rebeccaregr5′s Blog

Everybody dies.  I hope that anyone that is reading this post has already finished Hamlet, because if they have not yet done that, I just ruined the ending to a great play (kind of like saying “the titanic sinks”).  Well, actually not everyone dies.  Horatio lives, and Hamlet wants him to carry on the crown, but it seems like Young Fortinbras was giong to take over Denmark in the end.

One thing that was almost a bit random was that while Laertes and Hamlet were dying from each other’s blows,  they forgave each other and both blamed Claudius.  It almost seemed to sudden (from a playwright’s perspective) for them to be killing each other, and suddenly the Queen’s death opened their eyes to Claudius’s scheme.  

But one thing that Shakespeare did, was trick me into believing that Horatio was going to die because of the great friendship that he was building up between Hamlet and Horatio (and Mrs. Hazel’s emphasis on that relationship) I believed that Horatio would die as well in this tragedy.  I think also one reason I was so sure that Horatio was going to die was because of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  (As I have already pointed out striking similarities of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet)  I thought that Horatio was going to be like a Marcutio character and die before his friend died in the play.  I was wrong and ironically Horatio was the only “major” character that survived that “War of Roses”.

One thing that I found (just al little off topic) was a website of The Trial of Hamlet.  This is a play that was written by Steven Breese.  And it is where Hamlet is put on trial.  I happened to stumbled over it while looking for pictures for my blog.  It is really neat.  I hope you enjoy it. 

Foil between Hamlet and Laertes:

Shakespeare probably did this on purpose, to develop the characters of both Hamlet and Laertes.  This foil also shows not only that these are two different men in the same situation, who is aligning themselves with whom.  Claudius is aligning himself with Laertes and against Hamlet.  Hamlet is aligning himself against Claudius and soon it will become consequently against Laertes.

Hamlet:

• Wants to die himself, but fears damnation
•      “To sleep to dream, aye there’s the rub.”
• Cautiously moves forward as to not harm the innocent
•      He is willing to give up his whole plot if Claudius does not act guilty during the play
• Is treated like a subject by Claudius (formal)
•      Claudius uses the formal “We” consistently when talking to Hamlet

Both:

• Had a father killed
•      Hamlet (Senior) was killed by Claudius putting poison down his ear
•      Polonius is killed by Hamlet (Jr), who thought that he was Claudius ease-dropping into his conversation with his mother
• Wants revenge for his death

Laertes: 

• Doesn’t care about damnation.  He just wants to avenge his father’s death.
•      “ I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
  That both the worlds I give to negligence,
  Let come what comes; only I’ll be revenged
  Most thoroughly for my father.”
• He is so enraged that Claudius has to warn him not to hurt the innocent.
•      Claudius puts the blame on Hamlet and takes it off himself
• Is treated like a friend/ son by Claudius (informal)
•      Claudius always used the informal language “Thee” and he even granted him leave to France, while he did not even allow Hamlet to return to his school.

Hamlet’s goal was to kill his uncle after his guilty reaction to the play, but instead of killing him, Hamlet killed his lover’s father, Polonius.  To me, it sounds a lot like Romeo and Juliet:  Romeo killed Juliet’s cousin, Tibalt.  Anyway, they were both written by the same playwright.  But unlike Romeo and Juliet, Ophelia goes crazy (in the next Act). 

One thing I really liked about this Act was that Shakespeare developed Claudius’s character.  Instead of making him a very shallow character that is purely evil, Shakespeare has made Claudius repentant of his sin, and even praying to God for forgiveness.  This prayer saved his life from Hamlet, a threat that Claudius did not even know existed.  But that was a temporary act of mercy on Hamlet’s part, maybe if Claudius had gone up to Hamlet and repented, he would have been spared his life rather than Hamlet succeeding in his revenge.  For throughout the rest of this Act, Hamlet is yelling at his mother trying to make her sins known to her, and make her repent/ be ashamed of them.  

Why does Gertrude not say she is sorry to Hamlet as Claudius did to God?

Did Claudius have any type of hunch that what he experienced between Hamlet and Ophelia might be shockingly similar in the confrontation between Hamlet and his mother.  ”To make a mistake once is human error, but to make the same mistake twice is just plain stupid.”  This misjudgment led to the death of Polonius.

