Aesthetic Cohesion, Transliteration, and Morality in Historia Danica, "Hamlet," and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern"

This post is a continuation of my emphasis on Renaissance Teaching Methods.  It is also a follow up post to previous research that I mentioned performing in regards to a relationship between Hisotria Danica, “Hamlet,” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.”  I will be discussing how transliteration affected the depiction of morality in the portrayal of several more explicit scenes.  Let me begin by explaining a bit about transliteration.

Transliteration Defined:

Transliteration is the act of taking a text and transferring it from one language into another.  You might say that it is translating, but there is a level of attention and exactness used in transliteration that is not required to simply translate a work.  To translate a work is to translate the words and then the sentences so that the same message is conveyed.  Transliteration is one of the tools of renaissance teaching, because it employs heavy use of variation, amplification, and imitation in order to not only convey the original meaning of a work, but to attempt to recreate the tone, structure, and argumentative positioning of concepts within the text.  Transliteration concerns itself with accurately conveying the original intent into an alternate format.  (Regularly another language)

The difficulty of performing a proper transliteration can be more readily understood by observing this image of the original text of Historia Danica.  The script type was hand written, meaning that throughout the text certain unintentional variations may have occurred requiring the reader to review the same line multiple times in order to ensure that they not only understand the words, but how they are arranged in the text, and the overall effect that they create.  Hand written text also meant that the reader could not simply retrieve any copy of the text and expect the same material.  However detailed the transcription, light variations among the copies was inevitable; therefore, in order to ascertain a continuity of reading, the reader needed to keep in his possession the same copy of the text (this would also help the reader not have to adjust to variations among handwriting styles).  The text could then be translated to the desired language, and then rigorously compared to the original text in order to ensure accuracy of the transliteration on the level of design and tone.  At the conclusion of the process the transliterationist had a workable text capable of dissemination in a more universal language.    

Shakespeare's Transliteration: 

In my review of Hamlet I began with an interest in the source work from which he supposedly derived his story.  Because of the ties that have been discovered between several of his other plays and previously written texts, the knowledge that Shakespeare may have gleaned from Saxo Grammaticus’s Historia Danica leads to the interpretation that Shakespeare likely gleaned his inspiration of Hamlet from the events of the life of Amleth in this narrative.  I read a brief summary of this relation in The Necessary Shakespeare and wanted to deepen my understanding of this source text.  I found a translation of the original Latin text done by Douglas B. Killings in 1997.  A particular scene from the original text intrigued me greatly.  Here is Killings translation of that scene (Book 3):

For if the son had any wits at all he would not hesitate to speak out in the hearing of his mother, or fear to trust himself to the fidelity of her who bore him. The speaker, loth to seem readier to devise than to carry out the plot, zealously proffered himself as the agent of the eavesdropping. Feng rejoiced at the scheme, and departed on pretence of a long journey. Now he who had given this counsel repaired privily to the room where Amleth was shut up with his mother, and lay flown skulking in the straw. But Amleth had his antidote for the treachery. Afraid of being overheard by some eavesdropper, he at first resorted to his usual imbecile ways, and crowed like a noisy cock, beating his arms together to mimic the flapping of wings. Then he mounted the straw and began to swing his body and jump again and again, wishing to try if aught lurked there in hiding. Feeling a lump beneath his feet, he drove his sword into the spot, and impaled him who lay hid. Then he dragged him from his concealment and slew him. Then, cutting his body into morsels, he seethed it in boiling water, and flung it through the mouth of an open sewer for the swine to eat, bestrewing the stinking mire with his hapless limbs. Having in this wise eluded the snare, he went back to the room. Then his mother set up a great wailing, and began to lament her son's folly to his face; but he said: "Most infamous of women; dost thou seek with such lying lamentations to hide thy most heavy guilt?” 

