understandā¦ā No, these were people working with the language of the time, these were people working with the music of their time trying to write popular entertainment. Itās just the fact that they happened to be towering intellects of all time that the stuff continues to be amazing and it amazes at the very most elite level, but also, who doesnātā¦who canāt whistle a Mozart theme?
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** It appeals and thatās what he was trying to do. He was trying to write hits.
**Sterrantino:** And Shakespeare was really successful. Thereās this myth that if youāre a playwright or in the arts, which is still a myth, that you canāt make a decent living, but he owned part of the Globe, he was really pretty well off. He did really well. He had the favor of Queen Elizabeth and then James I, and thereās always references to both of them in just about every play. So, you could look at Gertrude as the aging Elizabeth now. Of course, you would never say that outright because that would have made her unhappy, but he always had veiled references to things that were going on in society. This way, he could deny it if the king or queen were angry with him and said, āI canāt believe you said that about me!ā āOh, that wasnāt about you! That was just this other thing that I made up.ā But, yeah. So, he definitely was really successful at his time, too. It wasnāt just now.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. And he takes liberties with the facts in his historical plays.
**Sterrantino:** Sure.
**Wyatt:** He takes a lot of liberties, but times havenāt changed much.
**Sterrantino:** No. We think of Richard III and the deformity supposedly that he had and that most of us grew up watching him always deformed, and then they found his skeleton a few years ago, he was not nearly that deformed. He wasnāt completely crippled at all, but there was this idea of that, and I think it was more symbolic than physical but it because a physical attribute as time went by.
**Wyatt:** Well, everybody should come see the play and everybody should read it and think about what it means. And then, because Cedar City is the destination for the Utah Shakespeare Festival, most of those that come to see the play will stay overnight.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Wyatt:** Spend a little bit of time here. Make sure that, if any of our listeners are coming to see Hamlet this summer, again, it opens on July 5th, stay overnight and then come the next morning and listen to the seminar. Not listen to the seminar but participate in the seminar.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Wyatt:** The discussion about the play. Thatās what makes it so much fun.
**Meredith:** And then call you or me and we can go to lunch. And weāll give them a tour of our palatial podcast studio. \[All laugh\]
**Wyatt:** I had the opportunity to sit in on some of the tryouts and readings of this playā¦
**Meredith:** Really?
**Wyatt:** In anticipation of this summer, and to watch these professional actors go through some of the lines and then to have our artistic director, Brian Vaughn, say, āWould you take a slightly different approach to this?ā And instantly, they were a different person reading the same lines. And I thought, āWow, the magic of live theater.ā
**Sterrantino:** Thatās true. And Shakespeare, in general, there have been plays Iāve watched dozens of times, and Iām like, āWow, I donāt even remember that partā because it was portrayed so differently.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Wyatt:** It was deemphasized.
**Sterrantino:** Mhmm.
**Meredith:** So, President, our third book for the summer is Tao Te Ching, the kind of founding book of Taoism, right?
**Wyatt:** Yeah.
**Meredith:** And you were telling me earlier when we were having a discussion about the fact that you are actually reading a couple of other books and here came some quotes.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. So, Tao Te Ching is, Bryce Christensen from our English department is going to join us to discuss that and when I was talking to him about it, he mentioned that it is a fairly short book so it doesnāt take a long time to read it, but it does take a lifetime to think about it. So, this isnāt a hard read, but whatās been so interesting is that the book has never been really present in my mind thinking about it. But I read it quite a bit and ever since we decided it that this book was going to be part of our summer book club, I have read quotes from it in two other, random books.
**Meredith:** All of the sudden you see it everywhere.
**Wyatt:** And hereās one. This is a book called Atomic Habits.
**Meredith:** Thatās a hot, best-selling book, Atomic Habits.
**Wyatt:** Yeah. āMen are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.ā But this was in a book about how to form great habits and the idea that we donāt want our habits to become so hard, good or bad, that we become a disciple of death because dead things are not at all flexible.
**Meredith:** Thatās right.
**Wyatt:** Living thingsā¦
**Meredith:** Thatās how we know they are dead, they snap in half.
**Wyatt:** Thatās how we know they are dead. So, Iām super excited. I havenāt started reading this yet. I donāt know if you have, Steve.
**Meredith:** Nope.
**Wyatt:** I havenāt started reading but Iām excited to read this book. Again, itās a fairly quick read with a lot of thought. It just is interesting thought after interesting thought after interesting thought from a very old text. Far older than Shakespeare.
**Meredith:** Right.
**Wyatt:** Probably easier to read than Shakespeare.
**Meredith:** Wellā¦
**Wyatt:** The quotes that Iāve read have all been easier to understand.
**Meredith:** But laden with meaning.
**Wyatt:** Laden with meaning and a lifetime to think about it.
**Meredith:** Cool, that will be fun. Iām looking forward to that. You've been listening to Solutions for Higher Education, a podcast featuring Scott L Wyatt, the president of Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. Weāve enjoyed our conversation today with Joy Sterrantino from our English faculty and weāve been discussing Hamlet, which is not only the worldās greatest play, but also going to be part of the Utah Shakespeare Festival beginning July 5th. We invite you to Cedar City to come and see a very special version of that play. We invite you to finish reading this play with us if you havenāt, and, as always, we appreciate you continuing to be our faithful listeners. Weāll be back again soon. Bye bye. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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