KD^3C^3 - 20250511 It's a human skull on the ground
First, a Programming Note: I will be on vacation next Sunday, so don't expect much from me. Or the week after.
As you probably know I've been watching a lot of Hamlets. In Act 3, there is a scene where Claudius is struggling with the fact that he killed his brother. He want to repent, but struggles with it because he's still the king and married to Gertrude and doesn't want to give those things up. He then bows in silent prayer.
Hamlet comes upon Claudius and realizes he could kill the king right here, but if he did so, the king would likely go to heaven, what with being in prayer and all. Hamlet finds he can't bring himself to do it, because paradise is too nice an end and wouldn't be revenge as he wants it.
Every time I watch the scene I'm reminded of one of the worst pieces of critical analysis I have ever read about the play.
The author asked the question "Why doesn't Hamlet kill Claudius in Act 3 when he has the chance?" Then they proceeded to list all of the in-text reasons that could be used to justify Hamlet's hesitation: the above reason about Claudius being in Prayer, Hamlet's general ambivalence towards committing murder, perhaps Hamlet is actually mad and his faculties are diminished. But then the author of this analysis says all of those answers are wrong and the real answer is: Because there are still 2 acts left in the play!
This frustrates me for multiple reasons. First: Shakespeare didn't write five act plays. The acts were laded decided upon by editors. At no point was Shakespeare sitting around going, “well i could have the play end here, but I still need two more acts!” He never thought of his plays as having acts. They had scenes (roughly) but even the first published versions of his works didn’t have the act breaks that have become so common.
Shakespeare wrote plays as a complete thing, and they were as long as they needed to be. Shakespeare’s shortest play is A comedy of Errors. It’s a good play! It is a complete work and it is about 1800 lines long. Hamlet is, by comparison, more than 4000 lines long. more than twice the length, and Shakespeare’s longest play. The other of his 37 plays fall somewhere in that spectrum.
If Hamlet were to kill his uncle in this act 3 scene and then the play ended there, Hamlet would still only be Shakespeare’s 7th shortest play. Macbeth would be about the same length. Shakespeare didn’t write this play then decide he needed to pad it out with more scenes because the ending was too short.
In literary criticism, sometimes you see a distinction between “Watsonian” and “Doylist” explanations of something happening in a given work. The names from from the Sherlock Holmes stories, which were written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but narrated as if they had been written by the fictional Dr. John Watson. A Watsonian explanation or reading of a text looks for answers to questions that come from within the logic of the text, while a Doylist reading will look at the context in which the text was written, and why the author set up the scenario the way that they did.
What the original author of the analysis that I’m mad about was trying to to, it appears, was shift the perspective of readers from a Watsonian perspective (what are Hamlet’s motivations in this situation based on what has been set up previously) to a Doylist one (Why did Shakespeare put in a scene that could have ended the play, but didn’t?)
There’s room for both types of discourse and analysis when working with a text, particularly one as rich as Hamlet. But if you’re going to only talk about the external causes for a text, you should least be willing to apply actual facts to the situation. You should also ask the question in a way that isn’t meant to mislead the answers.
The original question was: Why doesn’t Hamlet kill Claudio in act 3? The question they want to answer is instead “Why did Shakespeare include this scene where Hamlet could kill Claudio but doesn’t?”
You can’t ask a Watsonian question and expect Doylist answer. That’s just intellectually dishonest.
I do have an answer to the question "Why doesn't Hamlet Kill Claudius in Act 3?" but my answer isn't inherently the right one. The beauty of Hamlet being a play, with hundreds or thousands of different ways to approach the text, is that each version gets to make its own decision. They have to evaluate the text and create their own interpretation. But the answer will never be, "because there are 2 acts left in the play."
Hugo Watch:
Still making my way through the The Ministry of Time, but I'm on the downhill slope. I hope to read at least 2 or 3 of the novels while I'm on vacation, so I'll better be able to place it afterwards.
