"Objective Correlatives"

The term "objective correlatives" was coined by T.S. Elliot in his essay

from the following essay : " Hamlet and His Problems"


http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw9.html


T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. 1922.

Hamlet and His Problems



"FEW critics have even admitted that Hamlet the play is the primary problem, and Hamlet the character only secondary. And Hamlet the character has had an especial temptation for that most dangerous type of critic: the critic with a mind which is naturally of the creative order, but which through some weakness in creative power exercises itself in criticism instead. These minds often find in Hamlet a vicarious existence for their own artistic realization. Such a mind had Goethe, who made of Hamlet a Werther; and such had Coleridge, who made of Hamlet a Coleridge; and probably neither of these men in writing about Hamlet remembered that his first business was to study a work of art. The kind of criticism that Goethe and Coleridge produced, in writing of Hamlet, is the most misleading kind possible. For they both possessed unquestionable critical insight, and both make their critical aberrations the more plausible by the substitution—of their own Hamlet for Shakespeare's—which their creative gift effects. We should be thankful that Walter Pater did not fix his attention on this play. 1
Two recent writers, Mr. J. M. Robertson and Professor Stoll of the University of Minnesota, have issued small books which can be praised for moving in the other direction. Mr. Stoll performs a service in recalling to our attention the labours of the critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 1 observing that

they knew less about psychology than more recent Hamlet critics, but they were nearer in spirit to Shakespeare's art; and as they insisted on the importance of the effect of the whole rather than on the importance of the leading character, they were nearer, in their old-fashioned way, to the secret of dramatic art in general.

2
Qua work of art, the work of art cannot be interpreted; there is nothing to interpret; we can only criticize it according to standards, in comparison to other works of art; and for "interpretation" the chief task is the presentation of relevant historical facts which the reader is not assumed to know. Mr. Robertson points out, very pertinently, how critics have failed in their "interpretation" of Hamlet by ignoring what ought to be very obvious: that Hamlet is a stratification, that it represents the efforts of a series of men, each making what he could out of the work of his predecessors. The Hamlet of Shakespeare will appear to us very differently if, instead of treating the whole action of the play as due to Shakespeare's design, we perceive his Hamlet to be superposed upon much cruder material which persists even in the final form. 3
We know that there was an older play by Thomas Kyd, that extraordinary dramatic (if not poetic) genius who was in all probability the author of two plays so dissimilar as the Spanish Tragedy and Arden of Feversham; and what this play was like we can guess from three clues: from the Spanish Tragedy itself, from the tale of Belleforest upon which Kyd's Hamlet must have been based, and from a version acted in Germany in Shakespeare's lifetime which bears strong evidence of having been adapted from the earlier, not from the later, play. From these three sources it is clear that in the earlier play the motive was a revenge-motive simply; that the action or delay is caused, as in the Spanish Tragedy, solely by the difficulty of assassinating a monarch surrounded by guards; and that the "madness" of Hamlet was feigned in order to escape suspicion, and successfully. In the final play of Shakespeare, on the other hand, there is a motive which is more important than that of revenge, and which explicitly "blunts" the latter; the delay in revenge is unexplained on grounds of necessity or expediency; and the effect of the "madness" is not to lull but to arouse the king's suspicion. The alteration is not complete enough, however, to be convincing. Furthermore, there are verbal parallels so close to the Spanish Tragedy as to leave no doubt that in places Shakespeare was merely revising the text of Kyd. And finally there are unexplained scenes—the Polonius-Laertes and the Polonius-Reynaldo scenes—for which there is little excuse; these scenes are not in the verse style of Kyd, and not beyond doubt in the style of Shakespeare. These Mr. Robertson believes to be scenes in the original play of Kyd reworked by a third hand, perhaps Chapman, before Shakespeare touched the play. And he concludes, with very strong show of reason, that the original play of Kyd was, like certain other revenge plays, in two parts of five acts each. The upshot of Mr. Robertson's examination is, we believe, irrefragable: that Shakespeare's Hamlet, so far as it is Shakespeare's, is a play dealing with the effect of a mother's guilt upon her son, and that Shakespeare was unable to impose this motive successfully upon the "intractable" material of the old play. 4
Of the intractability there can be no doubt. So far from being Shakespeare's masterpiece, the play is most certainly an artistic failure. In several ways the play is puzzling, and disquieting as is none of the others. Of all the plays it is the longest and is possibly the one on which Shakespeare spent most pains; and yet he has left in it superfluous and inconsistent scenes which even hasty revision should have noticed. The versification is variable. Lines like

