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“It Started Like a Guilty Thing”: the Beginning of Hamlet and the Beginning of Modern Politics Search by JEFFREY R

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“It Started Like a Guilty Thing”: the Beginning of Hamlet and the Beginning of Modern Politics Search by JEFFREY R Telling Facts and Naming Names Since 1993 HOME ARTICLES MAGAZINE SUBSCRIBE DONATE ARCHIVES ABOUT BOOKS PODCASTS FAQS JULY 24, 2015 “It Started Like a Guilty Thing”: the Beginning of Hamlet and the Beginning of Modern Politics Search by JEFFREY R. WILSON June 21, 2016 King Hamlet is a tyrant and King Claudius a traitor Tweet but, because Shakespeare asked us to experience the events in JEAN BRICMONTShare 43 The European Dead Hamlet from the perspective of the young Prince Hamlet, we End 0 are much more inclined to detect and detest King Claudius’s MATTHEW Email STEVENSON political failings than King Hamlet’s. If so, then Shakespeare’s Will Britain Pull the play Hamlet, so often seen as the birth of modern psychology, Plug on the EU? might also tell us a little bit about the beginnings of modern ROBERT HUNZIKER Fukushima 3/11 politics as well. Breeds Cynicism TED RALL * * * Get Over It: Mass Shootings are the Let’s start over. Let’s read Hamlet as if we’ve never read it New Normal in America before. It begins with a king who has died. A figure looking like DAVE LINDORFF the dead king has appeared to some soldiers sent to guard the What About the castle of Elsinore – they don’t know why, nor do we in the Cops? Let’s Ban Assault Weapons for audience. This figure was armored up, suggesting something of Police, Too a warrior king, and this intimation of a warrior king is SUSAN BABBITT immediately confirmed by a man named Horatio, the only one Cuba’s “Battle for Ideas” Affects Us All, around who has any idea what’s going on: or Could, and Should JOHN WIGHT Such was the very armour he had on Brexit, the EU and When he the ambitious Norway combated; the Future of Britain: the Main Enemy So frown’d he once, when, in an angry parle, Resides Here, Not in Brussels He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice. JULIAN VIGO ‘Tis strange. Disenfranchisement Laws, Race and the There really is something “strange” about Horatio’s story. A U.S. Presidential Election technical term of combat, “parle” means peaceful negotiations PATRICK COCKBURN between the opposing sides of a conflict. In fact, the Oxford The Fall of Fallujah English Dictionary cites this line from Hamlet for its JENNIFER MATSUI definition: “A debate or conference; discussion; negotiation; How to React to Headlines and Not spec. a meeting between enemies or opposing parties to Read into News – A discuss the terms of an armistice.” But the former king, if Handy Primer in the Age of Outrage Horatio can be taken at his word, once slaughtered a slew of NICK FORD Polacks while in parlay. This is not the only possible reading of Equal Access to the this line. Perhaps Horatio is trying to be metaphorical or glib – Draft is Equality Not Worth Having and there is some editorial dispute over the phrase “sledded BINOY KAMPMARK Polacks” – but the most straightforward reading of the first Dreams About Terrorists: Wolves, substantive bit of information we get about King Hamlet is Wolf Packs and that he was a warrior king who did not respect the laws of war. Resources HARVEY WASSERMAN This image of a somewhat scandalous King Hamlet is 5 More U.S. Nukes to Close, Will Diablo amplified as Horatio proceeds to explain why Denmark is on Canyon Be Next? high alert: CESAR CHELALA Children Pay the Our last king, Highest Price for the Refugee Crisis Whose image even but now appear’d to us, RIVERA SUN Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway, Celebrating Grace Thereto prick’d on by a most emulate pride, Lee Boggs Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet– KANI XULAM Ali Hammers UN For so this side of our known world esteem’d him– Stooges—Even from the Grave Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal’d compact, Well ratified by law and heraldry, June 20, 2016 Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror: ERIC DRAITSER After Orlando, Against the which, a moiety competent Democrats and Was gaged by our king; which had return’d Republicans Clamor for Expanded Police To the inheritance of Fortinbras, State Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant, MALÚ HUACUJA DEL TORO And carriage of the article design’d, Intolerance and “The Trump Effect” His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras, PEPE ESCOBAR Of unimproved mettle hot and full, Beijing Goes Mobile Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there in the South China Sea Shark’d up a list of lawless resolutes, RALPH NADER For food and diet, to some enterprise Commercializing That hath a stomach in’t; which is no other– Elections