Exit, Pursued by a Bear

"Exit, pursued by a bear." That's how Antigonus dies in The Winter's Tale. It's the most infamous stage direction in Shakespeare, and I have a story about it.

I took a Shakespearean Comedies class as an undergraduate English major, and The Winter's Tale was one of the plays we read. To kick off the discussion, the prof asked one of the students what she thought of it.

"It was too long!" she said. Think of a Valley Girl with a Southern accent. She kinda giggled when she said it.

"Well, that's a very insightful comment," the prof said with just the right touch of sarcasm. (I myself tend to pour sarcasm on my words like A-1 on a burnt steak; this was more of a light flavoring, just enough to let you know it was there. Magnifique!)

Then he went around the room and had every single student say something about the play. There were -- oh, I dunno, maybe 80 of us. Some of the comments were more insightful than others, but you can be damn sure nobody else said "it was too long." Hick/Valley Girl just sank deeper and deeper into her chair with each non-inane comment.

I was sitting in the back row, so by the time he got to me, most of what I wanted to say had been said. But I scrounged up something to say about that odd stage direction -- something to the effect that I didn't think a modern audience would buy it, but maybe it told us something about how Shakespeare's audiences differed from us in their expectations, in what they accepted as stage reality. (Or, I'd add now, maybe they just didn't care -- maybe they sorta accepted it as a bit of spectacle.) Hick/Valley Girl sank another notch and the prof moved on.

Nobody ever made another comment like that in that class.

Claudius is Creepy

CLAUDIUS: 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness ....
-- Hamlet, I.ii

I must have read or seen Hamlet dozens of times before I grasped one of the implications of this passage. I've always seen the obvious one, that Claudius is attempting to distract Hamlet from his grief. (He goes on to literally promise him the kingdom, for Pete's sake.) It's not hard to see why Claudius, the murderer, doesn't want anyone -- least of all Hamlet -- dwelling on the murder of Hamlet's father. Move along, Danes; nothing to see here!

What I noticed only recently is something Claudius himself doesn't mean to reveal: his own casual, brutal attitude toward death. When he says airily that "your father lost a father," he as Hamlet's paternal uncle is speaking of his own father's death. And it means nothing to him. Death has never meant anything to Claudius, except lately as a means to an end.

More deeply, he's unconscious that death could mean something to other people. He's unaware he's revealing anything about himself because he's unaware that he's unusual -- practically sociopathic. No doubt the way he counsels his nephew Hamlet to experience the elder Hamlet's death, and the subsequent natural grieving process, is simply the way Claudius does it himself: you put on some black clothes, walk around pretending to look sad for a while, and then have a nice sandwich.

He's manipulating Hamlet, to be sure, but I think he's also genuinely puzzled by Hamlet's behavior. Why are you acting this way, kid? Don't you know this isn't how you play the game?

Claudius is creepy. Claudius is cold.