Look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill,


are of the Shakespeare of Romeo and Juliet. The lines in Act v. sc. ii.,

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep...
Up from my cabin,
My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark
Grop'd I to find out them: had my desire;
Finger'd their packet;


are of his quite mature. Both workmanship and thought are in an unstable condition. We are surely justified in attributing the play, with that other profoundly interesting play of "intractable" material and astonishing versification, Measure for Measure, to a period of crisis, after which follow the tragic successes which culminate in Coriolanus. Coriolanus may be not as "interesting" as Hamlet, but it is, with Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's most assured artistic success. And probably more people have thought Hamlet a work of art because they found it interesting, than have found it interesting because it is a work of art. It is the "Mona Lisa" of literature. 5
The grounds of Hamlet's failure are not immediately obvious. Mr. Robertson is undoubtedly correct in concluding that the essential emotion of the play is the feeling of a son towards a guilty mother:

[Hamlet's] tone is that of one who has suffered tortures on the score of his mother's degradation.... The guilt of a mother is an almost intolerable motive for drama, but it had to be maintained and emphasized to supply a psychological solution, or rather a hint of one.


This, however, is by no means the whole story. It is not merely the "guilt of a mother" that cannot be handled as Shakespeare handled the suspicion of Othello, the infatuation of Antony, or the pride of Coriolanus. The subject might conceivably have expanded into a tragedy like these, intelligible, self-complete, in the sunlight. Hamlet, like the sonnets, is full of some stuff that the writer could not drag to light, contemplate, or manipulate into art. And when we search for this feeling, we find it, as in the sonnets, very difficult to localize. You cannot point to it in the speeches; indeed, if you examine the two famous soliloquies you see the versification of Shakespeare, but a content which might be claimed by another, perhaps by the author of the Revenge of Bussy d' Ambois, Act v. sc. i. We find Shakespeare's Hamlet not in the action, not in any quotations that we might select, so much as in an unmistakable tone which is unmistakably not in the earlier play. 6
The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. If you examine any of Shakespeare's more successful tragedies, you will find this exact equivalence; you will find that the state of mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep has been communicated to you by a skilful accumulation of imagined sensory impressions; the words of Macbeth on hearing of his wife's death strike us as if, given the sequence of events, these words were automatically released by the last event in the series. The artistic "inevitability" lies in this complete adequacy of the external to the emotion; and this is precisely what is deficient in Hamlet. Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear. And the supposed identity of Hamlet with his author is genuine to this point: that Hamlet's bafflement at the absence of objective equivalent to his feelings is a prolongation of the bafflement of his creator in the face of his artistic problem. Hamlet is up against the difficulty that his disgust is occasioned by his mother, but that his mother is not an adequate equivalent for it; his disgust envelops and exceeds her. It is thus a feeling which he cannot understand; he cannot objectify it, and it therefore remains to poison life and obstruct action. None of the possible actions can satisfy it; and nothing that Shakespeare can do with the plot can express Hamlet for him. And it must be noticed that the very nature of the données of the problem precludes objective equivalence. To have heightened the criminality of Gertrude would have been to provide the formula for a totally different emotion in Hamlet; it is just because her character is so negative and insignificant that she arouses in Hamlet the feeling which she is incapable of representing. 7
The "madness" of Hamlet lay to Shakespeare's hand; in the earlier play a simple ruse, and to the end, we may presume, understood as a ruse by the audience. For Shakespeare it is less than madness and more than feigned. The levity of Hamlet, his repetition of phrase, his puns, are not part of a deliberate plan of dissimulation, but a form of emotional relief. In the character Hamlet it is the buffoonery of an emotion which can find no outlet in action; in the dramatist it is the buffoonery of an emotion which he cannot express in art. The intense feeling, ecstatic or terrible, without an object or exceeding its object, is something which every person of sensibility has known; it is doubtless a study to pathologists. It often occurs in adolescence: the ordinary person puts these feelings to sleep, or trims down his feeling to fit the business world; the artist keeps it alive by his ability to intensify the world to his emotions. The Hamlet of Laforgue is an adolescent; the Hamlet of Shakespeare is not, he has not that explanation and excuse. We must simply admit that here Shakespeare tackled a problem which proved too much for him. Why he attempted it at all is an insoluble puzzle; under compulsion of what experience he attempted to express the inexpressibly horrible, we cannot ever know. We need a great many facts in his biography; and we should like to know whether, and when, and after or at the same time as what personal experience, he read Montaigne, II. xii., Apologie de Raimond Sebond. We should have, finally, to know something which is by hypothesis unknowable, for we assume it to be an experience which, in the manner indicated, exceeded the facts. We should have to understand things which Shakespeare did not understand himself."

