Poland is Hamlet. Why has Hamlet in particular and Shakespeare in general gained such prominence in
Poland is Hamlet. Why has Hamlet in particular and Shakespeare in general gained such prominence in the Polish imagination? In this blog Professor Tony Howard ((University of Warwick) reflects on this question. Hear more from Tony on 4 July where he will speak as part of Wyspiański: Hamlet Study and The Death of Ophelia. Hamlet sits amongst the drinkers, trying to avoid theirhostile stares and the raucous singing. He must concentrate on his thoughts. Inthis tiny space it is impossible to ignore the fact that Hamlet, almost in thelaps of the spectators, wears the striped trousers of a Jewish prisoner inAuschwitz.Hamlet paces amongst us in her dressing room, her pale facereflected in the make-up mirror. She looks out onto the stage of Krakow’slegendary Stary Theatre, where Claudius and his court are shouting reassuringplatitudes out into the auditorium - which is empty. Hamlet pulls herselftogether, preparing to take on the suicidal role for which she feels unfitted.Outside the theatre, in the ‘real’ world, Communism is collapsing.Hamlet hacks at golf balls as the crowd enters the Gdanskshipyard where, over twenty years ago, Solidarity was born and the Cold Warended. Suddenly the abandoned post-industrial buildings echo with the clatterof horseshoes. Suddenly a siren sounds and the spotlights find Ophelia floatingin the dark water. Inside, Claudius smilingly teaches his friends the rightpronunciation of European wines.These are scenes from three legendary productions – orrather, perhaps, threeinvestigations of Shakespeare’s tragedy -performed in modern Poland. They date from 1964, 1991 and 2004 and weredirected respectively by Jerzy Grotowski, Andzej Wajda and Jan Klata. There will be a chance for UK audiences to see fragments ofthose extraordinary stagings at Shakespeare’s Globe on Wednesday 26 June at the start of the Shakespeare and Poland Festival -when leading directors (including Jan Klata) and academics come together totalk about the profound and passionate relationship between that country andthat play. However brief, those clips will hint at what we’ve been missing.‘It is Poland that inour time has come closest to the tumult, the damage, the intensity, theimaginativeness and the daily involvement with the social process that madelife so horrible, subtle and ecstatic to an Elizabethan. So it is quitenaturally up to a Pole to point us the way.’Peter Brook, 1964The Pole in question here was the critic Jan Kott. For Brookwas introducing Kott’s new book ShakespeareOur Contemporary, which revolutionised the way we think about the playsonstage, so that we now take it for granted that every time we see themperformed, they are speaking to us - and speaking about us and our hopes andanxieties – here and now.Jan Kott wrote of one play in particular: ‘Hamlet’ is like a sponge. Unless it isproduced in a stylised or antiquarian fashion, it immediately absorbs all theproblems of our time.’ His chapter on Hamletfocused on a Polish performance justafter the end of Stalinism (Stalin hated this play, of course, this study oftyranny, repression and stifled protest).Here, Kott wrote, here on the public stage was what Hamlet meant in 1956, thereand then: ‘It was a political drama. Everybody, without exception, was beingconsistently watched… unequivocally and with a terrifying clarity.’ After adecade, the censorship had relaxed little and - as soon as the tragedy could beperformed again in Poland - it was holding the mirror up to its times.When in 1965 the Royal Shakespeare Company staged Hamlet, the programme included a poem by Zbigniew Herbert, whoremembered only too clearly how Hitler and Stalin had fought to the death torule over Poland - and who knew that Fortinbras isn’t a Saviour: ‘Adieu prince I have tasks’, he tells Hamlet’s corpse: ‘I must also elaborate a better system ofprisons/since as you justly said Denmark is a prison.’1964, 1991, 2004: Those great productions by Grotowski, Wajda andKlata showed how the spaces that Hamlet isacted in are part of its meaning, and that environment is history. They showed how rehearsals can become intense journeys ofexploration for all those involved, both the actors and the audience: psychological,ethical, generational…. Journeys of conscience, journeys towards newconceptions of identity, gender and race.Hamlet asks a soldier where Fortinbras’s army is marching. ‘Some part of Poland’ is the reply. Where are we headed - here and now, on the verge of regime change,in Summer 2019? Can Hamlet or history‘point us the way’?With BarbaraBogoczek,Tony has translated Stanislaw Wyspianski’s seminal book, The Hamlet Study and The Death of Ophelia,published by Shakespeare’s Globe. Extracts – English premieres - will be stagedin the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 4 July in Wyspiański: Hamlet Study and The Death of Ophelia. -- source link
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