I don't think I've talked about Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form yet, so let us do that. We have 2 Doctor Who Episodes (A perennial nominee) two episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks, and one episode each of Fallout and Agatha All Along. Best DPSF isn't supposed to just be "Best TV episode" it often becomes that. So we get a lot of TV episodes nominated. Conveniently I have seen all of these already, so I can quickly rank them from least to most favorite.
Agatha All Along: Death's Hand in Mine - This was fine. I didn't love this series but this was probably the best episode of it. I do love non-linear storytelling, so this got points above the rest for me. I'm so burned out on marvel, that even their more interesting attempts to do anything don't really wow me. And this whole series never really rose above the heights of the one it spun off from (Wandavision)
Fallout: The Beginning - The fallout series was better than I ever expected it could be, but I also forgot it almost immediately after it was over. It was fine.
Doctor Who: Dot and Bubble - Both of the nominated Doctor Who episodes are 'Doctor light' meaning the Doctor actually has a limited presence. in the narrative. Here, he spends almost all his time on a screen viewed by the POV character. This episode is one of the recent crop that pretends to be about one thing before becoming something else entirely. The problem for me was that it didn't quite accomplish either thing at full power. But still it's a complete story and I wouldn't mind watching it again.
Star Trek Lower Decks: The New Next Generation - This and FIssure Quest bounced back and forth in their spots. The New Next Generation hit me hard emotionally, because it's a well executed finale, but it's a finale more than it is a complete story. It is a wonderful send off for the series (even though I want more.)
Star Trek Lower Decks: Fissure Quest - This episode works both as a standalone and as a fun romp through the history of Trek. I don't want to say mor ethan that, but I liked it enogh to put it above the finale, but just barely.
Doctor Who: 73 Yards - This is the episode I knew would be at the top one I saw the list and i never really wavered from that. Another 'Doctor light' episode, but where Dot and Bubble is a little clunky, this one is tightly wound like a spring. The story refuses to explain itself and there's a little handwavyness if you thing about it to hard, but the emotional journey works and I was very satisfied when I watched it the first time. An easy first place ballot pick for me.
As you probably know I've been watching a lot of Hamlets. In Act 3, there is a scene where Claudius is struggling with the fact that he killed his brother. He want to repent, but struggles with it because he's still the king and married to Gertrude and doesn't want to give those things up. He then bows in silent prayer.
Hamlet comes upon Claudius and realizes he could kill the king right here, but if he did so, the king would likely go to heaven, what with being in prayer and all. Hamlet finds he can't bring himself to do it, because paradise is too nice an end and wouldn't be revenge as he wants it.
Every time I watch the scene I'm reminded of one of the worst pieces of critical analysis I have ever read about the play.
The author asked the question "Why doesn't Hamlet kill Claudius in Act 3 when he has the chance?" Then they proceeded to list all of the in-text reasons that could be used to justify Hamlet's hesitation: the above reason about Claudius being in Prayer, Hamlet's general ambivalence towards committing murder, perhaps Hamlet is actually mad and his faculties are diminished. But then the author of this analysis says all of those answers are wrong and the real answer is: Because there are still 2 acts left in the play!
This frustrates me for multiple reasons. First: Shakespeare didn't write five act plays. The acts were laded decided upon by editors. At no point was Shakespeare sitting around going, “well i could have the play end here, but I still need two more acts!” He never thought of his plays as having acts. They had scenes (roughly) but even the first published versions of his works didn’t have the act breaks that have become so common.
Shakespeare wrote plays as a complete thing, and they were as long as they needed to be. Shakespeare’s shortest play is A comedy of Errors. It’s a good play! It is a complete work and it is about 1800 lines long. Hamlet is, by comparison, more than 4000 lines long. more than twice the length, and Shakespeare’s longest play. The other of his 37 plays fall somewhere in that spectrum.
If Hamlet were to kill his uncle in this act 3 scene and then the play ended there, Hamlet would still only be Shakespeare’s 7th shortest play. Macbeth would be about the same length. Shakespeare didn’t write this play then decide he needed to pad it out with more scenes because the ending was too short.
