The Author Speaks….Hamlet – re-edited
Hamlet is arguably the most adored of the Shakespeare plays which qualifies it as arguably the most beloved play of all time. For an authoritative discussion of its high points we will go the horses mouth - the author. What would he have said about Hamlet were he alive today. Sir Francis Bacon of St Albans is one man I would love to meet. He admired Solomon but didn’t live as long, having died at 67 in 1623 after experimenting with snow as a viable means for preserving chickens.
Hamlet is, like all of Shakespeare’s of plays, about real people being themselves. How easy it is to identify with Hamlet, the character, who spoke a noble language full of passion and contradiction. Macbeth, though no less eloquent, was predictable compared with Hamlets character – that suicidal depressed master of dry wit – powerful in his restraint.
Most people feel much in common with Hamlet as well as Ophelia and perhaps the queen but my impression is that we live in a less violent time.
I wish, but can’t, be fluent during my moments of suffering. So, let me be close to those that are.
Bacon wrote a lesson in in all his works. He knew he was a genius and people would benefit from his intellectual powers. We have.
Concerning Hamlet, I have decided to highlight two of Bacon’s essays Of Death, and Of Vengeance to underscore the dominant themes I believe Bacon had in mind. Also, a reference to Idols of the Theater from Bacon’s Novum Organum seem in order plus an interesting comment from Bacon’s letters. Just about all of Bacon’s points in his essay Of Death are taken up by Hamlets lines.
Hamlet and Bacon agree: “the play’s the thing.”
The play characterizes how people understood death and how they thought about revenge at that time. He did not wish to teach better approaches to those two problems because he probably intended his essays and other writings to do that.
There are more themes entwined and I hope to explore at a future time.
At the age of 12 when he graduated from Cambridge College Bacon decided that all of knowledge was to be his providence. The plays and the essays were two of five mechanisms whereby he would advance all that was known and he did the best he could which wasn’t bad.
His emergence as an author was the beginning of the literary renaissance in England as well as France following his visit there and his death marked a return to more mundane literature.
There is a distinct autobiographical flavor to Hamlet. When Bacon wrote Hamlet he was definitely in a passionate frame of mind and we all know the best writings are based on personal experience.
The events that transpired in Francis’ life at the time he wrote Hamlet are as gut wrenching as Hamlets.’ The official story behind the origination of Hamlet goes like this – Not – there isn’t one. Santa Clause doesn’t have an official biography either but he is in all the books.
The adopted son of Nicholas Bacon (the Keeper of the Seal) and Ann Bacon, Francis Bacon, is facing poverty because adopted father, Nicholas, died leaving his biological son, Anthony, his estate and gave his adopted son the scraps. It’s hard to blame Nicholas for favoritism because ‘poor’ Francis’s mother was the Queen of England. Fairy tale you say? Letters discovered by a German researcher around the turn of the last century in the Spanish archives between Robert Dudley, the queens secret husband the fact that the queen gave birth to Francis and Robert Deveroux.
It would have appeared to Nicholas that Francis could take care of himself. Sure, but not carry out his Grand Instaturation, the advancement and restructuring all of knowledge at the same time.
Francis thought he should restructure all of knowledge and I believe he came closer than any one in history except perhaps the original mother one hundred thousand years ago who had the first prominent forehead and made us into humans.
You would think that having royal blood and a clear view to the throne was a great thing but it was one lottery ticket away from a beheading. The queen may have done Francis a favor by publically refusing to have anything to do with him but Francis must not have thought so.
Around the time he wrote Hamlet she was furious with him because he blocked her national tax that would have bled the life out of her subjects. Francis as a leader of parliament heroically said no to her and made it stick.
Francis walked on the thin royal-ice much of his life being heir to the throne but I believe if given the chance William Tudor aka Francis Bacon would have been the greatest leader of any country in history. Second to that he wrote Hamlet. Still pretty good.
Francis continually complained that his mother refused to finance him. I supposed she expected him to get a job. Chuckle. He did get a job but it Chancellor of England the highest non-royal rank in England, but not the position he wanted to take over the world.
In Francis recovered letters he reveals that he was stressed about his financial situation and admittedly depressed about losing his step father, his only visible means of support. Likewise, Hamlet was depressed for losing his father, his major means of money and power especially when his mother quickly married her brother-in-law.
