{"id":9340,"date":"2024-04-24T19:21:42","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T19:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=9340"},"modified":"2024-04-25T15:24:04","modified_gmt":"2024-04-25T15:24:04","slug":"rappaports-hamlet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/24\/rappaports-hamlet\/","title":{"rendered":"Rappaport’s Hamlet"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The Life Between the Lines<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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A new independent edition of Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet<\/em> takes a strong stand in a scholarly gap but doesn\u2019t close the book on this most studied of plays.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Raquel Sequeira<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A new edition of Hamlet<\/em>? Why? I was curious when I learned about this publication, especially as it comes not from Arden or Folger, but from an individual scholar. Dr. Gideon Rappaport\u2019s critical text of Shakespeare\u2019s most criticized work is really many projects in one. Part scholarly argument, part dramaturgy, and part (a relatively small part) edited playtext. Yet all these different genres\u2014contained in one thick, hardback folio\u2013serve Rappaport\u2019s overriding mission: to restore the true Hamlet <\/em>to readers, performers, and audiences.<\/p>

The preface and introduction articulate a case against misreadings of Hamlet<\/em>\u2014and, in many ways, the entire book reads like a legal argument. Rappaport unabashedly claims one and only one right reading of the text (an \u201cessential meaning\u201d), and his hermeneutic is akin to what law scholars call \u201coriginal public meaning originalism.\u201d That is, the right way to interpret this text is to figure out how its original audience would have interpreted it. Accordingly, Rappaport wants to disperse our Freudian fog to reveal the true clarity of the play and its title character. None of this nonsense about Hamlet\u2019s indecisiveness or inaccessible interiority. Elizabethan audiences, he argues, would have had no doubt that Hamlet<\/em> is fundamentally a Christian morality play.<\/p>

There is something refreshing about the straightforwardness of this reading. So much of Hamlet<\/em> criticism feels like intentional obfuscation, as if we\u2019re afraid that if we get it, we\u2019ve gotten it wrong (to paraphrase Feynman on quantum mechanics). And it is certain that most modern productions of Hamlet <\/em>do not take religion seriously enough. You simply can\u2019t read Shakespeare without the Bible. But Rappaport wants to go farther, to give us a unifying spiritual arc as the key to understanding the play from the inside out. The climax of the play (we\u2019re too far gone for spoiler alerts, right?) is Act 3, Scene 3, when Hamlet decides not to seize the opportunity of killing his uncle, Claudius, while the latter is praying. Hamlet\u2019s reasoning is that if he kills Claudius in the middle of a pious act, Claudius\u2019s soul will go straight to heaven, and Hamlet\u2019s revenge will be hollow. It\u2019s a dark moment, laden with dramatic irony and tragic hubris. In seeking Claudius\u2019s damnation rather than his just punishment, Hamlet oversteps the bounds of his Christian duty (communicated by the ghost of his father) into the poison of pride, the arch-vice. The rest of the play depicts Hamlet\u2019s chastening under the hand of divine providence to teach him true humility and faith before the end.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Rappaport\u2019s work of synthesizing a Christian reading of Hamlet<\/em> is a crucial contribution to the play\u2019s canon.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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There’s a reason Rappaport needs the entire text of the play to support his argument: every character is a foil for Hamlet’s spiritual journey, every speech embodies patterns repeated throughout the play. It’s an impressive close-reading\u2014and a legalistic one. Wrong and right in Rappaport\u2019s Hamlet <\/em>are black and white, as are \u201cpassion\u201d and \u201creason.\u201d But I\u2019m not convinced that this is sound \u201coriginalism.\u201d Even if contemporary audiences would have agreed on an overall moral message, theological disputes were absolutely vitriolic in Shakespeare\u2019s time; surely not everyone would have agreed about the metaphysics of ghosts, kingship, revenge\u2026 can the Wittenberg reference to Protestantism really be so easily dismissed? And as to passion and reason, can\u2019t they\u2014don\u2019t they always\u2014commingle, especially in faith? Rappaport\u2019s readings of the aching speeches that begin, \u201cO, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,\u201d and, \u201cO, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!\u201d are cold. As I made my way through this text of the play, I found myself constantly fighting to regain something that was being lost. I think it was poetry.<\/p>

One of Rappaport\u2019s \u201ccanons of interpretation\u201d is that we must take every character at his or her word, as the playwright himself hints to us with Hamlet\u2019s line, \u201cThe players cannot keep council; they\u2019ll tell all\u201d (3.2). Rappaport cites this line and this interpretive principle again and again to reject any mystification of Hamlet\u2019s mind, heart, or motives. But it occurred to me that Hamlet is not a player (actor); he\u2019s a character. (Moreover, Hamlet is here referring to an actor not playing a part but speaking a prologue, going beyond the job of an actor and the world of the play.) Rappaport assumes that all the characters are reliable witnesses to their inner lives without poetic interpretation; but what if the characters\u2013through the actors\u2013are living their lives onstage? What if their words are not just informative but affective, changing the speaker in the act of speaking? I believe Hamlet gives us another interpretive principle earlier in the play: \u201cI have that within which passeth show\u201d (1.2).<\/p>

Rappaport\u2019s work of synthesizing a Christian reading of Hamlet<\/em> is a crucial contribution to the play\u2019s canon. I am personally grateful for many newly-illumined lines and a conviction to unlearn some of my learned helplessness about the play. The far-ranging intertextual scholarship is also of great value and makes this edition a worthwhile dramaturgical resource. That said, I would have liked even more contemporary religious sources, given how much hangs on that context, and to explore how theological questions<\/em>, not just answers, enrich this play. As to the other projects going on in this edition, some of the dramaturgy was overbearing (Rappaport is insistent on verse emphasis throughout) or obvious (I think most readers get the irony of Polonius\u2019s verbose discourse on brevity). Rappaport\u2019s conviction that there\u2019s only one right reading of the play seemed to imply that there\u2019s only one right performance. But where\u2019s the fun in that? Performance is a different kind of argument.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Raquel Sequeira<\/strong> is a teacher, graduate student in the History and Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, Notre Dame), and Shakespeare director\/dramaturg. She received her bachelor\u2019s in biochemistry from Yale in 2021 and currently lives in the DC area.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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William Shakespeare’s Hamlet<\/strong>, Edited and Annotated by Gideon Rappaport was pubished by One Mind Good Press on December 4, 2023. Fare Forward<\/em> appreciates their provision of a review copy. You can purchase a copy from the publisher here<\/a>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new independent edition of Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet takes a strong stand in a scholarly gap but doesn\u2019t close the book on this most studied of plays. 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