As regular visitors to Shakespeare ZA will know, on this platform we publish Shakespearean news, reviews, interviews, features, educational resources, digital texts, film material, conference announcements and more.
Every now and then, we also have the opportunity to share with our readers poetry that responds to, or is inspired by, Shakespeare’s plays. This poetic sequence was penned by South African author, academic and arts critic ROBERT GREIG. The poems first appeared in his 2005 collection, Rule of Cadence (UKZN Press, 2005).
THE HAMLET POEMS
AFTER THE BARBARIANS
And now, what will become of us without barbarians?
They were a kind of solution.
(“Waiting for the Barbarians” by CP Cavafy, translated by Rae Dalven)
It seems now
the Norwegians are not barbarians.
They laugh a lot,
are fond of dancing,
of vibrant colours:
unlike us, the Norwegians
are an earthy people
with a sense of community,
of family.
For so long
they waited for what was theirs.
Now they are here
they inspect our streets,
admire our shops, our houses –
such things dazzle the Norwegians –
they pick up delicate ornaments
with spatulate fingers, even
master our vowels.
And we – the wise at least –
believe we should follow their steps,
praise their rhythm, their harmonies.
We resolve to take fruit
to the old in their homes
twice a month, weather permitting,
to not shout at our children,
to learn how to drum.
Our new rulers have taught us
to celebrate Life.
As for those allegedly missing
and rumours of screams from cellars
it is true
we were far more discreet.
The Norwegians will learn, too, from us.
If we dress like them,
shout their slogans, adopt their dancing,
there will soon be no Norwegians
and none of us, just one nation
world without end.
THE NORWEGIAN PLOT
If you believe in gods and ghosts;
if you hope for a calm afterlife
and expect to die
soothed by the susurrus of sea
at castle walls
asleep in an orchard
breathing appleblossom;
if you believe in remaking the world
and happy endings
you're for us.
All it took
was an actor in old-time armour
mooing by moonlight;
a wicked stepfather;
an intellectual
seduced by action;
a prince who believed in happy endings:
theatre.
OPHELIA
Love was all that mattered:
lemony days in willow light,
the quaint cemetery toured
by moonlight and talk –
so much talk – of relationships.
Love, prayer and obedience would do,
and later, children.
Though it might take years,
the exemplary private life
would redeem the body politic.
The way, perhaps, a pill
quiets the turbulent mind or
more to the point, the rope
judiciously used
will still a midnight street.
OSRIC
Now he bears swords,
a serviceable man
found near the powerful,
smelling blood.
Before, life was pretty boys studying drama,
posters of Nureyev in the bathroom,
first nights at the Coward revival
(a moue for Fugard).
When everything was black and white
one could always invent,
ornament.
Now it's time to be relevant –
wearing dark clothes,
applauding the style
of an AK-47.
THE TESTAMENT OF POLONIUS
I ordered the castle walls
to be shrouded.
The climate was cruel.
Cells sweated silver and green.
You could smell
the waves trying to enter.
Outside, salt grained the air.
No edifice can last:
corrosion without, erosion within:
we try to preserve what we can,
to comfort, to muffle echoes.
My job was to mirror: smile
when they smiled, to cleave a brow
if they frowned, making no fuss,
to transmit intelligence, scrupulous
in using the passive tense.
I secured what was theirs.
Power, I learned, is doing nothing,
is lost when used.
They will use it, they will lose it.
THE SUPPORTERS OF CLAUDIUS
No-one ever actually voted for Claudius.
In the bad times
We were dissidents all
protecting the flame of freedom
from others. We were such secret rebels
no-one knew, not even Claudius.
Even the secret police –
they were really working from within
to destroy the system. To maintain their cover
they drowned the odd prisoner
taught others to leap and fly from battlements,
but these were criminals
and rapists, not to be missed.
Others, mainly the little men, took orders
Had little sense of the larger picture.
They cheer parades,
Agree with the politicians:
These must have been
The bad old days.
THE MERCHANTS PETITION FORTIBRAS
He will not see them, having other things to do.
Instead he sends Horatio:
his task is to hear petitions
from those who now
have so much to say.
Horatio learns of their loyalty,
In a sermon on the virtue of trade,
And veiled pleas for concessions.
He has heard it before, knows them,
the faces of those who vied
for favours of Claudius, delivered
gems to Gertrude, paid
for the hunting weekend in the wild, for carousing
at fires, who secured contracts for jails,
supplying maggots for detainees in food.
He thanks them for offers not made
he reports to Fortinbras:
“They’re shit-scared of new taxes,
of losing their bushveld villas,
being asked to explain.
For the sake of the economy . . .
We might reassure them?”
But Fortinbras, planning another campaign,
says nothing, having factored in
certain yields of uncertainty.
FORTINBRAS’S NOTES FOR A THREE-HOUR SPEECH
Our world is all that is the case:
we have no use for illusions:
there must be no theatre. When axes
fell the cherry trees, the previously cold
will be warmed; ghosts are silent.
As for mummers and all their crew
they will advance teaching
cadres of ruling substructures
to deploy the appropriate lines
from our Oslo bard, Shakespeare.
In addressing theatre, funerals follow –
those subversive rallies of the bad old days.
Now mourning is past. We may laud
the dead and the dying as pavestones
to our glorious dawning.
I commend to our orators the Romantics
whose cadences lull the populace,
who knew this world was a sign
only of immanent termination.
History is marble that bloodstains can’t mar.
Which brings me to Hamlet, a thinker.
Our age requires waste engineers.
We may recall his devotion to sparrows,
and, not least, love of the military drum:
the rest lies and must be silenced.
Since it transcends troubling thought
Music must rule our land.
You should con the caper, leaping
at Sunday rallies; and I benign will be seen
with a smile and discreet foot-tapping.
We will invent entrancing tribal traditions
For our popular singers to use
to teach the adroit unrolling of condoms,
for corporate choirs to hymn the collective good.
Even rapists will dance – at the tug of a noose.
Cadence, not words, will rule and be all.
HAMLET WATCHES
The assignation in Wittenberg:
I waited and waited long after our time.
Enter Fortinbras, bisecting the square.
Military boots compact the snow,
Haloed by starving sparrows.
Straight from Elsinore.
I kept my bargain.
Late again by design, with fanfare
He scooped up the crown
Lost no blood:
Tactician, strategist, victor.
I gape into space
Join the stars.
All around is bustle.
So many heroes of the struggle
Cleaning blood,
Hoisting bodies,
Buffing memory,
Inventing history,
Designs for the future.
Ruling.
They erect a statue –
A man reading a book, disengaged
Gaze averted. The intellectual.
They rename a small town
Where you can buy curios.
I have become the formal language of oratory –
Providence of sparrows cast down
In the tracks of history,
Warnings about paralysis of thinking,
the madness of those who see ghosts
To chasten the sceptical,
Quell the resistive.
I am a play that bores
Children who’d rather play rugby.
Like the face on a coin fingered by commerce
Tossed into ocean, I blur and vanish.
I kept my bargain
My dying choice alighted on Fortinbras:
A man of action who waited, let others act
But did nothing:
Still amid a flurry of sparrows.
After ideals
Come principles
Come decisions
Come policies
Come programmes and plans
Come well-paid carpetbaggers.
The gusty corridors of Elsinore privatised now
commemorate heroes against Claudius
With a popular bar called Ophelia’s
Heroes bulging in suits
Carousing
I observe from the battlements.