Literature and Film Quarterly of Salisbury

While going through possible sources for the paper, I found that this journal had a lot of potentially relevant articles, not only to Kozintsev's King Lear, but to other Shakespearean works and adaptations as well (along with general articles about adaptation, criticism, and analysis). I hope the link works, because I couldn't figure out any other way of getting to this page of articles!


Literature and Film Quarterly of Salisbury State University

Kozintsev's King Lear

This is the first scene of the movie. Since I could not figure out how to specifically clip the parts I'd like to highlight (the masses of moving people and the way Kozintsev introduces the characters), the times need to be found manually:
from 1:50-4:30 (masses of people), and from 6:39 - 8:01 (introduction of characters).

I also fell upon this poem which has some relation to Hamlet,

here is the original text:

"Н А Д Е Ж Д А"
от Ивайло ДИМАНОВ

Добрите хора си отиват рано,
а лошите остават на банкет.
Живота е лотария с награди,
но кой е печелившия билет?

Добрите хора често са самотни,
а лошите живеят на стада...
човек привиква някак неохотно
да казва "НЕ", когато мисли "ДА".

Добрите хора страдат от невроза,
а лошите са с нерви от въже.
Отдавна Хамлет е решил въпроса-
Бъди злодей, за да не ти е зле.

Добрите хора падат първи в боя,
а лошите зад тях крещят: "УРА!"
Нима при Ботев имаше за свои
облаги от народната мера?!

Добрите хора пеят тъжни песни,
а лошите-тържествен дитирамб!
Животът е прекрасен, но нелесен,
когато нямаш сигурен гарант...

Добрите хора вярват във доброто,
а лошите разчитат на късмет.
Но днеска за победата над злото,
не е достатъчно да си поет!

Разправят, че добрите ще изчезнат,
разпънати от свойта доброта.
Но аз живея с искрена надежда,
доброто надживява и смъртта!

This is where I found it :


Here is the translation with thanks to Google.

HOPE

by Ivaylo Dimanov

Good people go early
the bad are left at the banquet.
Life is a lottery with prizes
but who is the winning ticket?

Good people are often lonely,
and poor live in herds ...
man accustomed somewhat reluctantly
say "NO" when thinking "YES".

Good people suffer from neurosis,
and the bad with nerves of rope.
Hamlet long ago decided the question-
Be a villain to do you bad.

Good people fall first in the paint
and the bad behind them shouting: "Hurrah!"
Have at Botev was their
Public benefits from land?

Good people sing sad songs
a bad-solemn dithyramb!
Life is good, but uneasily,
when no reliable guarantor ...

Good people believe in good
and rely on bad luck.
But today the victory over evil
is not enough to be a poet!

They say that good will disappear
stretched from its goodness.
But I live with my sincere hope
good death and survives!


I think because of the many tenses that they are in Bulgarian, the translation suffers as it seems like the language is poor when it really isn't. This is just due to the different tenses used which "do not exist" in english.


Hope you guys enjoyed it.

Kalina

Bulgarian Song Named Hamlet "Хамлет"

I tought I must post this one here when I fell upon it on youtube.

Shturcite "Щурцитe" is a very famous old group from Bulgaria. My parents have listened to them for years, and I have grown up on some of their songs. I think I have seen this song before, just never realized it said "Hamlet" until now..

