Investigating the Role of Orality in Hamlet - Report Example

Verse versus Prose: Investigating the Role of Orality in Hamlet Eric A. Havelock’s article, “The Alphabetic Mind,” presents the reader with a world that existed before the alphabet, a world that revolved around experience and subjectivity rather than fixed universality, a world that demanded active participation and endless imagination in the communication process. Havelock’s world before words is the oral world of narrative stories that cast people in the role of dynamic story teller, telling stories of transformation, evolution, and becoming. Havelock’s definition of the oral mind does not discuss things in terms of absolute binaries – good and bad, man and women, day and night; rather, the oral mind is that which blurs boundaries and creates spectrums of acceptability because it realizes that the purpose of communication is not in defining what it is, but what it does. However, the oral mind was replaced with the alphabetic mind, approximately 700 years before Christ, by the Ancient Greeks who, initially, wanted a tangible medium through which to record their stories (Havelock 134). At first, the alphabetic mind was that which used devices, such as meter and rhyme, dynamic syntax, transitive verbs, epithets, and parataxis, to aid in the memorization, but not the conceptualization, of narrative stories. Yet, this would shift again, in which the subjective become the objective, the fluid became the fixed, and the accessible storyteller became the inaccessible authority. Havelock charts this transition from orally minded Homer, to Plato, and finally to alphabetically minded Hume (and Kant), stating that the Greek alphabet is responsible for remolding the act of communicating and the act of comprehending by giving us “a universe of principles and relationships and laws and sciences, and values and ideas and ideals.” (Havelock 149). However, before resigning ourselves to a life of linguistic austerity, there are still literary avenues available to satiate our oral minds. Havelock discusses the Ancient Greeks’ ability to blend the oral with the alphabetic, which is frequently used in Shakespearean plays to convey a myriad of information to the audience about the mood, meaning, and moral of the story. Therefore, there is no better place to see Havelock’s oral mind in action than in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Havelock pinpoints the decline of the oral for the alphabetic mind early after the alphabet was established, when poetry transitioned into prose, and narration into exposition (134 – 135). Yet, this transition did not render poetry, referred to here on out as verse, and narration obsolete. William Shakespeare employed both verse and prose for a variety of reasons, most notably to create an auditory and sensory experience for the audience. Shakespearean plays are a motley mix of prose rolling into verse, and there seem to be no concrete boundaries or rules to explain why one starts where the other ends. A true storyteller, Shakespeare masterfully incorporates both mindsets and, upon closer inspection of the text, distinct reasons for the use of verse and prose begin to emerge. Shakespeare utilizes verse and prose for two central purposes: first, each of these styles conveys important information to the reader about the themes, characters, and setting; and second, Shakespeare employs verse and prose as a means to introduce his own opinions on morality. After carefully reviewing Hamlet, five central uses for verse materialize: first, verse is used by characters to make insightful observations or critiques;1 second, it expresses profound emotions of joy and misery;2 third, it introduces irony to the audience; fourth, it is used by the ‘righteous’ characters (as Shakespeare perceives them) as a tool to mock the lowly, the ignorant, and the immoral;3 and last, it signals an attempt to restore order from chaos. In contrast, the role of prose in the play is as follows: first, it provides a necessary break for the audience from the intellectually and emotionally draining experience of listening to dynamic verse; second, it expresses that which is common or expected; and third, it frequently suggests guilt or madness in a character.4 In addition, Shakespeare uses verse to separate the nobility from the peasants, and the heroes from the villains; Hamlet and Horatio frequently use verse to express themselves; whereas Claudius, Polonius, and even Gertrude to an extent, speak in prose. However, Shakespeare does not rigidly write Hamlet in terms of verse and Claudius in terms of prose; at times, both of these characters, constructed as protagonist and antagonist, slip into the use of the other style of speaking, which suggests that even the most noble of characters have base instincts, and even the most abhorred have redeeming qualities. Lastly, Shakespeare uses verse to engage the audience by narrating the story through dynamic imagery and active characters, and prose to inform the audience about an important development or to provide background information. This clever inclusion of both styles supports Havelock’s argument that the oral mind need not live in isolation from the alphabetic mind; Shakespeare perceives verse to represent high brow and prose low brow culture, but it becomes obvious to the audience that one cannot exist without the reinforcement of the other. Finally, Shakespeare’s frequent blurring between verse and prose is for auditory effect. Becoming too acquainted with one style results in skimming text and selective listening on the part of the reader; therefore, Shakespeare uses verse after long sections of prose in order to cast the audience as active participants in the narrative, rather than passive receivers of information. The constant shift between verse and prose demands a new kind of cognitive understanding from the audience, in which the audience becomes an omnipresent character in the play while simultaneously acting as the analytical judge and jury. This interplay between the two, which is central to truly experiencing the play, Hamlet, is virtually lost when the original version is transposed into a contemporary language. This is most notable in the final scene in Act 5 which, due to the nature of the scene, should abound with images of death, despair, redemption, and finality. In the original version, Hamlet’s final words are as follows: O, I die, Horatio. The potent poison quite oercrows my spirit. I cannot live to hear the news from England. But I do prophesy the election lights On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice. So tell him, with th occurrents, more and less, Which have solicited. The rest is silence. O, O, O, O. (dies) (5.2.352-358). In contrast to the sensory overload of the original, the modern version removes all sense of drama, replacing it with a sterile interpretation of one of the most important scenes in the play. The modern interpretation reads as follows: Oh, I’m dying, Horatio! This strong poison’s overpowering me. I will not live to hear the news from England. But I bet Fortinbras will win the election to the Danish crown. He’s got my vote as I die. So tell him that, given the recent events here—oh, the rest is silence. Oh, oh, oh, oh. (he dies) (SparkNotes.com). In short, the example included above is a testament to the validity of Havelock’s assessment of the necessity to preserve the oral mind. In summation, Shakespeare’s Hamlet provides a tangible example of the importance of orality in literature. Unlike the alphabetic mind that connects ideas in an abstract fashion, the oral mind connects the reader to the text in an experiential fashion. The alphabetic mind is depicted as a sanitized voyeur who silently watches and interprets from the sidelines; whereas the oral mind is the active participant who chooses to play rather than watch the game. However, Havelock is not suggesting that we reject the alphabetic for the oral because, in our modern society, this is not possible, especially when the vast majority of information is transmitted through alphabetic communication. To reject this form is to commit literary suicide. What Havelock is suggesting is that a combination of the oral and the alphabetic can exist in literature, as it did in Homer, Plato, and Shakespeare’s works, and it is in finding this balance that literature will evolve to include the subjective and the objective, the dynamic and the conceptual. . Works Cited Havelock, Eric A. “The Alphabetic Mind: A Gift of Greece to the Modern World.” Oral Tradition 1.1 (1986): 134 – 150. E-Journal. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York: The University Society, 1901. Online text. Spark Notes. No Fear Shakespeare: Hamlet. SparkNotes, LLC., 2010. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. < http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/page_332.html>. Read More