The Black Prince (Penguin Classics) (31 page)

‘All the old gang. Bingley and Grey – Pelham and Dyson and Randolph and Matheson and Hadley – Smith and – ’

‘Did Mrs Grey – Pelham come?’

‘No.’

‘Oh good. Hartbourne, I am sorry.’

‘Never mind, Pearson. Can we make a lunch date?’

‘I’m leaving town.’

‘Ah well. Wish I could get away. Send me a postcard.’

‘I say, I am sorry – ’

‘Not at all.’

I put the telephone down. I felt the hand of destiny heavy upon me. Even the air was thickening as if it were full of incense or rich pollen. I looked at my watch. It was time to go to Notting Hill. I stood there in my little sitting – room and looked at the buffalo lady who was lying on her side in the lacquered display cabinet. I had not dared to try to straighten out the buffalo’s crumpled leg for fear of snapping the delicate bronze. I looked where a line of sloping sun had made a flying buttress against the wall outside, making the grime stand out in lacy relief, outlining the bricks. The room, the wall, trembled with precision, as if the inanimate world were about to utter a word.

Just then the door bell rang. I went to the door. It was Julian Baffin. I looked at her blankly.

‘Bradley, you’ve forgotten! I’ve come for my
Hamle
t tutorial.’

‘I hadn’t forgotten,’ I said with a silent curse. ‘Come in.’ She marched before me into the sitting – room and pulled the two lyre – back chairs up to the marquetry table. She sat down and opened her book before her. She was wearing the purple boots, pink tights, and a short mauve shirt – like dress. She had combed or tossed the mass of browny gold hair back into a great coxcomb behind her head. Her face looked shiny, summery, healthy.

‘You’re wearing the boots,’ I said.

‘Yes. It’s a bit hot for them, but I wanted to show them off to you. I’m so cheered up and grateful. Are you sure you don’t mind discussing Shakespeare? You look as if you were going somewhere. Did you really remember I was coming?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Oh Bradley, you are so good for my nerves. Everybody irritates me like mad except you. I didn’t bring two texts. I suppose you’ve got one?’

‘Yes. Here.’

I sat down opposite to her. She sat side saddle on her chair, the boots side by side, very much on display. I sat astride on mine, gripping it with my knees. I opened my copy of Shakespeare in front of me on the table. Julian laughed.

‘Why are you laughing?’

‘You’re so matter – of – fact. I’m sure you weren’t expecting me. You’d forgotten I existed. Now you’re just like a school teacher.’

‘Perhaps you are good for my nerves too.’

‘Bradley, this is fun.’

‘Nothing’s happened yet. It may not be fun. What do you want to do?’

‘I’ll ask questions and you answer them.’

‘Go on then.’

‘I’ve got a whole list of questions, look.’

‘I’ve answered that one already.’

‘About Gertrude and – Yes, but I’m not convinced.’

‘You’re going to waste my time with these questions and then not believe my answers?’

‘Well, it can be a starting point for a discussion.’

‘Oh, we’re to have a discussion too, are we?’

‘If you have time. I know I’m lucky to get any of your time, you’re so busy.’

‘I’m not busy at all. I have absolutely nothing to do.’

‘I thought you were writing a book.’

‘Lies.’

‘I know you’re teasing again.’

‘Well, come on, I haven’t got all day.’

‘Why did Hamlet delay killing Claudius?’

‘Because he was a dreamy conscientious young intellectual who wasn’t likely to commit a murder out of hand because he had the impression that he had seen a ghost. Next question.’

‘But, Bradley, you yourself said the ghost was real.’

‘I know the ghost is real, but Hamlet didn’t.’

‘Oh. But there must have been another deeper reason why he delayed, isn’t that the point of the play?’

‘I didn’t say there wasn’t another reason.’

‘What is it?’

‘He identifies Claudius with his father.’

‘Oh really? So that makes him hesitate because he loves his father and so can’t touch Claudius?’

‘No. He hates his father.’

‘Well, wouldn’t that make him murder Claudius at once?’

‘No. After all he didn’t murder his father.’

‘Well, I don’t see how identifying Claudius with his father makes him not kill Claudius.’

‘He doesn’t enjoy hating his father. It makes him feel guilty.’

