A Truant Disposition

Horatio's Role in the Tragedy of Hamlet -- Who is Horatio, friend and confidant? false friend and opportunist? ghost, Fortinbras, cap-a-pie armor, false friends, HORATIOANDHAMLET.COM, Lecture excerpts

Feb 2024 I recently found this mock news interview of an older Horatio who admits to his opportunism and false friendship with Hamlet. I do not know who the creators are outside of what Youtube shows here. Can anyone help me out? This is an excellent skit - I assume it was created by students. https://youtu.be/8NoGu9xeM50?si=tk6OfC5JOI1Yyvw9

Dec 2023 Keanu Reeves - My book will help with this! Reeves says, “I’ve always wanted to know since I was growing up, who really wrote the plays of Shakespeare. ... So I want to be there at that moment when Shakespeare [wrote his works],” continued Reeves. “Because I don’t think it was really Shakespeare… So I’d like to [time travel] to 1600s [and see] Shakespeare writing Hamlet.”(James Osborne "The Digital Fix" Keanu Reeves speaking with "Buzzfeed")

In the meantime, Keanu could buy my book, "A Truant Disposition." 🙂. Another reason to like Keanu.

Apr-May 2023 -Director Gregory Berry’s recent staging of “Hamlet” * shows us an Horatio who conspires with Osric to present our troubled Hamlet with a ghost who will anonymously demand the murder of Claudius. These are perspectives I encourage in my book, “A Truant Disposition,” and I was pleased to see this more textured, integral, and Shakespearean role for Horatio. Berry’s presentation flows seamlessly and employs skillful directing to embody the action - better and less complicated actions than I suggest in my book to accomplish the same goals. CONGRATULATIONS to director, players, and staff for this excellent “Hamlet.”

You can hear an interview with Berry about this “Hamlet” here:

Greg Berry "Hamlet": Arts & Entertainment Spotlight on.soundcloud.com

Hamlet (Variorum) adapted by Toby Malone. Outsiders Inn. at Explorations Academy 1701 Ellis St. Bellingham, WA. It played April 18 to May 5, with a final performance in Seattle on May 6, 2023.

September 2022 King Charles III quoted “Hamlet” to honor his mother’s passing: “May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” (Act 5, scene 2) The play “Hamlet” may have been echoing the final prayers from the scaffold of Charles’s tenth great-grandfather, Robert Devereux Earl of Essex, on February 25, 1601: “When my life and body shall part, send thy blessed angels to be near unto me, which may convey it to the joys of Heaven.” King Charles’s sons William and Harry descend from the Earl of Essex through their father, and also through their mother, Diana Spencer. Hamlet’s difficulties are often compared with Essex’s, most notably from John Dover Wilson in “The Essential Shakespeare.” (See Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1598-1601 for an account of the Essex rebellion, trial, and execution.)

March 2022 Actor Mark Rylance’s recent description of the characters he tends to play matches how I would like to see Horatio’s character in “Hamlet.” In response to Scot Tong’s observation that good guys vs. bad guys aside, Rylance has played more complex characters, Rylance said he tends to play characters who are “trying to do their best, something good, they might make a hash of it.” He said although he doesn’t agree with the doctor in “Don’t Look Up,” the doctor thinks he is right, and Richard III believes he is right. Rylance said he is devoted to Shakespeare and to play-acting. (Rylance interview with Scot Tong, 17 March 2022, “The Outfit”, Graham Moore, director. WBUR) https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/03/17/mark-rylance-the-outfit A more developed role for Horatio could reflect the complexity of being a political opportunist with university connections to Hamlet, while seeking to align himself with whoever emerges from the disruption of the monarchy at Elsinore.

January 2022 I recently discovered another not-so-friendly Horatio appeared in Leif Stinnerborn’s 1996 production of “Hamlet” at the Västanå Theatre in Sweden. This play also questioned the supernatural nature of the ghost. Polonius is pretending to be the ghost to encourage the murder of Claudius and gain power. Horatio joins Polonius in this conspiracy.

In “The Production of Hamlet at the Västanå Theatre in Sweden,’ Freddie Rokem writes, “the young male actor playing Horatio, however, who as an outsider to both of the two families and the real joker of the game, slowly exits bearing the ghost-costume.” (Rokem, Freddie. Western European Stages; New York Vol. 9, Issue 2, Spring 1997: 57.) And: “By telling a completely different story on the basis of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” text, changing the basic plot structure of this drama, the theatre wanted to challenge these claims. Not only can the most classical drama ever written be “told” with the style developed by the theatre, it is even possible, by paying attention to an alternative dramaturgy and complex meta-theatrical dimensions, to “tell” “Hamlet” in a radically different way.” And: “Horatio is the character who has undergone the most radical change. He is definitely not Hamlet’s friend.”

