Looking for Shakespeare
Shakespeare is appropriated by educators and others to serve their own purposes (Allen, 1991, p. 42–43), whether they be to teach the heritage of English literature, to perpetuate the examinations system, the Shakespeare industry and its Bardolatry, or, in this case, to promote adolescent response. The perspective from which Looking for Shakespeare begins is that of an inquiry into the layers of personal meaning in the play: Shakespeare’s “open text” challenges participants to reassess and transform their perceptions and their worldview (Allen, 1991, p. 45). A four–week intensive theatre workshop for adolescents which began at New York University in 1999, the program was conceived for inner–city adolescents who may not have had any theatre background to get to know and to perform a Shakespeare play. We adopted an integrated arts approach, employing improvisation, role play, visual art, creative writing, movement and music to explore and illuminate the text.
Framing in Hamlet
A # %fter The Murder of Gonzago has come to its premature end, Guildenstern chides the irrepressible Hamlet: "Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame" (3.2.300). Guildenstern clearly means to call the wild and whirling words of the Prince into discursive order, but the formulation of his remark makes him appear even more obtuse than usual.1 Hamlet has framed a theatrical mousetrap to demonstrate Claudius's guilt, and he has surrounded this play-within-a-play with a framing discourse. Not only has Guildenstern witnessed The Murder of Gonzago without noticing that framing discourse, he has apparently forgotten Hamlet's discourse on framing, delivered just a few scenes earlier:
Shakespeare in the Caribbean: The Morant Bay Massacre, Jamaica, 1865
If any one asks me whether I consider that the palace I see before me is beautiful, I may, perhaps, reply that I do not care for things of that sort that are merely made to be gaped at. Or I may reply in the same strain as that Iroquois sachem who said that nothing in Paris pleased him better than the eatinghouses. I may even go a step further and inveigh with the vigour of a Rousseau against the vanity of the great who spend the sweat of the people on such superfluous things. Or, in fine, I may quite easily persuade myself that if I found myself on an uninhabited island, without hope of ever again coming among men, and could conjure such a palace into existence by a mere wish, I should still not trouble to do so, so long as I had a hut there that was comfortable enough for me.—Kant, The Critique of Judgement