‘So he’s paralysed with guilt? But he never says so. He’s fearfully priggish and censorious. Think how nasty he is to Ophelia:

‘That’s part of the same thing.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He identifies Ophelia with his mother.’

‘But I thought he loved his mother.’

‘That’s the point.’

‘How do you mean that’s the point?’

‘He condemns his mother for committing adultery with his father.’

‘Wait a minute, Bradley, I’m getting mixed.’ ‘Claudius is just a continuation of his brother on the unconscious level.’

‘But you can’t commit adultery with your husband, it isn’t logical.’

‘The unconscious mind knows nothing of logic.’

‘You mean Hamlet is jealous, you mean he’s in love with his mother?’

‘That is the general idea. A tediously familiar one I should have thought.’

‘Oh
that
.’

‘That.’

‘I see. But I still don’t see why he should think Ophelia is Gertrude, they’re not a bit alike.’

‘The unconscious mind delights in identifying people with each other. It has only a few characters to play with.’

‘So lots of actors have to play the same part?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t think I believe in the unconscious mind.’

‘Excellent girl.’

‘Bradley, you’re teasing again.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Why couldn’t Ophelia save Hamlet? That’s another of my questions actually.’

‘Because, my dear Julian, pure ignorant young girls cannot save complicated neurotic over – educated older men from disaster, however much they kid themselves that they can.’

‘I know that I’m ignorant, and I can’t deny that I’m young, but I do
not
identify myself with Ophelia!’

‘Of course not. You identify yourself with Hamlet. Everyone does.’

‘I suppose one always identifies with the hero.’

‘Not in great works of literature. Do you identify with Macbeth or Lear?’

‘No, well, not like that – ’

‘Or with Achilles or Agamemnon or Aeneas or Raskolnikov or Madame Bovary or Marcel or Fanny Price or – ’

‘Wait a moment. I haven’t heard of some of these people. And I think I do identify with Achilles.’

‘Tell me about him.’

‘Oh Bradley – I can’t think – Didn’t he kill Hector?’

‘Never mind. Have I made my point?’

‘I’m not sure what it is.’

‘Hamlet
is unusual because it is a great work of literature in which everyone identifies with the hero.’

‘I see. Does that make it less good than Shakespeare’s other plays, I mean the good ones?’

‘No. It is the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays.’

‘Then something funny has happened.’

‘Correct.’

‘Well, what is it, Bradley? Look, do you mind if I write down some notes on what we were talking about earlier about Hamlet thinking his mother was committing adultery with his father, and all that. Gosh, how hot it is in here. Please may we open the window? And do you mind if I take off my boots? They’re simply baking me alive.’

‘I forbid you to take notes. You may not open the window. You may take off your boots.’

‘For this relief much thanks.’ She unzipped the boots and revealed, in pink tights, the legs. She admired the legs, waggled the toes, undid another button at her neck, then giggled.

I said, ‘Do you mind if I take off my jacket?’

‘Of course not.’

‘You’ll see my braces.’

‘How exciting. You must be the last man in London who wears any. They’re getting as rare and thrilling as suspenders.’

I took off my jacket, revealing grey army surplus braces over a grey shirt with a black stripe. ‘Not exciting, I’m afraid. I would have put on my red ones if I’d known.’

‘So you weren’t expecting me?’

‘Don’t be silly. Do you mind if I take off my tie?’

‘Don’t be silly.’

I took off my tie and undid the top two buttons of my shirt. Then I did one of them up again. The hair on my chest is copious but grizzled. (Or if you prefer, a sable silvered.) I could feel the perspiration trickling down my temples, down the back of my neck, and winding its way through the forest on my diaphragm.

‘You aren’t sweating,’ I said to Julian. ‘How do you manage it?’

‘I am. Look.’ She thrust her fingers in under her hair and then stretched her hands towards me across the table. The fingers were long but not unduly slim. They were faintly dewy. ‘Now, Bradley, where were we. You were saying
Hamlet
was the only – ’

‘Let’s fold up this conversation shall we?’

‘Oh Bradley, I knew I’d just bore you! And now I won’t see you again for months, I know you!’

