During our high school years in Canada, we spend a lot of time reading the works of English writer William Shakespeare, who is considered the immortal bard. His writing is difficult to decipher for students because it is antiquated. Interestingly, many of the words that we use today were first used in his poems and plays, so in a way, he invented them. He had a lively imagination. We value Shakespeare's works because his tragic stories touch upon universal themes that go beyond the particulars of the narrative. At least that’s the official story we’re told. One must wonder, however, just how universal these themes truly are.
In her article, Shakespeare in the Bush, anthropologist Laura Bohannan writes about her attempt to tell the story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to members of a West African tribe during one of her field trips. Prior to the voyage, a friend of hers had given her a copy of the play. He was of the mind that Americans, like Bohannan herself, were misinterpreting the universal themes in the stories because they misunderstood the details of the plot. Laura scoffed at this idea. Shakespeare's themes remained constant in human cultures regardless of time and place. She took Hamlet with her on the trip so she could “achieve the grace of correct interpretation.” Snooty Brits!
During her field trip to West Africa, Bohannan lived with the tribe, learning about their traditions. It was a time of the the season when “enforced isolation and leisure” was observed by the tribe. Men, women, and children spent the day drinking large amounts of beer.
People began to drink at dawn. By midmorning the whole homestead was singing, dancing, and drumming. When it rained, people had to site inside their huts: there they drank and sang or they drank and told stories.
As it was nearly impossible to do any “serious” work because of the festivities, she busied herself with other matters including reading her copy of Hamlet. In the mornings, she would try to talk to the villagers before they began drinking.
One day I crawled through the low doorway and found most of the men of the homestead sitting huddled… In the center were three pots of beer. The party had already started.
She was invited to join the tribesmen by one of the elders. The old man was pleased that she was drinking instead of sitting alone in her hut “looking at a paper,” like one servant had informed him. Apparently, he was only familiar with tax receipts, bride price receipts, court fee receipts, and letters. They did not know about books with stories in them. So Bohannan explained to them that the paper (Shakespeare's Hamlet) had “things of long ago.” The elder was curious and urged her to tell them more.
Bohannan was reluctant because “story telling is a skilled art among them; their standards are high, and the audiences critical.”
After the old man reassured her that they would not criticize her story-telling skills, given her limited knowledge of their language, and seeing an opportunity “to prove Hamlet universally intelligible,” Bohannan agreed to tell them the story of Hamlet.
Personally, I read the play a long time ago, so the details are not really fresh in my memory. I don’t feel like digging up old books or trawling the net for information, so I asked ChatGPT to provide me with a summary of Hamlet’s story
Hamlet is a play by William Shakespeare, set in Denmark. The main character, Prince Hamlet, is grieving the death of his father, King Hamlet, and is troubled by his mother's remarriage to his uncle, King Claudius, who has taken the throne. Hamlet feigns madness as he seeks to avenge his father's death, leading to a tragic ending for many of the play's characters. The play explores themes of betrayal, revenge, and the corrupting nature of power. It is considered one of Shakespeare's greatest works and is widely studied and performed.
Murder, greed, betrayal, revenge, death, and more! Pretty universal themes, and one of the reasons, we're told by our High School elders, why Shakespeare is considered a literary genius.
Murder
For Laura Bohannan, things quickly went off the rails.
“Not yesterday, not yesterday, but long ago, a thing occurred,” she began as it was the tradition in the tribe’s culture. “One night three men were keeping watch outside the homestead of the great chief, when suddenly they saw the former chief approach them.”
By “great chief”, she meant the King, Hamlet’s father, who was very dead by now. So, it was his ghost roaming around. She was trying to translate the concepts from English to the language of the tribesmen.
”Impossible,” said the tribe elder… “of course it wasn’t the dead chief. It was an omen sent by a witch. Go on.”
This humorous response shows a key difference in the way we tell stories in western culture vs this West African tribe. In western society, story telling is generally not participatory. The audience is expected to sit and listen until the story is told (unless otherwise instructed by the performers). For the members of this tribe, however, story telling involved the audience, which could inject comments, objections, and asides during the performance.