Here is the video and below I have provided another video, of a song that is very good by them:



Good songs:






Here is the original text and translation of the Hamlet video :

"Хамлет"

Искате да свирите на мен?
Държите се сякаш познавате
всички дупчици на ума и сърцето ми.
Искате да изтръгнете
скрития звук на тайната ми,
да ме просвирите от най-ниската
до най-високата ми ноти?
Не!
За какъвто щете
инструмент ме смятайте -
можете да ме разстроите,
но не и да свирите на мен!

О, в такава нощ минава само трамвай,
като последна стража.
Последен звън и друго няма.
Сега и аз мога да ви кажа.

Във спор със свойта млада памет
един връстник на всяка младост,
съвременен объркан Хамлет
пресича сред нощта площада.

О, все още крачи Хамлет в мрака,
трепери от студа среднощен,
по дънки и със тънко яке
той чака своя знак все още.

Сред булевардите се вглежда
във непознатия прозорец.
Там будна е една надежда,
там някой днес ще му отвори.

Къде момче, сега отиваш
и наш`те сънища тревожиш?
Дали все още Хамлет жив е -
средновековно невъзможен?...

О, в такава нощ минава само
трамвай, като последна стража.
Последен звън и друго няма.
Какво не мога да ви кажа?

Все още сам е Хамлет в мрака,
трепери от студа среднощен,
по дънки и със тънко яке,
той чака своя знак все още.

Дали все още Хамлет жив е?
Дали все още се тревожи?
Да бъде или да не бъде -
средновековно невъзможен...

translation: ( with thanks to google )

Want to play me?
You act like you know
all the holes of my mind and heart.
Want to extort
hidden sound of my secret,
let me play the lowest
the highest my notes?
No!
For whatever you like
Instrument consider me -
you upset me
but not to play me!

Oh, in one night just passing tram
as the last guard.
Last ring and no other.
Now I can tell you.

In dispute with his young memory
a peer of each youth,
contemporary confused Hamlet
crosses one night square.

Oh, Hamlet still walking in darkness,
shiver midnight,
in jeans and a thin jacket
he waits for his character yet.

Among boulevards looks
stranger in a window.
Awake there is one hope
there one day will open.

Where a boy, now go
and our dreams' they worry?
Whether Hamlet is still alive -
Medieval impossible? ...

Oh, such a night passes only
tram, as the last guard.
Last ring and no other.
What I can not tell you?

Still Hamlet himself in darkness,
shiver midnight,
in jeans and a thin jacket,
he waits for his character yet.

Whether Hamlet is still alive?
Do you still worry?
To be or not -
Medieval impossible ...

:)

- Kalina

"The Tango" A short play by Kalina Nikolova

This is Act Three Scene One of an adaptation on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Set in present day Argentina, the characters are of the upper-class, and express themselves through the use of dance. The play centers around Hamlet’s indecisiveness about his love for Ophelia, and how the death of his father exacerbated his inability to decide if he wants to love her or not. This scene has Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Hamlet, and Ophelia present, as well as five dance couples who represent the bourgeoisie circle of Hamlet’s family. While on stage, Hamlet and Ophelia will be dancing the tango passionately, with Hamlet in the lead. Ophelia’s naïve character will show trough her lack of dancing skills, yet her “feistiness” will be represented trough her attire and abrupt comments. Hamlets’ character will emphasize his disgust with Ophelia’s naïve character, and at the same time his love for her. The rest of the actors will be spectators of Hamlet and Ophelia.




Act Three: The Tango

Scene 1:

Claudius, Polonius, Gertrude, Ophelia and dancers are seated on various tables encircling the dance floor. Ophelia is shoved onto the dance floor by Claudius and Polonius. The spotlight is on a red gift bag on a piano chair, with a card for Ophelia. Ophelia picks it up and reads the card aloud, while taking out the gifts.

OPHELIA: “For my exquisite O, with love. Yours forever, H.”
Smiling, she perfumes herself with “Mille et Une Roses,” wraps the radiant red silk Belisi scarf around her, and places the Swarovski Erythrina flower in her hair.Hamlet enters. The song “Diferente” by Gotan Project plays in the background.



