In a course I’m on at the City Lit we’ve been looking at Hamlet. It’s a play I’ve always loved, and I’ve especially enjoyed seeing various productions of it over the years, both on stage and on screen. It has always fascinated me how a play can be interpreted so differently by different directors and actors.
In recent years I’ve become interested in a branch of writing called Oulipo, and have discovered that it’s not only people associated with the theatre or film who have put their individual stamp on Hamlet. Writers too have got in on the act.
Harry Matthews, an American, created a work called 35 Variations on Theme from Shakespeare, which appears in the Penguin Book of Oulipo, and in the Oulipo Compendium. These are based on the source text “To be or not to be, that is the question.”
The idea originates from Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style (Amazon affiliate link), in which the author takes a very mundane incident and reworks it in various ways.
My favourite three “variations” are:
Another point of view:
“Hamlet, quit stalling.”
Emphasis:
“To be, if you see what I mean, to BE, be alive, exist, not just keep hanging around; OR (ant that means one or the other, no getting away from it) NOT to be, NOT be alive, NOT exist, to — putting it bluntly — check out, cash in your chips, head west; THAT (do you read me? not “maybe this” or “maybe something else”) THAT is, really IS, irrevocably IS, THE one and only inescapable, overwhelming and totally preoccupying ultimate QUESTION.”
Amplification:
“To live forever or never to have been born is a concern that has perplexed humanity from time immemorial and still does.”
These treatments serve both to highlight the beauty of the original language, and to put the issue in stark, modern, terms.
A version of the entire play appears in the Oulipo Compendium. Called “The Skinhead Hamlet”, by Richard Curtiss, it renders the whole thing (all four plus hours of it!) into two pages. It’s humorous in its own way, but in true skinhead style it’s full of swear words. For example:
“Act II, Scene 1: A corridor in the castle
Enter Hamlet reading. Enter Polonius.
Polonius: Oi! You!
Hamlet: F—- off, grandad!
[Exit Polon. Enter Rosencrantz & Guildernstern]”
For what it’s worth, my own attempt at making Hamlet accessible to the modern reader was Hamlet Reimagined As The Dice Man.
This sort of thing is, in a sense, pointless, but I think it serves, or can serve, some serious purposes.
Firstly, it really does indicate how great the original is, so great that you can mangle it almost out of recognition and yet it still, on some level, works. I am reminded of great music, like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. As well as different versions executed at different speeds, I’ve heard prog rock and disco versions and it’s still a fantastic piece of music: it’s so good that it seems to be indestructible.
Secondly, a good teacherly exercise would be to ask students to rewrite it in their own words. I’ve seen “hip” versions of “Romeo, Romeo” and “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” and they work!
And thirdly, and following on from that point, it’s quite good fun.
This is the text used on the course. Unlike the Oulipo versions this is the real thing! Click the cover to see this book on Amazon (affiliate link)
I’ll be taking a very short course called Writing the Oulipo: a taster, on 19 June 2021. As it’s name implies, this is an introductory class, and lasts for just two and a half hours. If you’re interested in learning a few techniques to expand your writing ideas, along with suggestions for further reading, then sign up. It will take place online, so from a geographical point of view it doesn’t matter where in the world you are. Details here: Writing the Oulipo: A Taster.