A Trixposé

FROM TRIXIE THE CAT

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code….

There can be few Shakespeareans round the globe who are UNAWARE that Benedict Cumberbatch…..

……famed for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes….

 

……is currently playing Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in London…..

The play is currently in preview – and opens to the Press on Tuesday, 25th August, 2015……

HOWEVER….

…..the Times broke the critical embargo…..

…..and sent along one Kate Malby……

……critic AND academic….

….. to cover the first preview.

She reported – in horror – that Hamlet’s soliloquy…..

To Be or not to Be……

…. had been moved from Act Three to the very beginning of the play…..

….described this as….

…indefensible…..

…..and awarded the production only two stars….

Tony Award-winning director, John Tiffany….

(No, Your Cat had never heard of him either)

….attacked Maltby in the Observer for…..

….moralising….

…and criticised her….

….lack of understanding of what previews are for….

Maltby went onto BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the morning after the first preview to defend the Times’s decision to publish her review. She agreed it would be unfair to criticise energy and pace at such an early stage but criticising structural changes was justified.

 Since then more theatre folk have leapt from the woodwork to defend the play’s director, Lindsey Turner….

….declaring that young directors now feel more at liberty to change the structure of old plays…..

IN ANY WAY THEY LIKE…..

HOWEVER…..

….reports are coming in that the soliloquy has been restored to….

…..it’s rightful place….

…..in Act Three….

BUT YOUR CAT HAS NEWS FOR EVERYONE!!!

THERE IS NO RIGHTFUL PLACE FOR ‘TO BE OR NOT TO BE’!!!!

The very first version of Hamlet that we now have is the 1603 Quarto….

…..known as the Bad Quarto….

In the last century academics came up with the bizarre theory that this version was put together from memory by a bunch of actors….

…and that’s why it’s full of….

…mistakes…

Bletchley Code Breaker, Eric Sams…

…made short work of the….

…amnesiac actors theory….

After all……

THE ONE THING YOU CAN BE SURE OF IN ACTORS IS THAT THEY HAVE GOOD MEMORIES!!!

No, Thomas Heywood, Shakespeare’s contemporary, gives a vivid account of how plays were pirated by…

….stenographers…

…HIS WORD….

….who would stand in the pit and write down the words of the actors…..

In this Bad Quarto version, the ‘To Be or not to Be’ speech comes earlier than Act Three…..

It comes in what would be the equivalent of Act Two!!!

(The Bad Quarto, for obvious reasons, has no Act or Scene divisions.)

It comes BEFORE the…

Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I…..

…..soliloquy….

…..and NOT AFTER IT…..

…. as it does in the Second Quarto (1604/5)

…..which represents Shakespeare’s ‘second thoughts’ about the play….

……and which forms the basis of our ‘standard’ Hamlet text.

In The Code’s view, the early positioning of the soliloquy is the better one…..

….and Stewart Trotter used this in his LAUDED 1982 production of the play at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter….

….starring the fabulous Anthony May as the Dane….

(The late B.A. Young, the distinguished theatre critic of the Financial Times, described Stewart’s ending of Hamlet as the best he had ever seen…)

In this earlier placing of the soliloquy, Hamlet enters…..

….in King Claudius’s words….

…poring upon a book…

This means that when Hamlet says….

To be or not to be…..

HE IS QUOTING FROM THE BOOK ITSELF!!!

He then responds with delight at the truth of this observation by declaring…..

….. in the 1603 version….

Aye, that’s the point…..

…and in the 1604 version….

…that is the question….

Lewis Fiander…..

….the great Australian actor….

….once told Your Cat that he auditioned with this speech for the legendary Laurence, Lord Olivier….

Lewis entered from the wings reading a book….

…and when he said….

That is the question….

…he flung the book across the stage in an explosion of intellectual excitement….

Olivier’s reaction?

Baby, if I had seen you do this twenty years ago I would have stolen it….

‘Bye now….

Thanks for the kind words, Trixie.

Just to let Brothers and Sisters know that I’m hard at work on ‘The Princess of France (from Love’s Labour’s Lost) as Queen Elizabeth I.

Trix ‘n’ Tom are also busy decoding Shakespeare’s ‘Bath Sonnets’…..

ALL WILL BE REVEALED SOON!!!

Best wishes…..

…. and thanks for your Patronage…..

Stewart T.

TAILNOTE FROM TRIXIE THE CAT

The Independent newspaper has printed the following note from Stewart in its 25th August edition:

Hamlet in any order

Lyndsey Turner, the director of the Cumberbatch Hamlet, has every right to make “To be or not to be” a movable feast. It’s exactly what Shakespeare did himself.

The First Quarto of Hamlet (1603) places this speech before “Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I” and the Second Quarto (1604/5) – the version now generally followed – after it. I prefer the earlier version as it allows Hamlet to enter “poring upon a book” – so “To be or not to be” becomes a quote from the book itself.

Stewart Trotter
London W9

Well done, Boss XXX