“Did Polonius die because Hamlet stabbed him or because Shakespeare wrote the play that way”
Be Here Mondays gives his take on this October’s “First Things” review by Stephen M. Barr on Creation and the book by the Harvard scientist Edward O. Wilson Ed, who is first and foremost an ant man, but also has a profound admiration for scarab beetles.
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“Did Polonius die because Hamlet stabbed him or because Shakespeare wrote the play that wayâ€
“Polonius” didn’t die because “Polonius” is not a real man. “Hamlet” never stabbed him, save within the story written by Shakespeare, because “Hamlet” is not real person. To claim “Polonius died” is to suspend disbelief (to pretend the story is real and not written
by Shakespeare,) and so within that context we must say that Polonius died because Hamlet stabbed him.
We might ask “Why did Hamlet stab Polonius?” and I think it is here that we would exit the story to reference its author. If one would make the claim made above for this case we can see such logic leads to a series of “why?” questions ending with a final “why?” that must reference the author.
I see two places where the author might be referenced as a cause in a story: the first is in the will of the characters, and if not there then in the first story event to which all other events form a chain reaction.
Yet, in the end, the question is negligible. The words of Shakespeare broken down to an ordered series of letters broken down to a dark chemical absorbed by paper mean what you interpret them to mean. The real question, as with all art(and even technology,) is: Does it help you understand reality?
Comment by steve doetsch — January 3, 2007 @ 10:25 AM
yall are mean to display this poor human dog in a muesum you wuldnt like it if it was done to you…………….
Comment by jasmine — February 5, 2008 @ 7:39 AM
that image is so gross but so cool at the same time!
Comment by briana — December 5, 2008 @ 10:00 AM