Furthermore, Queen Elizabeth was married to her job to which she was faithful and was also secretly married to Robert Dudley – Frances biological father. In effect, Francis lost his real father plus the chance to succeed his Dudley to the throne which was impossible because Dudley was not royalty and no one wanted him to be King alongside Elizabeth. It’s a subject for the silver screen. Thus Elizabeth and her son were inextricably bonded and torn asunder at the same time.
Both Hamlet and Francis had cause to be furious with their mothers financially, politically and morally.
Interestingly, Hamlet was forbidden to return to school by Claudius and the record shows that Francis was forbidden to return to his travels abroad after returning to England for Nicholas’s funeral by the Elizabeth who sent him to Europe in the first place.
Bottom line: unless you study Bacon’s essays you cannot say you know Shakespeare,
Shakespeare’s words are in red
Bacon’s words are in purple
My thoughts are in green
In response to her no travel decree, Bacon wrote to Cecil, the queens main advisor, “I could face out a disgrace; and that I hoped her Majesty would not be offended, that not able to endure the sun, I fled into the shade”
Hamlet – “Not so, my lord; I am too much i’the sun.”
Larson — The meaning of this line in the letter and Hamlets line in the play are close to being identical.
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QUEEN GERTRUDE – Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
Bacon — It is as natural to die, as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful, as the other. — Of Death
Bacon’s instruction is very sound in that death is regarded too negatively although we understand she is not taking Hamlet seriously. — ERL
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HAMLET –
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,–meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark:
Bacon — But yet the spirit of Job was in a better tune: Shall we (saith he) take good at God’s hands, and not be content to take evil also? And so of friends in a proporting. – Of Revenge
Bacon — You shall read (saith he) that we are commanded to forgive our enemies; but you never read, that we are commanded to forgive our friends.
Cruelty from our enemies has a simple responce but our rage from the betrayal of a friend is boundless and we need guidance to handle that. The bitter divorce is a common example. — ERL
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HAMLET
For every man has business and desire,
Such as it is; and for mine own poor part, Look you, I’ll go pray.
HORATIO — These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.
Bacon — Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. Of Revenge.
Revenge invites recklessness and criminality next to the law. Abandon revenge. — ERL
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HAMLET – I’m sorry they offend you, heartily;
Yes, ‘faith heartily… Before mine uncle: I’ll observe his looks;
I’ll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
BACON — Some, when they take revenge, are desirous, the party should know, whence it cometh. This is the more generous. For the delight seemeth to be, not so much in doing the hurt, as in making the party repent. — Of Revenge
The revenge seeker wishes to have a witness for the retribution of the crime. The perpetrator embodies the witness to the victims suffering humiliation and helplessness. — ERL
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HAMLET — I am thy father’s spirit,
Doom’d for a certain time to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg’d away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
would harrow up thy soul…
HAMLET – The rest is silence.
Dies
Bacon — Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious … Of Death
Hamlet makes a vague reference to a purgatory like place without saying it and then dies completely. Bacon was a devout follower but God and the Devil are used in conversion no differently from today’s slang. A direct reference to any holy belief system is missing. Bacon being no dummy himself leaves direct references to religion out as (1) the way to avoid Puritan, Catholic, or Church of England wrath or (2) a message to his audience that those with out a faith, or spirituality or cosmology are left to isolated carry out the moral message. — ERL
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HAMLET – I’ll have grounds
More relative than this: the play ’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.
BACON – Some, when they take revenge, are desirous, the party should know, whence it cometh. This is the more generous. For the delight seemeth to be, not so much in doing the hurt, as in making the party repent. — Of Revenge.
Larson — Bacon favors social embarrassment over violence in revenge.
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HAMLET — Abuses me to damn me: I’ll have grounds
More relative than this: the play ’s the thing …
BACON – All the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion. — Idols of the Theater from Organum Novum.
Bacon lets Hamlet make take center stage with his philosophy.
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HAMLET — To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
BACON — and therefore, death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him, that can win the combat of him. — Of Death.
Bacon is proposing that perhaps death is a kind of sleep that is a real alternative to the nobility of suffering while alive.
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Hamlet — No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
BACON — A man would die, though he were neither valiant, nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft, over and over. — Of Death.
Shear boredom of the monotony of living might be a reason for dying.
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Hamlet — For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, …
… the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love,
BACON — It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man, so weak, but it mates, and masters, the fear of death. Revenge triumphs over death, love slights it, honour aspireth to it, grief flieth to it, fear preoccupateth it... love slights it.(death) — Of Death.
Larson — Despised love is love unreturned which can turn to hate.
