Freud Interpretation Of Hamlet
Before we begin, I would like to congratulate you all on getting selected
for
the various parts in this production of Hamlet. My name is Glenn Close,
and I
will be directing this production from today until it closes in Tokyo
next May.
I have played the role of Gertrude, as many of you know, in the
Hollywood
production starring Mel Gibson. I also played Ophelia twice in high
school and
once my senior year at UCLA. This is my favorite Shakespeare play,
one of the
best of all time. Recently I was reintroduced to Freud’s notable
commentary on
Shakespeare and his relation to Sophocles in The
Interpretation of Dreams. From
this I have pulled the essential pages and
copied them for your perusal. In
fact, each of you received those pages one
week ago and were asked to come
prepared to discuss its important aspects and
to help me create a clearer vision
of what we can do to make our Hamlet more
like the one that Freud envisioned in
1899. As the director of this play,
I have gathered you all here today to
explain what this particular version of
Hamlet is best representing. I decided
to try to help Hamlet become more
overtly repressed by his intellect so that
Freud’s vision can come to
light in the minds of our audiences. In my humble
opinion, no single director
has yet made a good project out of exploring fully
the impact of repression
on the individual through the impotence of a paralyzed
Hamlet. There is a
reason for this. Many directors have tried and failed for the
following
reason: they were all men. Only a woman with the understanding of what
it
means to be sexually craved by her son can do justice to the directorship
in
the light of what Freud understood. I want this version of Hamlet to
represent a
modern day sexual scenario. By changing a few scenes, I can show
Hamlet’s
repressed emotions toward Gertrude, and his resentment toward
Claudius. I want
Hamlet almost to give in to his feelings for his mother
due to her persuasion. I
will be directing most of my focus on Hamlet. The
setting will be present day
Athens, Greece. I chose Athens because Freud
refers to Oedipus Rex as the basis
of Hamlet’s character. Since Oedipus is
Greek, putting Hamlet in Athens makes
the connection between these characters
more direct. There are two reasons why I
moved the play to the present day.
The first one is the difficulty that modern
audiences have with Shakespearean
English. My goal is get the audience to hear
Freud’s Hamlet as clearly as
possible without getting lost in Shakespearean
language. The second reason
has to do with the poor habits of American theater
audiences. If the play
takes place in another time period than the present, the
audience members
tend to see the lessons of the story as unrelated to them. Only
in bringing
the play to the modern day can Freud’s lessons connect directly
with the
repressed lives of the modern theatergoer. I also feel that most men
living
in the twenty-first century will not admit that during their formative
years,
sexual desires arose and were naturally directed towards their mother,
the
object of their most fond love. According to Sigmund Freud, the story
of
Oedipus Rex and the story of Hamlet have the same underlying theme. In
both
stories, the character of the prince, Oedipus and Hamlet respectively,
is caught
in Freud’s Oedipus Complex: "Being in love with one parent and
hating the
other are among the essential constituents of the stock of
psychical impulses
which is formed at that time [childhood] and which is of
such importance in
determining the symptoms of later neurosis." (294)
Hamlet’s neurosis is
manifested by his inability to act. The story of Oedipus
is different from that
of Hamlet because Hamlet never acts on the feelings he
has for his mother and
never avenges his father’s death. Hamlet represses the
feelings he has for his
mother, and feels that if he kills his father, he is
killing the embodiment of
his own repressed wishes. According to Freud, "
Hamlet represents the type of
man whose power of direct action is paralyzed
by an excessive development of his
intellect." (298) By altering certain
scenes, I can bring the repressed Hamlet
out and show our modern viewers that
dealing with these Freudian issues is
acceptable in today’s society. At this
point I would like to look at a couple
of specific key portions of scenes in
order to show you what I mean by bringing
the Freud out in Hamlet. Let’s turn
our text to act three scene four, please.
I would like Hamlet and
Gertrude to try out a few key lines here. This is the
scene where Hamlet and
the Queen Gertrude are in the Queen’s private chambers.
Hamlet, Gertrude,
hurry up on stage here so that we can get to the heart of what
Freud was
talking about in his treatise. (Changing focus back to the group,
Glen
Close continues) Hamlet walks into the bedroom and begins to speak
with a"wicked tongue" to his mother. Hamlet hears a noise behind the curtain,
and
with no hesitation, kills Polonius. This is done out of full rage, with
the
hopes that the King was behind the curtain. With little regret, Hamlet
continues
his conversation with his mother. This brings us to line182.
