![]() ![]() Goddard claims that Prince Hamlet was struggling to resist the “force of the fathers” as represented by the ghost of his father, King Hamlet. In Goddard’s thinking, Hamlet’s famous delaying is not due to some tragic flaw within Hamlet, but in fact is due to Poet within Hamlet that is struggling against the way of aggression, domination-seeking, and revenge. By “beauty” and “flower,” Goddard thinks Shakespeare is ultimately referring to the way of Peace, Imagination and Poetry. “How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, whose action is no stronger than a flower?”īy “rage,” Goddard thinks Shakespeare is ultimately referring to the way of aggression, domination-seeking, and revenge that is such a huge part of human history. Goddard claims that the whole of Shakespeare is summarized in these lines from Sonnet 65: In Goddard's telling, it is the Poets who are the saviors of the world, & who shall ultimately stop the recurring Hitlers, Stalins, Richard IIIs, Henry Vs, Shylocks, Edmunds, Conquistadors, Torquemadas, and types like Neil Perry’s father (“Dead Poet’s Society”). The Poet, via imagination, integrates head and heart, masculine and feminine, life and death, heaven and earth, body and mind, sex and love, and so on. In Goddard's telling, the way of the Poet is something rare & unique. Goddard claims that Shakespeare's salvation was that he eventually trod the path of the Poet and rejected the path of the Philosopher and also rejected the path of Theater (mere showiness, spectacle, shallow drama for drama's sake). Goddard, in his book The Meaning of Shakespeare, Shakespeare himself was mightily tempted in the direction of living too much in his head, i.e., being an intellectual of the shallow, showy, money-grubbing, fame-seeking type. Hamlet talks about this in his speech that includes "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" and in “Seems, madam? Nay it is I know not 'seems.”Īccording to Harold C. Shakespeare himself seems to have been very aware of the fakery & shallowness of much of what passes as literature, theater, philosophy, & knowledge. Hamlet, at the beginning, is too much the Philosopher. Plato said that each person's psyche has 3 parts: Appetitive (pursing bodily pleasures), Hot-Blooded (passionately desiring to avenge injustices and dishonors), and the Philosopher (seeking in an dispassionate way to enact the Good, the True, and the Beautiful). Hamlet's journey was, perhaps, from a man who was too much living in his head to a man who eventually became more "down to earth," or, at least, achieved a more healthy balance between living in the "heavens" of the mind, ideas, words, poetry, theater, and philosophy, and living on the "earth" of brute force, violence, treachery, sexual attraction, etc. The Robin Williams character is a therapist who is aiming to help the Matt Damon character to see that he uses his intellectual life in order to avoid the emotional pain of the trauma of his childhood. ![]() N.B.: The language in the clip is, like the film, rated R. It's a fabulous scene, and I include it below. ![]() But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable-known someone that could level you with her eyes. I ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, and watched him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. ![]() I ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right? "Once more into the breach, dear friends." But you've never been near one. We all know that there's lots of Shakespeare in Boston.Īnd one of the best movies featuring Boston accents in Good Will Hunting.īut did you notice the Shakespeare-with-a-Boston-accent in Good Will Hunting?Ībout a third of the way though the film, the Robin Williams character talks to the Matt Damon character and argues that all the book learning in the world won't make up for experience: Robin Williams, Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck. ![]()
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