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I received Marvin Rosenberg’s “The Masks of Hamlet” several months ago. Quite a major purchase. Yet, I have not been able to fit it into my reading life. So, yeah, I am going to book-blog it, mine it for quotes. It is over 900 pages of Hamlet, but we will take it slow. Hamlet, after all, is often considered to be the greatest dramatic character ever conjured by the literary imagination, and I rather enjoy the work myself. Rosenberg, in his preface, cites a Montaigne quote and touches upon why Hamlet is celebrated so.
_ _ _
He who examines himself closely will seldom find himself twice in the same state. I give to my soul now one face, now another.... All the contradictions are to be found in me, according as the wind turns, and changes. Bashful, insolent; chaste, lascivious; talkative, taciturn; clumsy, gentle; witty, dull; peevish, sweet-tempered; lying, truthful; knowing, ignorant; and liberal and avaricious and prodigal - all this I see in myself in some degree, according as I veer about; and whoever will study himself very attentively will find this discordance and unsteadiness.
-- Montaigne
On Shakespeare’s way to exploring this in “Hamlet”, he set himself a Herculean task: cram as much as possible of the clashing multiplicity of human personality - imaginative, sensual, spiritual, social - into a single dramatic character. One who can love and hate, mourn and rejoice, befriend and destroy, have faith and doubt and cheer and heart-ache, seek meaning in this life and the next, hope and be hopeless, laugh and weep, meditate and do, philosophize and politicize, seem mad and sane, tell truth and lies, speak soaring poetry and salty prose and sing jingles, play and fight, contrive and fall prey to contrivance, worship one parent and scorn another, cherish and kill - a troubled mortal, and an actor acting one.
-- Marvin Rosenberg, “The Masks of Hamlet”
_ _ _
He who examines himself closely will seldom find himself twice in the same state. I give to my soul now one face, now another.... All the contradictions are to be found in me, according as the wind turns, and changes. Bashful, insolent; chaste, lascivious; talkative, taciturn; clumsy, gentle; witty, dull; peevish, sweet-tempered; lying, truthful; knowing, ignorant; and liberal and avaricious and prodigal - all this I see in myself in some degree, according as I veer about; and whoever will study himself very attentively will find this discordance and unsteadiness.
-- Montaigne
On Shakespeare’s way to exploring this in “Hamlet”, he set himself a Herculean task: cram as much as possible of the clashing multiplicity of human personality - imaginative, sensual, spiritual, social - into a single dramatic character. One who can love and hate, mourn and rejoice, befriend and destroy, have faith and doubt and cheer and heart-ache, seek meaning in this life and the next, hope and be hopeless, laugh and weep, meditate and do, philosophize and politicize, seem mad and sane, tell truth and lies, speak soaring poetry and salty prose and sing jingles, play and fight, contrive and fall prey to contrivance, worship one parent and scorn another, cherish and kill - a troubled mortal, and an actor acting one.
-- Marvin Rosenberg, “The Masks of Hamlet”
