English Literature & Composition - PopulationMe.com

Chapter 7: Introduction to Drama
AN EVEN CLOSER READING ...
August Wilson's Fences, we will see, makes effective use of the prop that it is named for. Henrik
Ibsen uses the decimated Christmas tree and Torvold's closed office door in A Doll House. So
it is no surprise that Shakespeare also makes frequent use of these elements of stagecraft. One
subtle instance occurs when Hamlet has met the ghost and learned about his uncle; he draws
out "my tables" to "set it down that one may smile and smile and be a villain." The prop reminds
us that the prince-this is an element of his fascinating complexity-is one part nerd and
another part philosopher. He likes to write things down. We later discover in his graveyard chat
with Horatio that he has learned, as every well-trained prince must, to "write fair" and it "now
did me good service." He tells his friend that he substituted his forged command for Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern's writ of execution. Hamlet's narrative implicitly repeats that earlier
"writing" motif and prop.
Similarly, Prince Hamlet's handling of the recorders in his scene with the king's two spies
is an effort to use a simple hand-held object to define the men's improper behavior toward him:
"Look you ... how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me; you would
seek to know my stops ... " (III. ii. 319-321.) The prop becomes a moral teaching tool.
A crucially important way to approach the play is to show how a certain pattern-such as
baiter, bait, carp-repeats itself in many different ways during the play. Had Shakespeare
wished simply to suggest insights like "The world defies human understanding and control,"
he could have written an essay developing that thesis. He didn't. He was a dramatist and poet,
not a man eager to educate his audience with a well-developed five-paragraph essay or to parade
his politics with a well-crafted op-ed piece. An artist, especially one of Shakespeare's caliber,
links artistic ends to dramatic and poetic means to convey that insight: those means
include poetry, dramaturgy, gripping dialogue, creation of vivid characters. Therefore, for instance,
he not only opens the play with a question ("Who goes there?"-a good first indication
of uncertainty), but instead of answering the question inserts a challenge: "Nay, answer me."
The first seconds of the play immediately drag us into a world that is both uncertain and hostile.
Here a preview suggestion is to have students read the first lines of the play, then tum to
Maynard Mack's essay on p. 1655 and read just his first three paragraphs on the play's obsessive
use of questions and riddles.
Later in the scene the three men on watch attempt to stop the ghost with their swords ('''Tis
here," IIITis here,") and fail ("'Tis gone")-what we might term a dramaturgical enactment of
this same theme of failed intention. The swords are props that enact one of the play's key concerns:
the near-impossibility of meaningful human action in a universe that defies comprehension.
We see it yet again in the structure of Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy where each
effort either to act or comprehend ends in futility and inaction. We see it once more in
Claudius's failed prayer for forgiveness. The pattern runs through the entire play, a conscious
artistic decision that can be observed and analyzed. Once again, our goal as teachers is to train
students to think analogically, just as we did with the iterative references to fences in "Bam
Burning" (not to mention Wilson's use of the actual fence in his play) or Donne's astonishingly
inventive variety of similes and conceits in his "Valediction" (p. 1098).
What follows are more items and activities to consider as you walk your students through
the play. Rather than a single conceptual net to throw over the play's poetry, action, and props,
here are some ideas that occur to us, in almost a scatter-shot manner, appropriate for the play's
unparalleled complexity and realism.
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