A little less than ten years ago, the radio program This American Life did an episode about a performance of Hamlet in a prison. Not a production in which the script was based in a prison, but one in which the actors were in prison. This brings out some interesting overtones in the play, of tension and hierarchies and criminality. Yet even more than that, it shows the value of a different perspective of this time-honored play. Sure, the play brings literacy and productivity and self-worth, and these traits are valuable for these actors –but even more valuable is what the actors bring to the play, with their life experience of anger, vengeance, cowardice and remorse. Their analyses of the story are strikingly different from those of, say, Freud and Goethe, and more useful for it. The disparity is deeper than one between, say, an American and a British production, or an ancient and a modern one. These actors understand Hamlet in a very different way than the actors of the Royal Shakespeare Company would. When students can learn from both, their understanding of the play is broadened – which is really all their teacher can ask for.
So, I think our class should take a field trip to a prison! No, not really. Still, we should keep our own perspective in mind when reading, as this radio program reminds us. This is far from a new idea, but it is one worth repeating. We should make every effort to examine literature from different perspectives, in order to learn more from what we study.
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