Hamlet, I want you
to grab your mother and hold her in your arms and shake
her; let your eyes shine
with lust for your mother while your body keeps
shaking and staying away from
her. These words of Hamlet’s are full of his
neurosis, "Not this, by no
means, that I bid you do: Let the bloat King tempt
you again to bed," Hamlet,
please stop for a moment. Everyone, notice that
Hamlet wants his mother to stay
out of sexual contact with his uncle. That is
the driving force of his hatred.
Obviously, Freud’s complex is strong at
work in this scene. As this scene
continues, it is amazing how much sexual
imagery Hamlet uses. He is obsessed
with wanting his mother, but his
intellect won’t let him act. Hamlet, I want
you to reach over and pinch
Gertrude’s cheeks as you say the next line.
Don’t be shy, really give
your mom a nice fat pinch. Continue please. "Pinch
wanton on your cheek, call
you his mouse," Hamlet, pretend to kiss Gertrude as
you say this next line.
"And let him, for a pair of reechy kiss," Hamlet, as
you say the next line,
touch Gertrude’s neck with a slight touch. "Or
paddling in your neck with his
damned fingers," Now Hamlet, I want you to
reach over towards Gertrude and
act as if you were going to kiss her but back
away as you skip directly to
line 197. "And break your own neck down." Now
Gertrude replies in
lines198-200. Gertrude, after you read these lines, reach
over to Hamlet and
attempt to kiss him. Hamlet, I want to back away in fright,
proving Freud’s
point that Hamlet cannot act because of the modern repression
of action by
the mind. "Be thou assured, if words be made of breath, And
breath of life, I
have no life to breathe/ What thou hast said to me." It
seems that Gertrude
can’t understand Hamlet’s love for her. Therefore she is
dumbfounded by his
words. Hamlet, reply to Gertrude in line 201 and after you
reply, walk out of
the room. "I must to England; you know that?" The acting
of these scenes
leads us to Freud’s interpretation of the sexual interactions
between Hamlet
and Gertrude. According to Freud, there is a "distaste for
sexuality
expressed by Hamlet." Hamlet, it is important that you physically
show your
neurotic distaste for sexuality in all scenes with either Gertrude
or
Ophelia throughout the play. The next scene I would like to draw
attention to is
Act Five, scene two, lines 326-339. In this last scene, a
poison ends up killing
the Queen, the King, and Laertes. Hamlet witnesses his
mother’s death and
learns that his uncle has been planning his murder. Once
the Queen is dead,
Hamlet is able to act out the feelings he has
repressed throughout the entire
play. In these next few lines Hamlet is
speaking to his uncle, but a cleverly
placed mirror reveals to the audience
that he is also speaking to himself.
"Here, thou incestuous, murd’rous,
damned Dane." Hamlet is correct in his
accusation of his uncle, but also of
himself. Remember what Freud said about our
beloved Hamlet, "Thus, the
loathing which should drive him on to revenge is
replaced in him by
self-reproaches." (229) Self-reproaches are what is
stopping Hamlet from
acting. Continue. "Heaven make thee free of it! I follow
thee. I am dead.
Wretched Queen, adieu!" Hamlet, I want you to lean over and
kiss your
deceased mother on the lips after the completion of the next line.
"You
that look pale and tremble at this chance, That are but mutes or audience
to
this act, Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death, Is strict in
his
arrest) O, I could tell you-" Hamlet finally grasps his own neurosis but
has
no time to explain it to us. Carry on, "But let it be. I am dead." As
Hamlet
stares death in the eye, he is finally able to stare his incestuous
feelings in
the eye. By looking in the mirror, he is looking inside himself.
Hamlet sees
himself as a hopelessly trapped man, trapped in his own mind. I
chose these
particular scenes because they both were dramatically inclined.
These two scenes
have been used for many interpretations of the production.
For Freudian
purposes, I chose to have the Queen’s age and Hamlet’s age to be
within
fifteen years of each other. There are a few reasons why Hamlet is
wearing tight
leather pants, a slightly unbuttoned iridescent shirt, and
black boots and why
Gertrude is wearing a tight, low-cut red dress, with
black pumps. I think these
clothes will enhance the psychosexual image that
Freud was able to take away
from the play and will also compliment the modern
time period. The extreme
closeness in age between Hamlet and Gertrude will
also accentuate the Freudian
concepts that I am best trying to represent.
With the loss of his mother, and
death upon him, Hamlet is finally able to
carry out his father’s (the ghost)
wishes by murdering his father’s murderer
(his uncle, Claudius). Hamlet’s
ability to act becomes feasible in the last
minutes of his life. As a woman, it
may be easier for me to believe and
direct Freud’s concepts of Hamlet. Male
directors have a tendency to deny and
even argue that Hamlet had an Oedipus
complex. I hope that by directing this
modern, Freudian Hamlet, my audiences
(especially men) will become more
accepting of these concepts instead of the
repressing them.