In literary criticism, sometimes you see a distinction between “Watsonian” and “Doylist” explanations of something happening in a given work. The names from from the Sherlock Holmes stories, which were written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but narrated as if they had been written by the fictional Dr. John Watson. A Watsonian explanation or reading of a text looks for answers to questions that come from within the logic of the text, while a Doylist reading will look at the context in which the text was written, and why the author set up the scenario the way that they did.
What the original author of the analysis that I’m mad about was trying to to, it appears, was shift the perspective of readers from a Watsonian perspective (what are Hamlet’s motivations in this situation based on what has been set up previously) to a Doylist one (Why did Shakespeare put in a scene that could have ended the play, but didn’t?)
There’s room for both types of discourse and analysis when working with a text, particularly one as rich as Hamlet. But if you’re going to only talk about the external causes for a text, you should least be willing to apply actual facts to the situation. You should also ask the question in a way that isn’t meant to mislead the answers.
The original question was: Why doesn’t Hamlet kill Claudio in act 3? The question they want to answer is instead “Why did Shakespeare include this scene where Hamlet could kill Claudio but doesn’t?”
You can’t ask a Watsonian question and expect Doylist answer. That’s just intellectually dishonest.
I do have an answer to the question "Why doesn't Hamlet Kill Claudius in Act 3?" but my answer isn't inherently the right one. The beauty of Hamlet being a play, with hundreds or thousands of different ways to approach the text, is that each version gets to make its own decision. They have to evaluate the text and create their own interpretation. But the answer will never be, "because there are 2 acts left in the play."
Hugo Watch:
Still making my way through the The Ministry of Time, but I'm on the downhill slope. I hope to read at least 2 or 3 of the novels while I'm on vacation, so I'll better be able to place it afterwards.
I don't think I've talked about Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form yet, so let us do that. We have 2 Doctor Who Episodes (A perennial nominee) two episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks, and one episode each of Fallout and Agatha All Along. Best DPSF isn't supposed to just be "Best TV episode" it often becomes that. So we get a lot of TV episodes nominated. Conveniently I have seen all of these already, so I can quickly rank them from least to most favorite.
Agatha All Along: Death's Hand in Mine - This was fine. I didn't love this series but this was probably the best episode of it. I do love non-linear storytelling, so this got points above the rest for me. I'm so burned out on marvel, that even their more interesting attempts to do anything don't really wow me. And this whole series never really rose above the heights of the one it spun off from (Wandavision)
Fallout: The Beginning - The fallout series was better than I ever expected it could be, but I also forgot it almost immediately after it was over. It was fine.
Doctor Who: Dot and Bubble - Both of the nominated Doctor Who episodes are 'Doctor light' meaning the Doctor actually has a limited presence. in the narrative. Here, he spends almost all his time on a screen viewed by the POV character. This episode is one of the recent crop that pretends to be about one thing before becoming something else entirely. The problem for me was that it didn't quite accomplish either thing at full power. But still it's a complete story and I wouldn't mind watching it again.
Star Trek Lower Decks: The New Next Generation - This and FIssure Quest bounced back and forth in their spots. The New Next Generation hit me hard emotionally, because it's a well executed finale, but it's a finale more than it is a complete story. It is a wonderful send off for the series (even though I want more.)
Star Trek Lower Decks: Fissure Quest - This episode works both as a standalone and as a fun romp through the history of Trek. I don't want to say mor ethan that, but I liked it enogh to put it above the finale, but just barely.
Doctor Who: 73 Yards - This is the episode I knew would be at the top one I saw the list and i never really wavered from that. Another 'Doctor light' episode, but where Dot and Bubble is a little clunky, this one is tightly wound like a spring. The story refuses to explain itself and there's a little handwavyness if you thing about it to hard, but the emotional journey works and I was very satisfied when I watched it the first time. An easy first place ballot pick for me.