The boldness he has with Polonius is humorous.  However, he is only so bold in acting out is insanity.  He spoke brave words in the end of Act I, and he did it again in the end of Act II, but both times they are to himself.  He has not been so bold to do anything to avenge his father’s death other than acting insane (which some people argue that he really is insane and not pretending). I honesty feel that he is a bit cowardly, because of the fact that he has only said a lot of strong words about vengeance to the air, and even he calls himself a coward in this Act:

But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall

The play that Hamlet has requested the Players to preform, Hamlet compares it to the murder of his father by his uncle. But this play, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare is actually the product of influences of a 12th Century tale by Saxo Grammaticus. This tale was translated by Thomas Kyd in The Spanish Tragedies.

The revenge drama derived originally from the Roman tragedies of Seneca but was established on the English stage by Thomas Kyd with The Spanish Tragedie (c. 1590). This work, which opens with the Ghost of Andrea and Revenge, deals with Hieronimo, a Spanish gentleman who is driven to melancholy by the murder of his son. Between spells of madness, he discovers who the murderers are and plans his ingenious revenge. He stages a play in which the murderers take part, and, while enacting his role, Hieronimo actually kills them, then kills himself. The influence of this play, so apparent in Hamlet (performed c. 1600-01), is also evident in other plays of the period.

I found this interesting information on the influences on Shakespeare’s Hamlet at http://bestoflegends.org/shakespeare/hamlet.html.  At this web site they do other brief comparisons of Hamlet to other stories/ legends/ plays.

If anyone thought that they had it bad, just read Shakespeare’s Hamlet Act I.  Once they get a good taste of the situation, empathize with the characters, and realize just how good they got it, they’ll be dying for more (not to be ironic or anything).  Hamlet’s father had been murdered by his uncle.  His uncle usurped young Hamlet’s crown and married Hamlet’s mother too quickly after his father’s funeral.  And finally,  Ophelia is warned by he father and brother to avoid Hamlet even though he seems to love her.

One part of this Act was Scene 2 when Hamlet is talking to Horatio.  First it is a “pleasant” conversation between friends, with Hamlet’s zings towards his uncle, Claudius.  But it soon turned into the secret exchange of knowledge from Horatio to Hamlet about seeing the ghost of Hamlet’s father.  During this conversation, Hamlet inquires if the ghost: was frowning,  pale or red, and had his eyes fixed upon Horatio.  Horatio’s answers point out that the past king had a:

Countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

And was very pale, and his eyes were constantly fixed upon Horatio.  These observations were intriguing to me because they set the stage for what would be revealed in Scene 5.  The deceased Hamlet was more sad that he had to endure purgatory than that he was murdered by his brother.  The Ghost was pale which I interpret as he was not willing to walk the Earth, but forced to until the sins have been cleared.  For if he was red, I would conclude that he was angry and willing searching the earth to do his revenge.  But because he was pale, it gives me idea of “being blue”, thus I can conclude that he is sad and unwilling to walk the Earth.  And finally that he was looking for someone in particular, and that is why he was constantly looking at Horatio (the king had known that his Hamlet and Horatio were friends).

I found this cool audio of scene 2, where the actor is reciting Hamlet’s soliloquy  while the modern and the old english are scrolling down the screen.  But one interesting thing I found about this website is that it has a quiz on Hamlet with really nifty pictures alongside each question as a bonus!

Floor

Imitating Theodore Roethke

I looked at the floor, caked hard with dirt,

And I saw dust from the walls, finer than flour,

like blue shine on freshly frozen snow.

I took pity on her and romped across the room,

And created a garment for her of niether fur nor hair.

God bless the Floor!  I shall walk softly there

(I feel her presence in the common day).

I created this poem by combining many [some are revised] phrases of Roethke poems to create one poem that caught the general feeling of Teddy’s poetry. Sadly, in doing so, I lost the beat of some of his poems and defiantly the rhyme that almost all of them had.  But I still feel that this verbal colleague still points to the poet that it is futilely trying to imitate. 

