Coriolanus and Hamlet

I think I was around eight years old when I first heard about Hamlet. At that time, I had so many funny conceptions of words, like when I heard my brother asking for a thesaurus, I was wondering why he wanted a specific dinosaur and having Charlie Brown's Encyclopedia volume 3 as my favorite, I also wondered how come the Thesaurus was not included in the book. Around that time, as I was fond of reading my elder siblings' school books (mine are boring), I chanced upon Hamlet and in my mind, Hamlet is somewhat like a small version of Peppa Pig, a brave and courageous leader whose story I never would know until today.

Last week, I watched National Theatre's Coriolanus which had Tom Hiddleston of Marvel's Loki fame playing the Roman general whose tragic life invites both contempt and sympathy depending on perhaps the background of the reader/ audience. I greatly sympathize with his character, a victim of cunning but incompetent politicians who hold power to sway the people to to choose Barrabas over Jesus. Of course, Coriolanus is not your perfect main character, being himself clothed with pride, although I would say he possesses merit by single-handedly dealt with the Volscians of Corioli. When he gains power he withholds grain from those without military service, and we as reader/ audience can understand fully well where he is coming from. During the siege of Corioli, he is abandoned by cowards. And indeed it is always a timeless story of how competent people's virtues are overshadowed by what is to the average person "hubris" but for the competent one, fairness and justice. To say that the play was executed marvelously is an understatement. We see with our own eyes how the fit Tom Hiddleston perfectly plays the role of the proud general. The ending was a real WOW with him chained upside down as Aufidius kills him. What really stands out in this Shakespearean play is how powerful women, or in particular the mother, can be in influencing even the most skilled warrior that she makes her son quit the plan to ransack the city that exiled him. (We also remember how Macbeth himself was persuaded by his wife to carry out the king's murder...) 

This weekend, my first choice is Stratford Festival's Hamlet. It seems that by the end of this year I will have gained much familiarity with The Bard's works. This is the fifth Shakespearean work I engage in and its theme of betrayals and usurpation. Here we deal with the son of a king who seeks revenge. Hamlet's father as ghost in the play reveals to his son that he is killed by his own brother Claudius who now reigns as king. Claudius even marries Queen Gertrude shortly after, leading to Hamlet's anger at the indecency. In Hamlet, we find The Bard's versatility for his ability to weave comic scenarios in an over-all morbid and tragic story as when Hamlet, pretending to be mad, playfully mocks Polonius. 

For all the lengthy soliloquies and dialogues, there are many questions that are sure to arise in the minds of careful readers/ audience. For instance, how come Gertrude agreed to marry her brother-in-law? Why did Ophelia become mad? Now if we are to believe the Ghost (Hamlet's father) we can see that Gertrude is a lustful woman but who probably is unaware that the brother killed her husband. I remember something Q told me though, that a decade ago, his close friend (also my classmate) liked me and so as respect for their friendship that means he could not like me. I have heard of the same thing from my male friends and the Bro Code dictates that a friend's ex may not be your lover or something like that. What more siblings. And especially a brother who kills his own brother. To give Gertrude the benefit of the doubt, she does not seem to have any idea about her husband's killer. But then with Claudius claiming her for his wife speaks a lot about his nature. Which leads us to our second question. When Ophelia suddenly appears as a madwoman, she is sweet even to Gertrude but is seemingly cold to Claudius. Her lines are wrapped in ambiguity but it is not hard to extrapolate that she is a victim of sexual assault, most likely by Claudius himself. In a later scene when she gives out flowers to people around her, she gives the rue to Claudius: "There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it “herb of grace” o' Sundays.—Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference." This insinuates that she knows of his crimes, most probably because she herself is a victim. 

I wish Q and I can watch something together. He's a very witty man and I would love to hear his thoughts on literary works. We both have short attention span but I think his condition is worse. (In retrospect, I think maybe that's the reason why he declined my invite to attend the Indian Film festival last year...) I at least was able to watch (although admittedly I fell asleep for some 15-20 minutes or so) Lav Diaz's five-hour film Norte Hangganan ng Kasaysayan and his nine-hour Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis thanks to UPFI, which I miss terribly. I hope UPFI also puts up a Youtube channel where they make Filipino films available for everyone.