‘Shut up. That dreary stuff about Hamlet and his ma and pa you can get out of a book. I’ll tell you which one.’

‘So it’s not true?’

‘It is true, but it doesn’t matter. A sophisticated reader takes such things in his stride. You are a sophisticated reader in
ovo.’

‘In what?’

‘Of course Hamlet is Shakespeare.’

‘Whereas Lear and Macbeth and Othello are – ’

‘Aren’t.’

‘Bradley, was Shakespeare homosexual?’

‘Of course.’

‘Oh I see. So Hamlet’s really in love with Horatio – ’

‘Be quiet, girl. In mediocre works the hero is the author.’

‘My father is the hero of all his novels.’

‘It is this that induces the reader to identify. Now if the greatest of all geniuses permits himself to be the hero of one of his plays, has this happened by accident?’

‘No.’

‘Is he unconscious of it?’

‘No.’

‘Correct. So this must be what the play is about.’

‘Oh. What?’

‘About Shakespeare’s own identity. About this urge to externalize himself as the most romantic of all romantic heroes. When is Shakespeare at his most cryptic?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘What is the most mysterious and endlessly debated part of his
œuvre?’

‘The sonnets?’

‘Correct.’

‘Bradley, I read such an extraordinary theory about the sonnets – ’

‘Be silent. So Shakespeare is at his most cryptic when he is talking about himself. How is it that
Hamlet
is the most famous and accessible of his plays?’

‘But people argue about that too.’

‘Yes, but nevertheless it is the best known work of literature in the world. Indian peasants, Australian lumberjacks, Argentine ranchers, Norwegian sailors, members of the Red Army, Americans, all the most remote and brutish specimens of mankind have heard of
Hamlet
.’

‘Don’t you mean Canadian lumberjacks? I thought Australia – ’

‘How can this be?’

‘I don’t know, Bradley, you tell me.’

‘Because Shakespeare, by the sheer intensity of his own meditation upon the problem of his identity has produced a new language, a special rhetoric of consciousness – ’

‘I’m not with you.’

‘Words are Hamlet’s being as they were Shakespeare’s.’

‘Words, words, words.’

‘What work of literature has more quotable lines?’

‘Oh what a noble mind is here o’erthrown.’

‘How all occasions do inform against me.’

‘Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice.’

‘Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I.’

‘Absent thee from felicity awhile.’

‘Something too much of this. As I was saying. The thing is a monument of words, it is Shakespeare’s most rhetorical play, it is his longest play, it is his most inventive and involuted literary exercise. See how casually, with what a lucid easy grace he lays down the origins of modern English prose – ’

‘What a piece of work is a man – ’

‘Hamlet
is nearer to the wind than Shakespeare ever sailed, even in the sonnets. Did Shakespeare hate his father? Of course. Was he in love with his mother? Of course. But that is only the beginning of what he is telling us about himself. How does he dare to do it? How can it not bring down on his head a punishment which is as much more exquisite than that of ordinary writers as the god whom he worships is above the god whom they worship? He has performed a supreme creative feat, a work endlessly reflecting upon itself, not discursively but in its very substance, a Chinese box of words as high as the tower of Babel, a meditation upon the bottomless trickery of consciousness and the redemptive role of words in the lives of those without identity, that is human beings.
Hamlet
is words, and so is Hamlet. He is as witty as Jesus Christ, but whereas Christ speaks Hamlet is speech. He is the tormented empty sinful consciousness of man seared by the bright light of art, the god’s flayed victim dancing the dance of creation. The cry of anguish is obscure because it is overheard. It is the eloquence of direct speech, it is
oratio recta
not
oratio obliqua.
But it is not addressed to us. Shakespeare is passionately exposing himself to the ground and author of his being. He is speaking as few artists can speak, in the first person and yet at the pinnacle of artifice. How veiled that deity, how dangerous to approach, how almost impossible with impunity to address, Shakespeare knew better than any man.
Hamlet
is a wild act of audacity, a self – purging, a complete self – castigation in the presence of the god. Is Shakespeare a masochist? Of course. He is the king of masochists; his writing thrills with that secret. But because his god is a real god and not an
eidolon
of private fantasy, and because love has here invented language as if for the first time, he can change pain into poetry and orgasms into pure thought – ’