A Cross - Post: We are all HAMLET

 
                                        (Original post can be found here)                                        

HAMLET, like all plays, is best seen live, and, I believe, best performed by young student actors.

Mel Gibson, in the Franco Zeffirelli 1990 adaptation, was in his mid-thirties. Kenneth Branagh (who directed as well as acted) in his 1996 version, was only a few years older.

They were brilliant performances, to be sure, and dazzled female audience members not just because of their magnetism and prowess. But the polish and confidence, while attractive, do not speak about the fatal flaw inside this corrupted soul, split apart by murder, and planning another.

In the youthful hands of director Nelsito Gomez's students from MINTeatro, the uncertainty and the existential angst that we all relate to came out in full force. I was lucky enough to catch their recently concluded production a few weeks ago, featuring a Shakespearean script given a new frame by Filipino Shakespeare authority Jaime del Mundo. Who would Hamlet be today, but the aloof kid in the black hoodie who sits far at the back of class, headphones on despite Teacher's lecturing, trying to put on a brave face while healing from the mental and emotional anguish of two years of the pandemic?

While HAMLET is best appreciated as a play watched live, it has inspired other literary works as well. Here are two I got to read during lockdown.

In NUTSHELL by Ian McEwan, the British author paid tribute to the Bard by putting wondrous original speeches written with a Shakespearean flair in the mouth of a babe yet to be born to a mother (Trudy, a modern Gertrude). This fetus overhears the plot to kill his father, with his uncle (Claude) in cahoots. 

The title comes from the quote in the play that goes: ""Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space -- were it not that I have bad dreams." Is it any wonder that the heart of this novel was an examination of consciousness, and whether it is a blessing or a curse?

In Maggie O'Farrel's HAMNET, she examines the death of Shakespeare's favorite son in a time of plague. It HURT to read this. It will go down as one of the most beautiful books I've ever read, but I dare not reread it for fear of reliving the trauma I felt the first time around. Huhuhuhu.

There is a reason why Shakespeare merely changed one letter from his son's name, in naming the cursed prince of Denmark. And just like how one death starts a chain of events in the play, so too, do we read about grief's ripples throughout even the most placid waters of family life.

(Interestingly enough, there is a recent movie about the impact of Hamnet's death, starring the self-directing Kenneth Branagh again, but this time, in the role of Will Shakespeare. ALL IS TRUE is streaming on Netflix.)

This was merely the tip of the iceberg of film adaptations and books inspired by this play! "The play's the thing," indeed. How infinite our obsession about this princeling, this mere quintessence of dust. For we are all Hamlet, all of us searching for our place in this world that can seem very dark and cruel.