April 29

Hamlet

Posted at 10:49 AM

In keeping with the “new me” who has recently rediscovered the joys of culture as a good gift from God and not something inherently “unspiritual”, I went to see Hamlet last night. I’ve never seen a live Shakespeare tragedy, so it was something I was looking forward to greatly (particularly as the Tobacco Factory do great Shakespeare). I was going with a friend who’d not ever seen Hamlet, but was a fan of Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (based on arguably pointless characters in Hamlet). So we were both quite excited, though wondering if we were just going to be thoroughly depressed by Hamlet moping for three hours. (Major plot points mentioned in the next paragraph – just in case someone cares.)

Turns out he was a very excitable and – though depressed – lively and almost comic character, so not a stereotypical Hamlet in any way, but brilliant none the less. An incredibly young-looking Ophelia was suitably melancholic; Polonius, (“brevity is the soul of wit”) wonderfully long-winded; and Claudius and Gertrude suitably guilt-ridden, schmaltzy and scheming as the situation demanded. You’re left guessing as to what’s going on in Hamlet’s head, and it makes Ophelia’s death and Hamlet’s reaction all the more poignant when up until then it had seemed that his desire for revenge had made him forget his love for her.

On Sunday we’d been discussing how Christians should engage with art that portrays immoral acts – is it okay to enjoy watching a tragedy like this, where none of the main characters (excepting Ophelia) seem to be those you can sympathise with? Is portrayal of sin outside of the oft-quoted Philippians verse: “whatever is noble and praiseworthy, think about such things”? Maybe I’ll come back to that another time. I did enjoy it, despite the tragic ending – almost because of the tragic ending! The play shows a world tainted by sin, and its consequences. It’s not enjoyable because I’m delighting in the sin shown, but as an act of creative genius that shows us our own natures. God in his grace has restrained human sinfulness in many ways, because if he hadn’t, many more stories would end up like Hamlet’s. If reading or watching such things was wrong, then we couldn’t read much of Old Testament history!

More and more I’m seeing the wonders of God’s gift of creativity. I pray that I won’t now go to the extreme and put art in the place of God (exchanging the giver for the gift). Art was made by God, and points to God: may I never lose sight of that.

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Comments

  1. Tony Watkins in one of his seminars on culture/media at Word Alive made an interesting point on Philippians 4:8.

    Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

    Does the verse only mean that we should think about things that are noble and lovely and admirable, etc., or does Paul mean that they need just one of these attributes to qualify? He argued the latter – what about those passages in scripture showing humanity’s sin? They do not show something that is lovely and pure. But it is true. You could apply the same argument to anything that portrays sin accurately, like Hamlet. But you can’t say the same thing for many modern films, books, TV shows, etc., which don’t show sin in a truthful manner.

    Sheepie on

  2. That’s an interesting idea! The way I was going with it was in terms of the context of the command: in the next verse talks about “these things that you have heard from me” – in other words, what verse 8 seems to be talking about is actually the gospel that Paul taught them, potentially amongst other things. It’s impossible to think constantly about those things, because there are other things we have to think about, so the command seems to be to “think on these things”, but not to the exclusion of thinking on other things.

    Lots of films or TV shows today don’t show sin accurately – anything which presents a picture of sexual promiscuity that has no real consequences, for example – but that doesn’t necessarily exclude us from watching them. If they’re going to affect us adversely, though, we probably shouldn’t.

    Matthew on