Here is that scene in Shakespeare’s adaption to the stage in “Hamlet:” (3:4)

            QUEEN GERTRUDE 
Have you forgot me?
HAMLET 
No, by the rood, not so:
You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife;
And--would it were not so!--you are my mother.
QUEEN GERTRUDE 
Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.
HAMLET 
Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.
QUEEN GERTRUDE 
What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
Help, help, ho!
LORD POLONIUS 
[Behind] What, ho! help, help, help!
HAMLET 
[Drawing] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
(Makes a pass through the arras)
LORD POLONIUS 
[Behind] O, I am slain!
(Falls and dies)
QUEEN GERTRUDE 
O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET 
Nay, I know not:
Is it the king?
QUEEN GERTRUDE 
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

This segment is very reminiscent of the more popular scene of hamlet killing Polonius in the chamber of his mother.  While the two events are somewhat similar, we see in the Historia Danica a more violent depiction of the death, and a gruesome handling of the body after death, while in the text of “Hamlet” a larger measure of discretion is used.  Having received the training to perform a correct transliteration of the text, Shakespeare’s deviation demonstrates a level of intentional alteration performed for a specific reason.  It is possible to say that, with the presence of Church and Humanist ideas infecting public sentiment, Shakespeare’s alteration was made as a moral prerogative.  In order to ensure the success of the play to a broader audience, he choose to err on the side of discretion and toned down the play once he varied the text from the narrative of a history into the text of a play. 

Contemporary Transliteration:

This analysis of the move towards discretion is certainly not always the case, but there is evidence of a connection between the transliteration of a text and the adjusting of its content according to the audience as seen both in Shakespeare's transliteration and more contemporaneous works.  For example, in her article “Stoppard’s (Re)Vision of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: A Lesson in Moral responsibility” Susan Abbotson states that “though tentatively explored in the play, the issue of individual and moral responsibility becomes the films central concern.  By altering the tone and characterizations of the major roles, the film achieves a unity of effect which underlines this central message and eradicates the play’s distracting alternatives” (171).   She notices that in order to provide a stronger sense of cohesion and appeal to a broader audience, Stoppard adjusted the moral ambiguity present in his previous derivative play of “Hamlet” and returned to a moral base.  By returning to a moral base for the presentation of the film we see that the transliteration of his play from the stage to the screen mimics the movement towards moral discretion seen in Shakespeare’s adaptation of “Hamlet” from a historical narrative to the stage.

These movements towards morality, some might argue dilute the text and estrange the final product from the original; however, keeping in mind the intent of transliteration versus translation aids in understanding the benefits of these moves towards morality on a level outside the realm of societal moors.  While societal moors are clearly an influential factor in these revisions, approaching the work from the angle of inherent continuity and thematic cohesion open the text to an aesthetic, not exclusively moral, interpretation. 

Morality, Aestheticism, and Transliteration:

Recall that the intention of transliteration is to not only translate meaning, but to correctly imitate the tone, form, and intent of the original work.  The original works in these instances provide these measures of continuity.  If we then build an interpretation of the transliterated text from these source works, the move towards morality in the process of transliteration becomes a move towards continued cohesion of the work in light of the new medium of dissemination.  The alternate forms of consumption necessitated a change in the delivery of the source text in order to maintain the continuity of the source work.  Thus, the aesthetic movement within the transliteration of a text becomes a moral alteration as a byproduct of the desire for continuity, not explicitly a moral choice.  Of course this also means that, in some degree, the inclusion of a “higher standard of morals” in a text opens the text to a stronger sense of unity and a broader audience – not only because of the sensitivity that a more moral portrayal will maintain for a varied audience of unknown moral standings, but because the cohesion of the text is more readily interpreted by the audience.  For example, imagine having to depict the slaughter scene from Historia Danica on the stage, or the mental broodings, double-speech, and ambiguity of character in “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” to a film audience.  The practical construction of a transliteration appears to contain the explicit design of making the source text equally comprehensible through these tools of cohesion and continuity.  I for one see many benefits to these movements.