In a Winter's Tale, we read of the King of Bohemia, a sea-side, peaceful and relaxed country. Here there are sheep-shearing parties,babies abandoned in deserts, and bears that eat people. The king sails home when fleeing Sicilia. Ladies and gentlemen may I present to you, Bohemia, a land-locked country whose border's are defined by no less than four mountain ranges. Bohemia is now the western two-thirds of the Czech Republic, and there is no way anyone could have ever sailed to it. Also, no deserts. And while I can swallow the idea that there were bears here, a coast and a desert beside each other in a land-locked country just doesn't float my boat.
Another example of Shakespeare not being true to location is in Hamlet. I actually visited Denmark this last summer, and spent some time with a Danish family. So reading through Hamlet recently was a little bit of a different experience. The one thing I noticed the most on my trip, and my Danish friend made sure to point out to me, was the importance of family. Denmark is an extremely peaceful country, and their view on family relationships is pretty cool. Children are respected and looked to for opinions, elders are honored and obeyed. And I'm not just talking ideal, it's actually illegal for parents in Denmark to hit their children. But we can debate the effectiveness of spankings some other day. What startles me most about Hamlet is how such a violent and manipulative royal family is set in such a peaceful and friendly country. The Danes have a word, "hygge", which doesn't exist in any other language, and can't really be defined. Don't try to pronounce it either, you can't. But think of everything that reminds you of home, and warmth, and contentedness. I was on a Danish ranch over the summer, my hair was wet from a recent drizzle, we had just finished a "Danish barbeque", people were singing about the start of summer in a language I didn't need to understand, the sun was setting at 11pm, and I was happier than I had been in a long time. It just felt so right, this community I didn't know was so complete. I told my friend I could just stand staring at the fire and be happy for the rest of my life. She told me, "That's hyyge."
Now think about Hamlet. Chaos, lies, trickery. A man goes insane because his family is corrupted. No, Hamlet is definitely not Danish. He's just an English character Shakespeare implanted into a land that sounded distant and mysterious. I'm not saying nothing could ever be rotten in the state of Denmark (there's way too many fish for that..), but Hamlet is in no way a representation of Danish culture.
So why did Shakespeare do it? Why does he not seem to care that his settings don't match up with reality? Was it just that, that he simply didn't care? Do we, as a collective Shakespeare readership, enforce disregard for truth by letting him get away with it?
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| Just for fun, Hamlet's castle in LEGO. |
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