HAMLET: At the front of the stage, looking out at the crowd.
I love her, but do I?
Is it better to remain silent and suffer
The fervent desires for her,
Or to act upon them
And, by all means be with her? To dance, to love-
No- but love would end my sleepless nights and endless desires
That my heart is prone to- it would devour me
But I wish that it would! To dance, to love.
To love, to imagine- yes those are the steps,
In that dance of love our imagination takes us
To a world beyond this materialism,
A world where we can pause. That is the reason
That makes our pain so enduring.
Who else would waste their time,
Waiting for her to learn the steps,
To follow the lead, and to mature.
She is beautiful, yet cannot follow.
Maybe I should stop dancing, and seek another?
But if I stop now, I will arrive at the undiscovered country,
From where no one returns.
If I don’t dance with her now,
I may never have the chance again.
My cowardice will lead me there,
For love does not come twice.
But why can’t she see?
My feet dance faster than my heart,
My dance is my love, my love is my Ophelia.
My love is my sickness,
I beg you learn to lead me, to cure me.
Hamlet turns around, as he hears her steps approaching.

OPHELIA: Hamlet, how are you? I shall dance for you, with you.

HAMLET: Oh Ophelia, I am fine, fine.

OPHELIA: Thank you, for the presents. You know so well that Belisi scarves are my favorites.

HAMLET: What presents, maybe from an admirer? Yes, I do see you have a lovely scarf on as always.

OPHELIA: The presents you left for me? Did you not, you know you did. No one but you knows me so well to choose them so fittingly.

HAMLET: My little gullible Ophelia, have you gone mad? I left no such presents for you.

OPHELIA: Pardon? Who do you dare call mad? She pushes him, her scarf flies off, and they passionately begin the tango.

HAMLET: No one, are you beautiful? I think you are desirable. But you need to open your eyes; can’t you see the world around us?

OPHELIA: Hamlet? What are you saying? It is you who has gone mad.

HAMLET: You wear your fancy Gustave Cadile dresses, and your Swarovski ornaments, only to hide yourself. Women, you are all disgusting. Naive and silly, all you think about is materialistic items, what happened to thoughts, to dancing, to loving? That is why you are such a poor dancer, because you bought your red dress, before you cared to learn the steps.

OPHELIA: But the Erythrina flower was from you! Why would you give me something you don’t want me to wear?

HAMLET: There you go again. I have given you nothing, but tried to teach you to dance, to appreciate the basics steps of life. You are so desirable, but be careful that is not all a dancer needs. Your good shoes won’t help you.

OPHELIA: Make up your mind Hamlet, you confuse me as always. Do you not love me?

HAMLET: I love you, but now is not the time to love you. Think my fair Ophelia, what has happened?
Hamlet takes the Erythrina flower from her hair, and leaves the stage. Ophelia sits on the floor with her disheveled hair, breathing heavily she takes off her shoes and begins to sob.

OPHELIA: Oh how he used to love me, to caress me, to lead me in my steps. I tried to learn, but could not. What is it that troubles him so much, that he cannot focus on our love? What a miserable girl I am to love him, who dares he call naïve? I know he loves me; he is the one who can’t make up his mind.
Claudius, Polonius, and Gertrude come forward. They stare at Ophelia with puzzled visages, the music ends, the stage goes black.

Emilia's Handkerchief Scene

Here is the behind-the-scenes view (according to me) of what goes on in Emilia's head as she takes the handkerchief and as she lies about it.

Characters:
Othello,
Desdemona,
Devil (left) – wearing black or red,
Angel (right) – wearing white or light blue,
Emilia – wearing something that isn’t either of the above
Narrator