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Hamlet — The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
BACON — A man would die, though he were neither valiant, nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft, over and over. — Of Death
Shear boredom of the monotony of living might be a reason for dying.
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| | ||
| Ghost | My hour is almost come, | |
| | When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames | |
| | Must render up myself. | |
| HAMLET | Alas, poor ghost! |
OPHELIA — My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
No hat upon his head; his stockings fouled,
Ungartered, and down-gyvèd to his ankle;
Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosèd out of hell
To speak of horrors—he comes before me.
Bacon — Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious;
Larson — If we’ve been bad we go to hell.
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Hamlet — But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Men — Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children, is increased with tales, so is the other.– Of Death
Larson — Fear of the unknown, know it well.
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HAMLET – I’ll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I’ll observe his looks;
I’ll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
BACON — Some, when they take revenge, are desirous, the party should know, whence it cometh. This is the more generous. For the delight seemeth to be, not so much in doing the hurt, as in making the party repent. – Of Revenge.
Larson — Bacon favors social embarrassment over violence in revenge. A repeated theme.
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LAERTES — He is justly served;
It is a poison temper’d by himself.
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet:
Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee,
Nor thine on me.
Dies
Hamlet — Had I but time–as this fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest–O, I could tell you–
But let it be. Horatio, I am dead;
Bacon — It is no less worthy, to observe, how little alteration in good spirits, the approaches of death make; for they appear to be the same men, till the last instant.
Larson — I think the reference is that we may change our attitude at the point of death.
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HAMLET — Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.
I am dead, Horatio. Wretched queen, adieu!
Revenge triumphs over death
Larson — Revenge is sweeter than death is sour.
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HORATIO — Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
Why does the drum come hither?
honor aspireth to it; would have been better for it.
Larson– There is honor in death
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HORATIO
…wandering ghosts, wherever they are, hurry back to their hiding places. We’ve just seen proof of that. I’ve heard that the rooster awakens the god of day with its trumpetlike crowing, and makes a
MARCELLUS
Yes, it faded away when the rooster crowed. Some people say that just before Christmas the rooster crows all night long, so that no ghost dares go wandering, and the night is safe. The planets have no sway over us, fairies’ spells don’t work, and witches can’t bewitch us. That’s how holy that night is.
Bacon — Yet in religious meditations, there is sometimes mixture of vanity, and of superstition — Of Death.
Larson — Straight forward message.
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GERTRUDE
. You can’t spend your whole life with your eyes to the ground remembering your noble father. It happens all the time, what lives must die eventually, passing to eternity..
Bacon — Better saith he, . It is as natural to die, as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful, as the other.
TODAY I WILL WRITE
Today I will write enough, not to little, not to much.
Today I will write to the end of the sentence.
Today I will write what I know.
Today I will write only those subjects which naturally occur to me as my thoughts..
I will learn to recognize and promote the situations in my life which are friendly to my writing
Today I will have lots of thoughts and wlll hold them gently.
Today I will not create a new reality, I will borrow beg and steal to attain that which is fully mine and right there in front of me.
Today I will love all that is written.
Today I will write in no style other than that which is in Edwin Larson’s head.
Today will write freely and unafraid of illusions of correctness.
Today I will tell the story for the people who tell me stories.
Today I will not upstage my characters with false wit.
Today I will write from dreams.
Today I will write using my whole brain and awareness.
Today I write for love and pain.
Today I will just write
It isn’t what it is.
It’s what I call it.
It’s joy.
Honest Sonnet#5 very afraid Shakespeare
The same process that over time shaped your wonderful face,
PROCESS PROBABLY REFERS TO THE GENTLE HOURS THE POET WHO WAS ADOPTED AWAY SPENT WITH HIS MOTHER THE QUEEN.
so that now everybody loves to look at you
YOUR LOVELY GAZE ON ME WHICH EVERY PERSON OF THE COURT WATCHES
, will eventually destroy that face,
making ugly what is now surpassingly beautiful.
WHICH IS UNFAIR ABOUT THAT WHICH WE EXCELL( THE POETS REQUEST TO BE GIVEN A SPECIAL OFFICE AND SALERY THAT OTHERS FEAR WOULD DO THEM GOOD.)