Poems each color is from:

“My Papa’s Waltz”

“Dolor”

“The Far Feild”

“Epidermal Macabre”

“The Waking”

“She”

Hi Anna,

I just finished reading your post.  And I’ve decided that your poet, Brooks, is very intreguing.  She was very brave to break down boarders in society between African-Americans and whites.  But she must have had a lot of close friends and family that supported her throughout her career.  My poet, Theodore Roethke, also had support, but not as much as Brooks did in the begining of his poetic career.  Actually, Theodore’s family wanted him to become a lawyer.  Also, both of our poet;s childhoods effected their poetry later on in life (but I think that is the same story of every artist).

Dear Mr. Bryne,

I am a student at East Grand Rapids High School and I have been assigned to create a blog of Theodore Roethke.  One of the parts of this assignment was to Analyze one of Roethke’s poems and reference another blogger’s post on that same poem.  I chose “My Papa’s Waltz” and your post was very, very well argued.

I honestly had the disadvantage of reading this poem in an anthology that had already been annotated.  Next to “My Papa’s Waltz” it said:  metaphor to child abuse.  Consequently, I had a premature bias and read the poem like that.  

When I read your post, I realized that I had been critiquing the poem using today’s standards.  I should have (as you pointed out) read it with a lens  reflecting the time Theodore Roethke wrote this master piece in.  

Still, I feel like a yo-yo in how to interpret this poem, and maybe that is how Roethke wrote it: to leave the person thinking.

Hey Margo,

I just read your post, and I am shocked at the similarities between Atwood and my poet, Theodore Roethke.  I know that your site it about Adrienne Rich, but your comments on Atwoods poetic themes parallel Roethke’s very well [hey, that rhymes ].  These two poets (Roethke and Atwood) seem to have more in common than spell check saying that their last names are spelt incorrectly.

As you commented: Atwood “attempts to describe . . . the feelings of an unhappy mother in ‘The Shadow Voice’, and the feelings of depression in the ‘Up’”.  Teddy had depression, and regularly used that to reach a “new level of reality.”  Many of his poems contain that same theme of a depressed, unhappy person.  In doing so, Teddy also conveys the feelings of depression to the reader.

great site!

P.S. I am glad that you constantly gave credit to Maddie for helping you by inspiring you in this connection between your poet and Atwood.

Hi Mrs. Hazel,

I like your patchwork poem.  It’s really fun to create; isn’t it?  It was Mrs. Michell (10th grade honors) who introduced me to the idea first of patchwork poems.  I am glad that now it is even spreading on the blogosphere!  I feel that the imitation poem was my favorite part of this spring project.  It really helped me see the similarities of his poems .  I can tell that you were able to find similarities in your poet’s poem too.   I like it how you patchwork flows from thought to thought, from phrase to phrase.  

James Wright.

Wright was a student of Teddy, and he was a leading poet of his own generation.  Even though he an Teddy never completely admitted their feelings for one another because they both tried to “step gingerly around the paternal subject”, they thought of the other as a father/son.  Teddy wrote to James in 1958:

“Apparently you are more of an emotional symbol to me than I realized: you are a combination of student-younger brother–something like that.  (I even shed a tear or two).”-New Yorker

“Roethke’s greatest subject was the secret life of flowers, plants, and children while Wright allied himself and his poetry with the dispossessed and the outcast. Both poets were deeply sentimental about women, especially after each found happiness after a late marriage.  And they were still more vulnerable on the subject of fathers– the taciturn, unemotional men about whom Roethke and Wright wrote their best poems.” -New Yorker

The relationship between these two men was so close that they went to the heavyweight championship where Pete Rademacher and Floyd Patterson fought for the victory.  At that time James was 29 and Teddy was 49 years old (almost double James’ age).  After the match james commented on Allen Tate’s remark:

“‘you’re the Heavyweight Champion of contemporary American poetry,’ This must have delighted the older poet, who approached his rivals in a fighting crunch.”-New Yorker

These two men were very very close, and maybe that was helped by the fact that they both “hoped that poetry is the communion of souls” and believed that “earnestness could make a poem live.”

Sadly, however, both of these two artists died within 20 years of each other.  Teddy passed away in 1963 and was soon followed by James in 1980. 

“Be with me, Whitman, maker of catalogues;

For the world invades me again,

And once more the tongues begin babbling.