When the “slightly shaken” Bohannan continued her story, she described the character Horatio as a “man who knew things” (scholar) but which also translates as witch in the tribesmen language. So the elder who had objected to the idea of a dead man walking around looked triumphantly at her. Bohannan further mentioned that Horatio told the other men that Hamlet should be informed, him being the King’s son and in line for the throne.
The tribemen shook their head, muttering to themselves on account that “such omens were matters for chiefs and elders, not for youngsters; no good could come of going behind a chief’s back; clearly Horatio was not a man who knew things.”
Betrayal
In the play, the dead King's brother (Hamlet’s uncle) marries the widowed wife (Hamlet's mother) a month after the funeral. Even by English sensibilities at the time, this was scandalous and dastardly behaviour. This is a key plot element, but the tribesmen had a different interpretation.
"He did well," the old man beamed and announced to the others, “I told you that if we knew more about Europeans, we would find they really were very like us. In our country also,” he added to me, “the younger brother marries the elder brother’s widow and becomes the father of his children.”
The elder tribesman wanted to know if Hamlet’s father and his brother had the same mother. The flustered anthropologist said she didn’t know, and the old man told her that when she got home, she needed to ask “the elders about it” because such family details were important. Trying a different approach, Bohannan told them that in Europe, it was customary for the widow to wait a couple of years before marrying. One of the old man's younger wives, who had been summoned to bring him more beer, said the following:
”Two years is too long... Who will hoe your farms for you while you have no husband?”
The audience grew increasingly skeptical and wanted to know why the King’s brother didn’t marry one of the King’s other wives. When Bohannan told them that in the west a man only had one wife, they couldn't believe it.
“But a chief must have many wives! How else can he brew beer and prepare food for all his guests?”
They were adamant that a man must have many wives. So they were not at all bothered by the relationship between King’s brother, Claudius, and his widow.
Afterlife
Later in the story, Hamlet speaks with the ghost of his father. This created another round of heated discussion because the concept of a ghost hanging around after death was not part of the tribe’s belief system.
”Omens can’t talk!” The old man was emphatic.
Bohannan tried to explain the concept of a ghost. The tribesmen understood the concept of zombies animated by witches for sacrifice and food. Bohannan told them that it was not a zombie because no one had resurrected the body, it did it by itself.
”Dead men can’t walk,” protested my audience…
She explained that “a ghost is a dead man’s shadow.”
But again they objected. “Dead men cast no shadows.”
“They do in my country,” I snapped.
Then they argued that this was not possible and squabbled in disbelief until the elder quelled down the uproar by speaking to Bohannan as one speaks to a foolish child who believes in fanciful stories.
”No doubt in your country the dead can also walk without being zombis.”
Then giving her piece of kola nut, he urged her to continue the story.
Love and madness
The ghost of Hamlet’s father had revealed to him that he had been poisoned by his brother, King Claudius, who then took the throne and married Hamlet's mother. The ghost urges Hamlet to avenge his death. So Hamlet feigns madness for a girl named Ophelia as a way to conceal his true intentions and plans for revenge against the usurper King Claudius. This part of the story was difficult for Bohannan to explain to the tribesmen. She mentioned that Hamlet was speaking and behaving erratically. This feigned madness is a central aspect of the play because it affects the actions and decisions of other characters, but the hapless anthropologist was having a hard time getting the point across.
”Why,” inquired a bewildered voice, “should anyone bewitch Hamlet on that account?”
“Bewitch him?”
“Yes, only witchcraft can make anyone mad, unless, of course, one sees the beings that lurk in the forest.”
So, in the tribesmen world view, the two causes of madness were witchcraft or the beings that lurk in the forest. Bohannan tried to clarify that Hamlet was feigning madness because he wanted evidence that King Claudius had indeed killed his father, even though his father’s ghost had already told him that it had been so.
The old man interrupted, with deep cunning, “Why should a father lie to his son?” he asked.
I hedged: “Hamlet wasn’t sure that it really was his dead father.” It was impossible to say anything, in that language, about devil-inspired visions.