May 2021 My ancestor, Stephen Hopkins, was in a shipwreck, he was at Jamestown, he was on the Mayflower. And maybe, just maybe, he’s in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

https://www.folger.edu/shakespeare-unlimited/stephen-hopkins-stephano-buckley

Listen to the Folger Library’s Shakespeare Unlimited: Epsiode 163

https://soundcloud.com/folgershakespearelibrary/stephen-hopkins-and-stephano

Stephen Hopkins was the only passenger on the Mayflower who had previously been to the Americas. Eleven years before the Mayflower landed in what is now Massachusetts, Hopkins sailed aboard the Sea Venture, a ship bound for Jamestown, VA that was blown off-course by a hurricane and wrecked in Bermuda. Among Hopkins’s fellow passengers on the Sea Venture was William Strachey, a poet and playwright whose account of the ill-fated voyage may have inspired Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Book Signing at Barnes and Noble, April 2021

April 23, 2021 1:00-5:00pm - To celebrate William Shakespeare’s 457th birthday, BARNES & NOBLE in Topeka invites you to meet Carol Grieb, the author of “A Truant Disposition: discovering the tragedy of Hamlet through the role of Horatio, Revised Second Edition.” The book offers a view for the roles of Horatio, Fortinbras, and the ghost which questions the restoration (1660s) revival of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” and firmly grounds the play in its historical context. Grieb will have books available for purchase.
March 4, 11, & 18, 2021 Instructor for “Context, Controversy and Confederacy in Hamlet.” Osher Institute at the University of Kansas. Enroll at osher.ku.edu. This class will be given online from 9:30 - 11:00 a.m.
July 2019 Instructor for “Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Time, Place, and Temperament” Osher Institute, at Washburn University.

Early 2019 Emmalyn Gladney Miron’s (POOR YORICK PRODUCTIONS) HAMLET offered an Horatio who conveyed his preoccupation with palatial intrigue and his underlying worry about how this was all going to affect him. “His apprehension in his involvement in the unfolding plot was palpable. To display an emotional discomfort is very hard to convey if there aren’t lines to support it. [The actor] understood the subtext of the lines and gave an effective nuanced performance.” http://thecolumnonline.com/review/01-30-2019_HAMLET-PRINCE-OF-DENMARK/
Early 2019 In researching “not Hamlet’s friend,” I found that Romanian director Dinu Cernescu (1970s) also saw Horatio as an opportunist working in conjunction with Fortinbras. See this article: Monica Matei-Chesnoiu, University "Ovidius" Constanta, Romania: Matei-Chesnoiu, Monica. “Mounting Revenge and Power from the Margins: Masks of Romanian Hamlets.” 7th World Shakespeare Congress, short paper session. Valencia. April 2001 https://shine.unibas.ch/revengechesnoiu.htm (accessed February 2022).
Mounting Revenge and Power from the Margins: Masks of Romanian Hamlets “Dinu Cernescu's Hamlet is a sequence of crimes, like in the royal tragedies. … Moreover, in the secret chambers of the castle there is another plot: Marcellus, Bernardo, and Horatio devise Claudius's murder. Horatio is not Hamlet's friend; he is the current king's enemy …”

January 2019 Shakespearean actor and artistic director Mark Rylance: “Time will celebrate those who were not daunted by the fearmongering of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and its supporters in the media and academia.” Rylance’s forthcoming book, Francis Bacon’s Contribution to Shakespeare: A New Attribution Method, argues that Bacon contributed to some of Shakespeare’s works. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/jan/19/mark-rylance-takes-on-shakespeare-establishment-in-authorship-debate-over-francis-bacon
October 2018 Print and e-book Revised 2nd Edition available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
June 13 - July 2, 2017 HEART of AMERICA SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET, Southmoreland Park, Kansas City, MO. Excellent performance!
March - April 2017 Instructor for "Is Horatio Shakespeare's Most Enduring Villain?" Osher Institute, kupce@ku.edu
July 2016 Instructor for “Horatio’s Role in Hamlet,” Piller Institute, Colorado Springs.

CarolGrieb%25252Blogo.jpg

Teaching Horatio's Role in Hamlet. — Teaching Horatio's Role in Hamlet.

cjg4words@gmail.com

Carol Grieb is a grandmother and former teacher living in Lawrence, Kansas. She has rural Kansas roots and has lived in New Jersey, Germany, Luxembourg, and Japan. Her travels also include England.

Osher class on Shakespeare's HAMLET. — Osher class on Shakespeare's HAMLET.

2017 KC HEARTLAND SHAKESPEARE stage for HAMLET

Friends, family, and neighbors come out to celebrate the publication of "A Truant Disposition."

Setting up for 2021 online class: “Context, Controversy, and Confederacy in HAMLET.”

Dec 2023 Keanu Reeves - My book will help with this!

He says, “I’ve always wanted to know since I was growing up, who really wrote the plays of Shakespeare. ... So I want to be there at that moment when Shakespeare [wrote his works],” continued Reeves. “Because I don’t think it was really Shakespeare… So I’d like to [time travel] to 1600s [and see] Shakespeare writing Hamlet.”(James Osborne "The Digital Fix" Keanu Reeves speaking with "Buzzfeed")

In the meantime, Keanu could buy my book, "A Truant Disposition." 🙂. Another reason to like Keanu.