And the terrible hunger for objects quails me”

-Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke was raised in the same nurturing environment that Walt Whitman (pictured above) did.  Walt was raised in the earlier years of America, when the land was still mostly unsettled, and the Romantic Poets started to emerge. Roethke matured in an “open America” too.  But Teddy’s, unlike Walt’s, was a large green house that his family owned.  There Teddy grew up and was influenced by nature just like Walt was by America’s wilderness.  But other than them both having the same conditions to mature in, Theodore Roethke greatly admired Whitman, and even wrote a poem in which he was crying out for Whitman’s help: “A Mixed Sequence”(cited at the top of blog).

Many, many, many of Theodore Roethke’s poems involve the outdoors, like Walt’s, or at least included natural objects/ critters.  But these striking similarities do not appear until almost the end of Teddy’s life, when he realizes his mortality and his poems change:

immediately we note the longer poetic line, the lack of exclamations marks, all those semi-colons with which he was ending his unjambed lines.  The poetic first person is still present, but that presence enters the poem late and seems subdued, suppressed.  He identifies with natural objects still, but less passionately, and with a more philosophical and personal distance.”  -King Fisher Press

The KF Press goes on to point out that the third part of Roethke’s poem, Meditation at Oyster River, it becomes very “Whitmanesque”:

“I would ith the fish, the blackoning salmon, and the mad lemmings,

The children dancing, the flowers widening.

Who sighs from far away?

“I would unlearn the lingo of exasperation, all the distortions of malice and hatred;

I would believe my pain: and the eye quiet on the growing rose;

I would delight in my hands, the branch singing, altering the excessive birds;

I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form;”

This poem compared to “Dolor” (cited in a previous post) almost seems like it was created by a different poet.  But Teddy wrote it.  However you can see the influences of Walt Whitman with the long, poetic lines.  And even though this post does not show it, the poem Meditation At Oyster River was actually a couple movements long, rather than the brevity that leads to uncertainty of “My Papa’s Waltz” (also cited in a previous post).  These poems mimic the long poems of Walt.  For example:  in Walt’s poem “When Lilacs Last in a Dooryard Bloom”, there are 16 movements.  Every one of them are composed of a substantial use of words and are sculpted in such a way to create beautiful imagery.  This is the type of poetry Teddy changed to and had published in The Far Field.

The foundation of my research was started by Time Magazine.

Dolor

by Theodore Roethke

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,

Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper wieght,

All misery of minilla folders and mucilage,

Desolation in imaculate public places,

Lonely reception roon, lavatory, switchboard,

The unalterable pathoes of basin and pitcher,

Ritual of multigraph, paper clip, comma,

Endless duplication of lives and objects.

And I have seen the dut on the walls of institutions,

Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,

Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tendium,

Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,

Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

I have come to the conclusion that this is a poem not about the drudgeries of school (what I first thought when I glanced at the first line) but about vast number of people unemployed to use/ take care of these objects.  Why are the pencils sad? because no one is using them. Why is no one using them? because the can’t; they have been laid-off.  This poem is using the inanimate office supplies to show the longing of a job so many Americans had during the Great Depression.  The same goes with the dusty “nails and eyebrows” of most likely statues.  Why are they dusty?  because no one has dusted them.  Why has no one dusted them?  Because no one is there anymore; that place went out of business.

The poem Dolor is mourning (as the voice of Roethke) the fall of society in the Great Depression. For Karl Malkoff:

“Dolor is the ‘possible exception’ to his opinion that ‘Roethke was never able to write very good poetry about society.’” 

But in this poem, Teddy uses many, many, many adjectives.  This is not uncommon for Roethke as according to Kenneth Burke’s opinoin of The Lost Son (the book Dolor is located in):

“Roethke ‘goes as far as humanly possible in quest of a speech wholly devoid of abstractions’”

But Dolor seems like it is the exception to this opinion too, because he uses all of these decriptive words to create a strong and powerful poem.  As The Explicator words it:

“Roethke does use abstract words; but he connects them so personally to the intimate experience of the poem that he renders them concrete.”

My “Scholarly” source was Questia School.  I found a journal article from The Explicator, Vol. 37, 1979