“You mean,” he said, “it actually was an omen, and he knew witches sometimes send false ones. Hamlet was a fool not to go to one skilled in reading omens and divining the truth in the first place. A man-who-see-the-truth could have told him how his father died, if he really had been poisoned, and if there was witchcraft in it; then Hamlet could have called the elders to settle the matter.”
The tribesmen were now running off with the story, interpreting the plot for the frustrated Bohannan.
”Because his father’s brother was a great chief, one-who-sees-the-truth might therefore have been afraid to tell it. I think it was for that reason that a friend of Hamlet’s father- a witch and an elder- sent an omen so his friend’s son would know. Was the omen true?”
“Yes,” I said, abandoning ghosts and the devil; a witch-sent omen it would have to be.”
Revenge
Towards the conclusion of the story, Hamlet has a heated argument with his mother while Polonius (his girlfriend's father) was hiding behind the curtains. When the mother called out in fear, believing Hamlet to be mad, Polonius moved behind the curtains, and Hamlet shouted ‘A rat!’ then stabbed Polonius and killed him.
The old men looked at each other in supreme disgust. “That Polonius truly was a fool and a man who knew nothing! What child would not know enough to shout, “It’s me!”
As it turned out, given that the tribesmen were hunters armed with bows and arrows, they usually shouted “Game!” when they spotted movement in the bushes, and if nobody answered they let the arrows fly. So one was expected to shout "it's me!" in order not to get shot.
Like a good hunter Hamlet had shouted, “A rat!”
In the tribesmen view, Polonius was foolish for not announcing he was behind the curtain. Regardless, the tribesmen were shocked that Hamlet would attempt to kill his uncle to begin with.
”For a man to raise his hand against his father’s brother and the one who has become his father- that is a terrible thing. The elders ought to let such a man be bewitched.
The bewildered anthropologist reminded them that the man had killed Hamlet’s father.
”No,” pronounced the old man, speaking less to me than to the young men sitting behind the elders. “”If your father’s brother has killed your father, you must appeal to your father’s age mates; they may avenge him. No man may use violence against his senior relatives.” Another thought struck him. “But if his father’s brother had indeed been wicked enough to bewitch Hamlet and make him mad that would be a good story indeed, for it would be his fault that Hamlet, being mad, no longer hand any sense and thus was ready to kill his father’s brother.”
This interpretation drew a round of applause by the audience. For her part, Bohannan decided to skip the controversial plot twists in the rest of the story, but still the tribesmen were adamant that their interpretation was correct.
Upon hearing of Hamlet’s murder of her father, Polonius, Hamlet's sweetheart, Ophelia, goes mad and drowns.
The tribesmen insisted that only witches can make someone drown. The anthropologist drank more beer and tried argued with them, but they would have none of it.
”…it is clear that the elders of your country have never told you what the story really means. No, don’t interrupt! We believe you when you say your marriage customs are different, or your clothes and weapons. But people are the same everywhere; therefore, there are always witches and it is we, the elders, who know how witches work..”
More squabbling and wild interpretations ensued. Bohannan added details hoping the tribesmen would come around to see her point, or rather Shakespeare's point. Yet, the tribesmen continued ascribing motivations to the characters based on their cultural norms and behaviors. They tried to fit the details of the play into their world view, even when the characters actions were at odds with their explanation.
When the anthropologist had finished the story, one of the elders thanked her for telling the story but made it clear that she needed to talk to the elders back home so she properly understood the story.
”Sometime,” concluded the old man, “you must tell us some more stories of your country. We, who are elders, will instruct you in their true meaning, so that when you return to your own land your elders will see that you have not been sitting in the bush, but among those who know things and who have taught you wisdom.”
So, as it turned out Shakespeare was not so universal after all, and her friend had been right. We interpret the details of a narrative based on our own experiences, and these experiences may not align with those of a different cultural group. Perhaps on a general level, all humans deal with topics of life, love, death, madness, and betrayal but as we like to say in North America, the devil is in the details.
Resource
Shakespeare in the Bush | Natural History Magazine (1995). https://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the-past/12476/shakespeare-in-the-bush, accessed January 18, 2023.
Images generated by 