Visual Brainstorming and Hamlet, or How the Key to the Play Is Its Very First Line

by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com

I can remember having a really interesting conversation with Dr. Michael Best, with whom I taught a course called Shakespeare by Individual Study at the University of Victoria. This was back in 1995 when I was still a Ph.D. student there. In discussing Hamlet prior to teaching it, Dr. Best indicated that the entire play is actually summarized in its opening line: "Who's There?"

Recently I was thinking about this again and decided to do a little visual brainstorming both to remember our conversation and to work a couple of things out for myself. You'll excuse my artistic mediocrity. It explains why I write graphic novels, I suppose, and don't illustrate them.

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Okay, so here are my scribbles...

VISUAL BRAINSTORMING OF 1.1.1. CLICK THE IMAGE TO GO TO OUR EXEMPLAR'S PAGE.

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So, not too shabby, I suppose. That first line turns out to be a doozy, though.

• Who's out there? The ghost is, of course, although Hamlet can't be entirely sure what to make of him.
• Who's in there? Well, Hamlet is in there somewhere, but it's kind of messy. Is he the son of the late king who should take arms against the sea of troubles both in his own mind and that are represented by Claudius' usurped rule? Or, is he the indecisive Prince that takes five acts to get it together?
• Who's over there (like on the throne)? Claudius is on the throne, as we all know. However, killing him, as Dr. Best explained, was tantamount to Hamlet killing himself, given that--as I understand it--Claudius has usurped Hamlet's role in the Oedipal fantasy by killing Hamlet's father and marrying his mother so that an act of regicide is actually also an act of suicide.
  

So it's complicated, I suppose. But the visual brainstorming allows us to make sense of it a bit. It doesn't let us write it out in a coherent, five paragraph essay, but it does let us get our scribblings down and begin to make sense of things.

That's a pretty cool thing, though, I think.

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