For never-resting Time takes summer by the hand
TIME IS RELENTLESS
, leads him into horrifying winter, and destroys him there
—freezing his sap, removing his full leaves,
IWON’T HAVE HEAT IN MY HOUSE OR CREATIVITY IN MY BLOOD BECAUSE I MUST MERELY SURVIVE.
covering up his beauty with snow, and turning everything bare
MY LIFE WILL BE SHIT
If we didn’t have perfume distilled from summer flowers to keep in a jar,
the effects of summer would vanish at the end of the season
OR DO YOU SUPPRESS MY DEEDS FROM THE WORLD AND USE ME LIKE A PERFUME
the effects of summer would vanish at the end of the season
I MORN IF YOU USE ME TO LOOK GOOD/BEAUTIFUL
Without perfume, we’d have no way of remembering the summer itself or its beauty
But the flowers used to make perfume lose only their outward beauty when winter comes
BUT SINCE MY SHIT DON’T STINK I WILL BE LIKE THE PERFUME YOU NEED IN THE WINTER WHEN YOU DON’T BATH(I am taking a little liberty here in order to get into the mood of the poet).
14 Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet
their beautiful scent lives on sweetly.
I WILL BE A NOTHING, BUT MY GOOD DEEDS WILL STILL BE SWEET
Affirmations that are Chewable An Affirmation a day keeps my deamons away
** When I over indulge I reduce my pleasure
**If I have done nothing to-day, I have not lived today.
**I must be intelligent to know what someone does not know.
**When I call on the courts I breed altercation and division.
**I learn well when I learn my own weakness and the betrayal of my understanding
**I am a good example when I follow my own example.
**I am a good leader when I follow my own leadership.
**When I interpret my interprets more than once I have ruminations
**When I scratch I know one of nature’s sweetest gratifications
**When I am happy with the soft, easy, and wholesome I am happy with ignorance and enjoy apathy.
**Only when I study do I am sensible about how much I must learn.
**When I nitpick and micromanage I increase doubt
**When I seek to understand death only then can I understand life.
**If I am afraid of death I am afraid of life.
**I am the best when I do not seek the extreme.
Woman Whisperer Weight – don’t look, don’t ask
A profoundly serious problem effecting every woman I have ever known is fat. It is also a delicate issue. Except as a psychiatrist I never, ever, no how, no way, to infinity and to death bring up weight with a woman. If I do, (but I don’t) for what ever reason, I would be cruel because she has already passed through 7 kinds of hell about her weight before I came along . And that is regardless what the scales say.
Weight control is a billion dollar industry. Concerns about weight has invaded just about every aspect of life and shows no sign of letting up – fashion, sex and recreation to name three.
I despise the altered pictures in magazines of women who don’t look that way in real life. The cultural hyper attention toward a certain look or way has also been a message to her already suffering self esteem which is low enough for the sake of the baby( see Women Whisperer about self esteem). The skinny message tends to help keep her down.
Pop the question!
OK OK.
Do issues about weight have an instinctual derivation? What was the survival value of being skinny? Were there any advantages to being over weight for the first humans?
Yes, yes and kind of.
First I know of no advantage an overweight mother has over a normal weight mother today. Capacity to make milk has no rules about that as far as I know.
So what is it? I will put myself in their moccasins. If I’m an infant all I want is a steady supply of mothers milk and a soft lap. I want my father to be the best hunter and my mother to be the best nurturer and despite famine will accept no substitute.
Who are the best hunters? Those who brought home at least enough calories for the health of the mother so she can do her job. Enough food for her would be determined by her body size.
Now, If you were the hunter, then, would you want to hunt for, a larger or smaller woman? Not a tough desision.
But then why-o-why Mr Know it-all do women gain weight so easily? Hummm? If the smaller women were selected to have the babies then we should not have a diet problem today, right?
I think the answer lies in how the successful mothers handled the food that was brought to them because sometimes there was plenty to eat and sometimes there wasn’t.
Even if the woman hooked the best and most loyal hunter, there would still be abundance times and times of scarcity. The fittest mothers probably stuffed themselves when they could and stored the excess in fat to prepare for the next famine. Logical?
So, it seems the most productive mothers were smaller for the sake of her hunter but she easily gained weight for the sake of the babies diet during famine. The phenomena of Twiggy is clearer – attraction and repellent. That she looks easy to feed but is a doubtful baby partner because she may not store any fat.
How does this information help women today? I don’t know. But if we understand answers become obvious. The ability to store fat is not an instinctual urge but physiology. The urgency to be small is instinctual not to only attract a hunter but also aid his efforts by being small. Then once he is committed to her and the baby she is eating for two or more for the rest of her life
Again, we have discovered another sacrifice women have made for our existence.
Mother nature knows best.
Thank you for listening.
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