The ABCs of “Hamlet”

 

“O, ‘tis most sweet
When in one line two crafts directly meet.” (Hamlet, 3.4.209-10)

At the start of my 40th year, I resolved to dedicate the majority of my leisure time to my two greatest fascinations: Cinema and Shakespeare. I pursue them in parallel much of the time, but it is in their intersection where I discover the most joy, and the flush of intellectual and aesthetic pleasure. It follows, as the night the day, that I would set up for myself a special challenge: Prof. Robert B. Ray’s ABCs.

In one semester at UF, I learned a simple, but endlessly rewarding technique for worthwhile film analysis. Prof. Ray encouraged his students to view film as a hypertext, just as Roland Barthes had done with his analysis of Balzac’s “Sarrasine” in S/Z. He instructed us to pick a classic Hollywood film (mine was The Philadelphia Story (1940)) and write 26 entries—one for each letter of the alphabet—each starting with a detail within the film. The detail would then serve as a jumping-off point to generate knowledge about the film, speculate about filmmaking, and reflect on cinema in general. It was as fun as it was difficult at times, but always edifying. It’s been the rubric for all my personal film musings for two decades.

Unfortunately, I could not for the life of me dig up my original paper anywhere, to at least find some examples of what I did and how to replicate it. I soon found that Prof. Ray published a book titled The ABCs of Classic Hollywood in 2008, and I obtained a copy. To my surprise, I realized that he credited me in a handful of his Philadelphia Story entries. Feeling so honored, I doubled down on my resolve.

The perfect film for my project was already on a pedestal in my mind: Sir Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet. As a responsible fangirl/scholar, I’ve already amassed more knowledge about Branagh’s oeuvre than any other favorite of mine—Chaplin, Bergman, and Almodóvar included. Having not only directed the most Shakespeare films in film history, he’s done extensive work with Shakespearean stage productions as well, and received a knighthood for it all, making him the pin-up in the locker of my nerdy heart. He’s right there next to a portrait of my dear old William. 

When I got back from the Netherlands in June, I proceeded to read and research and write my ABCs every morning, striving to get all 26 done before going back to work. I got all 26 drafts down, and I shall proceed to review, edit, and share them as individual blog posts in the future. I tweaked the formula a bit, however, so each detail must touch upon at least two out of three levels: 

1) Generate knowledge about the film

2) Generate knowledge about Shakespeare and/or his plays in general

3) Speculate/reflect on film history and/or filmmaking

Serendipitously, many entries come full circle back onto Hamlet in a six-degrees-of-Kenneth-Branagh way, just for fun. And boy, did I have fun. 

Note: All line citations are according to the Shakespeare Pro app, which reflects the editorial standards of   the texts from PlayShakespeare.com. All line citations are from their edition of Hamlet unless otherwise noted. I am citing as many bibliographical sources as possible, but I am not citing every little IMDb or Wikipedia page I trudged through for all their minutiae. I may be pretending to be writing all this for a PhD, but I am not actually achieving one in the end, so there.