to Destroy Our Democracy As it doth well appear unto our state– ADAM BLEDSOE But to recover of us, by strong hand The Racist and And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands Sexist Nature of Brazil’s New So by his father lost: and this, I take it, Government Is the main motive of our preparations, NELSON VALDES The source of this our watch and the chief head Revelation and the Fashionable: Or Of this post-haste and romage in the land. Writing About Cuba BEN MORRIS A scholar and a skeptic, Horatio tells the story of King Hamlet Brexit and the in a way that calls the quality of the King’s character and reign Murder of Jo Cox into question. As Horatio tells it, King Hamlet’s reckless URI AVNERY Will Petty Corruption actions directly led to the endangerment of Denmark and the Bring Down need for guards to be posted on watch. It all began, Horatio Netanyahu? explains, when Fortinbras of Norway challenged King Hamlet MICHAEL BARKER Are You a Racist? to a duel. According to the conventions of heraldry, the winner Take the EU Test of this duel would receive the other man’s country. The winner ELLIOT SPERBER The World is a Gas would expand his land, his subjects, his resources, his power, Chamber and thereby his ability to govern and protect his people, but GEORGE WUERTHNER The Last, Best that is not why King Hamlet accepted Fortinbras’s challenge, Chance to Save the at least not in Horatio’s eyes. King Hamlet sallied out to the Big Wild: Northern Rockies Ecosystem field to fight Fortinbras with everything on the line because Preservation Act Hamlet was “pricked on by a most emulate pride.” King THOMAS KNAPP Hamlet wanted to preserve his honor, not to enlarge his Syria: Change the Dissent Channel resources and capacity to rule, but to be seen as the better, KATHY KELLY stronger, braver man. Why Go To Russia? ROBERT KOEHLER The stakes could not be higher, but is this really a game you Mass Karma want your king to be playing? I wouldn’t want President RIVERA SUN Obama wagering our entire nation in a fistfight with Putin. Women’s Draft? Sign Me Up To Abolish What if he lost? Here, a modern reader might try to hide War behind the indignant charge of anachronism: That’s just how AIDAN O'BRIEN they did things in those days, and we shouldn’t hold Europe’s Football Fans are Innocent, Shakespeare’s medieval king accountable to modern Europe’s standards of politics. It must be remembered, however, that in Governments Are Not 1599 Shakespeare was telling a story that was already several WILL SOLOMON centuries old. His audience would have had the same reaction David Brooks’ God Is that we do. They wouldn’t have wanted Queen Elizabeth Not Your God fighting King Philip of Spain for the other’s nation. What if she JOHN HUTCHISON A Covert Life lost? Then all allegiances and resources would suddenly be NYLA ALI KHAN redirected to an outside ruler who did not have the land’s best Becoming Kashmiri interest at heart. It’s not anachronistic to view King Hamlet as a reckless ruler. It’s common sense. Weekend Edition June 17, 2016 Friday - Sunday Thank goodness he won, and yet in winning that duel, acquiring a part of Norway, disinheriting the young Fortinbras, ANDREW LEVINE who therefore mounts an army to attack Denmark and reclaim Bernie’s Tragic Flaw: Too Soft on Clinton his birthright, King Hamlet has directly endangered his people ALAN NASSER to satisfy his pride. Arguably, there was no possible good Hillary’s Agenda Here outcome to Fortinbras’s challenge: either King Hamlet could and Abroad refuse to fight and be seen by his enemies as weak; or accept Intertwined: “Full Spectrum the challenge, lose the duel, and lose his entire country; or win Dominance” Around the Globe, A Swelling the duel and start a blood feud in which he and his people Precariat at Home would never be safe. Arguably, tragedy is the logical conclusion ROBIN D.G. KELLEY of a culture of honor. Cedric J. Robinson: the Making of a Black Radical Intellectual Perhaps this is why, when a cock crows at the end of the first ROB URIE scene of Hamlet, the Ghost “started like a guilty thing.” The Hillary Clinton and whole point of the first scene is that the former king is guilty – American Empire ISMAEL HOSSEIN- guilty of being a bad man and a bad king. As we learn more ZADEH fullly later in Act I, the spirit of King Hamlet is only hanging Distorting Fascism to Sanitize Capitalism around here in Denmark because the king died a guilty man. MIKE WHITNEY He was, as the ghost laments when it reveals that King Hamlet Negative Rates, was murdered by his own brother, Plunging Yields and a “Fix” for the Economy Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, GARY LEUPP Unhous’led, disappointed, unanel’d, On “Islamic” and No reck’ning made, but sent to my account “Islamist Terrorism” With all my imperfections on my head.
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