It wasn't an early OCD episode. It was a series of assignments for my particularly mad AP English teacher. Hamlet was his favorite play, and he was absolutely convinced it could be used to answer any question the AP test writers could throw at us, so he wanted us to be able to cite it act, scene, and line.
I was a pretty huge smartass as a teenager so I spent a lot of time mouthing off to this particular teacher about how much Shakespeare sucked and how I would never write about Hamlet. I was going to write about The Great Gatsby or Lolita.
You know how you had that teacher? The one who changed your life, who made you less of a terrible person, the teacher who inspired you to pull up your socks and start acting like an adult? My AP English teacher was that for me. He was the first person who told me that my work was sub-par, that being a smart kid was fine, but it didn't go anywhere if you weren't willing to apply yourself.
For the record, he was yelling at my about my AP Econ grades, not the work I was doing in his class.
He's the reason I read The Great Gatsby, The Razor's Edge, Lear, Othello, The Dubliners. He gave me Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Maltese Falcon. When I graduated from high school he gave me my copy of Franny and Zooey, with a message written inside that still makes me cry when I read it.
He's the reason I read Hamlet, the reason I learned one of the soliloquies by heart. I don't doubt that writing about Hamlet and being able to cite it, act, scene, and line was the reason I did so well on the AP Exam. When I left the exam he accosted me in the hallway and asked what I had written about.
"Hamlet," I groaned, rolling my eyes. "But I still hate Shakespeare."
I couldn't possibly tell you how it happened.
For whatever reason, Hamlet kept popping up in my life. I'd be sitting in church trying to pay attention to services and I'd think of Claudius "Pray can I not, though inclination be as sharp as will." In graduate school during a particularly intense fight about sex and ethics I remembered Ophelia's response to Laertes: "Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven." During an emotional move (and its attendant break-up) the man I was seeing kissed me on the forehead and quoted "Doubt thou . . ." before sending me on my way.
Having favorite things shouldn't be problematic. But I'm the girl who can always find a way to turn good things into problems and here's the issue: I can be insufferable when I love something.
After sitting through Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing with me, Nick has vowed never to see another movie with me. During a live jazz show a friend of mine pinched me so hard she left bruises because I was holding my breath and she suspected I might pass out. I will nearly always say "The book was better" after seeing any kind of adaptation. As a result, it was no surprise that I ended up having to go to Hamlet alone.
I went to Hamlet expecting, well, I don't know what. After over ten years of loving this piece of theater so intensely, I didn't think I could be surprised by Hamlet anymore.
Last summer I wrote about how experiences can be slippery, how despite my best efforts as a writer there are events or books or people who impact me so unexpectedly and deeply that it's impossible to talk about them and their effect. Early in May I wrote about the stories that you don't tell.
I can't write about Hamlet.
I can't write about it because writing about it feels like being back in that AP testing room. I can't write about it because in this case, the play isn't the thing. The important part of seeing Hamlet wasn't seeing how the director staged it or speculating why they did it in period dress when so much Shakespeare seems to be reset in the 1940s. The thing about Hamlet, about seeing it live was less about the play and more about what happened after seeing it,truthfully, what happened after having it in my life for the past eleven years.
A good show, be it Hamlet at the Guthrie or Doomtree at First Ave should leave you shaky, breathless, without words to describe what's just happened, perhaps a little uncertain that your legs will carry you out of the venue. It ought to leave you open and vulnerable in ways you did not anticipate, and fill something inside of you that you didn't realize was empty. Hamlet did all of those things to me. It started doing all those things to me on the first of the five read-throughs all those years ago. Seeing it live surprised me and left me vulnerable in ways that I'm still discovering nearly a month later.
My AP English teacher would be proud.
It always seems to be English teachers, doesn't it? You never went on a Shakespeare play field trip or anything in high school? We saw Othello and (I think) Much Ado About Nothing in a modern setting. I think both were at the Guthrie.
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