Act III. Scene III.
Othello –Your napkin is too little. Let it alone. Come, I’ll go in with you.
[drops the handkerchief]
Desdemona – I am very sorry that you are not well.
[they leave]
[Emilia comes in, picks up the handkerchief] [The angel and devil come in from their respective sides. In the following conversation, Emilia tends to whip her head from angel to devil and back, as each character talks]
Emilia: I am glad I have found this napkin. This was her first remembrance from the Moor.
Devil: Oh, you should give it to Iago! He has been asking for it for ages and ages, you know.
Angel: Your husband is up to no good. He wanted you to steal it from Desdemona, and it means a great deal to her! She loves it so much that she always keeps it with her, kisses it, talks to it. Don’t take it from her.
Emilia: My wayward husband hath a hundred times
Woo'd me to steal it; but she so loves the token,
For he conjured her she should ever keep it,
That she reserves it evermore about her
To kiss and talk to.
Devil: He didn’t mean to steal it. He only wanted to borrow it. He has been asking so very persistently for it. Don’t you want to make him happy and be a good wife?
Angel: Desdemona is your mistress, and all she ever does is treat you with respect. That’s more than Iago does. Why don’t you give it back to her and make her incredibly happy?
Devil: Because serving Desdemona is so static. It feels like you’ve done that your entire life! You’ve been employed in Brabantio’s house for years, serving Desdemona day in and day out. You were the only one to go with her when she left her father’s house. You’re an exceptional attendant, and all you ever do is help Desdemona, follow Desdemona, listen to Desdemona. All of your energies go towards her. Don’t you deserve some reward? Don’t you deserve to give yourself some attention and help yourself, for once?
Angel [speaking only to the devil]: Why are you suddenly so interested in helping her?
Devil: When devils will the blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,
As I do now.
Angel: Don’t listen to the Devil, Emilia! This wouldn’t give you any reward at all.
Devil: Ph, Desdemona herself is a fair devil, isn’t she? Come on. Iago would think so highly of you! It’ll be almost as if you were newlyweds again, without these years of miserable baggage weighing you down. He’ll be so thankful – it might change your entire life.
Angel: Iago is a demi-devil – a liar and manipulator just like *you* are. She knows that better than anyone! Do you really believe that he’ll be thankful? Or that he’ll help you in any way? The only person he’s interested in is himself!
Devil: And you, Emilia, could use some more of that self-interest. Come on. You have to think of yourself, at least some of the time!
Angel: This will only hurt you, though. Desdemona will be absolutely heartbroken by this betrayal, she will never trust you again, and will probably fire you.
Devil: [pacing, shoving the angel aside] Why would Desdemona need to know about this “betrayal”? Who knows where it went? She probably just misplaced it, don’t you think so, Emilia? Goodness knows you’ll have plenty of other instances to serve Desdemona. This one thing really couldn’t hurt her, and it could really help you if you bring it to Iago. Even if you doubt he’ll be grateful, you can agree that he’ll finally think you’re fulfilling your role as a good wife. You’ve always wanted that, haven’t you? Your marriage hasn’t been the way you imagined it for years, already. This might be your chance to make things right. You’ll also do something good for yourself, instead of just for everyone around you. You might finally get all the good things you deserve – respect, even power. You can dangle it in front of Iago until he agrees to follow YOUR rules. You’ll have the upper hand! You’ll be in control of yourself AND of him. But this only works if you take this chance and give him the handkerchief. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime shot. You’ll spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been if you don’t take it. Figuratively and literally! Go for it!
Emilia: [forceful] I'll have the work taken out,
And give it to Iago: what he will do with it
Heaven knows, not I;
I nothing but to please his fantasy.
[LATER]
Act III. Scene IV
Narrator: Desdemona and Othello have just had a vicious fight about the handkerchief. Othello wants Desdemona to produce it; Desdemona does not have it, but claims that it isn’t lost in order to mollify him. He tells her about the history of the handkerchief and warns her that losing it would be “such perdition as nothing else could match”. Desdemona and Othello degenerate into having two separate conversations – Othello persistently, almost madly, asking for the handkerchief, Desdemona steadfastly trying to argue on Cassio’s behalf. Throughout this entire conversation, Emilia sits in the background, not saying anything. This is what’s going on in her silent reverie:
Angel: Emilia! What are you doing? Can’t you see you’re hurting everyone? Desdemona just wants the handkerchief back. Othello just wants to see the handkerchief. All of their problems would be fixed if they just had the handkerchief again! Tell them what you did with it.
Devil: What would telling them accomplish?
Angel: You would ease all their misery! This massive fight that they’re having right now wouldn’t happen! You have that power.
Devil: You wouldn’t do anything. They’d just be mad at you as well as at each other. Especially Othello. He’ll just be mad no matter what! It’s not your fault that this is happening. Othello is off his rocker and being completely unreasonable. It’s just a handkerchief! He’s losing perspective. You need to help Desdemona see that – she’s going to be upset by this argument, but you should explain to her that it’s Othello’s fault. The only reason this argument exists is that Othello is overly jealous.
Angel: You’re going to listen to the Devil? That has already gotten you involved in this mess. It’s only going to get worse! You know that the right thing to do is to confess what you did.
Devil: If you tell them what you did, nothing good will come of it. The number one rule for defendants is not to implicate yourself, right? Theft is definitely grounds for firing you, and since you stole it for Iago, he will also be exposed. Both of you will be entirely undone. Your life will be unimaginably worse as a result! All your hopes for a better relationship with Iago or a better position for yourself will be completely dashed. Listen, what Othello and Desdemona don’t know can’t hurt them, right? You can get the handkerchief back from Iago later, but telling them what you did with it will solve absolutely nothing. Right now, it’s time for immediate damage control.
Emilia: Is not this man jealous?
Desdemona: I never saw this before.
Sure, there's some wonder in this handkerchief:
I am most unhappy in the loss of it.
Emilia: 'Tis not a year or two shows us a man:
They are all but stomachs, and we all but food;
To eat us hungerly, and when they are full,
They belch us.

Osaka Hamlet

Osaka Hamlet Trailer
This is a trailer for a movie released in Japan in 2009. Set in modern day Osaka, the plot is very loosely based off of Shakespeare's Hamlet, but more interesting than the plot is the portrayal of the character of Hamlet. Here, Hamlet is split into three brothers: Masashi, Yukio, and Hiroki. Politics are completely removed from the story. I translated the trailer below. In order to keep my own translation from being colored by my personal interpretation of the movie, I tried to keep the translation as literal as possible (which makes some of the lines kind of awkward). One interesting fact that is not reflected in the translation is that the actors are speaking "Osaka-ben" which is a Japanese dialect quite different from what is known as standard Japanese ("Tokyo-ben"). There is also a website for the movie, which is in Japanese but also has lots of pictures.


TRANSLATION

Mom: Dad? DAD!! [referring to her husband]

Hiroki: One day, my dad suddenly died.

“Osaka Hamlet”

Uncle: Welcome home.

Yukio: What’s up with that uncle?

Masashi: Think about it on your own.

Yukio: You were bad-mouthing me, weren’t you?

Teacher: All I said was that you’re like Hamlet.

Yukio: Yamaguchi told me that Hamlet is another word for hamster. Do I look like a hamster to you??

Hiroki: I want to be a girl. I’m serious so please don’t make fun of me.

Teacher: This is the new teacher, Akashi Yuka.

Yuka: I know that one week is a short period of time, but yoroshiku onegaishimasu [idiomatic phrase, means something like “please regard me kindly”]

Masashi: People tell that I act like a middle aged man but…

Yuka: I like people like that.

Mom: Wow! You look pretty!

Hiroki: Don’t look at me!

Yukio: Between this book and the book you’re reading, which is more intelligent?

Girl: I guess that one.

Yukio: What is this?!

Hiroki: Time passed for us brothers, each wrapped up in our own troubles.

“Everyday life while dealing with troubles”

Mom: I’m pregnant

Punk kid: [???]

Yukio: Don’t put me together with that wishy-washy, wishy-washy spoiled kid! [Hamlet]

Hiroki: If the two of them get married, our uncle will become our dad right? If that happens, I wonder what our dad will become. Will it be like he never existed?

Uncle: I’m not confident that I’m right for this family.

Masashi: What is “dad”?

Yukio: Why does Hamlet say, “To be or not to be, that is the question”?

Yukio: It’s that people can’t just go on laughing all the time. That guy Shakespeare was pretty interesting huh?

Hiroki: Whether you’re troubled or laughing, as long as you’re with your family who will accept you as you are, no matter who you are, you can come to like yourself.

Hiroki: Osaka Hamlet.

“As for whether (you) should be or not be, as long as (you’re) alive that’s enough.” [No actual pronoun in Japanese, ambiguous]

Uncle: I bought these for all of you. They’re brand-name!