When reading the story The Camera Loves You, there is a line inside of it that mentions the famous line from Hamlet “What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba” and to thoroughly understand what this means, I wanted to research why this line is said, where the line originated from and who Hecuba was and her relevance to both of these pieces. It’s important I look further into this so I can understand the meaning behind the line and why its weaved its way into Attempts On Her Life.
Hamlet plot summary:
Horatio, Hamlet’s friend, tells two guards that he’s seen the Ghost of Hamlet’s recently deceased father and when the three of them see it at the castle, they decide to tell Hamlet what they’ve seen. Still grieving the loss of his father, Hamlet wants to see it for himself but when he is faced with the Ghost, he is unsure whether it’s real or not. The ghost tells him to avenge his death by killing Claudius, who murdered him and has now married Hamlet’s mother to become King, so Hamlet starts acting mad. Meanwhile, Polonius, a royal attendant, says goodbye to his son, Laertes, who warns his sister Ophelia to stay away from Hamlet.
Hamlet starts acting strange around everyone and he rejects Ophelia, leading to Claudius and Polonius spying on him, but can’t find any reason for Hamlet’s odd behaviour. Claudius then decides to get two old friends of Hamlet involved to see if they can find out why he’s acting this way, and at the same time Hamlet’s actor friends turn up to start writing a play. Hamlet decides the play will include his father’s death, and the group prepares to perform for the King and Queen.
Throughout the performance, Hamlet is watching how Claudius reacts to the play, and he eventually storms out and aims to send Hamlet away. When visiting his mother Getrude, Hamlet stumbles upon Claudius praying and decides to spare his life for the time being, and his soul would end up going to heaven rather than hell, whereas Hamlet wants him to suffer. Polonius aims to protect Gertrude from her son, so he hides in her room and when Hamlet comes in to complain to his mother, he notices him moving behind the tapestry. Hamlet stabs the tapestry, killing Polonius in the process and the ghost of Hamlet’s father reappears, and tells him that he shouldn’t delay killing Claudius.
Hamlet is sent to England by Claudius as an ambassador, and during his trip, the King of Norway travels through Denmark to attack Poland. Hamlet discovers Claudius’ plan to have him killed, so he returns to Denmark and kills his two companions, the old friends that came to check up on him in Act II. During this, Ophelia has gone crazy due to her fathers death and Hamlet’s rejection, and decides to drown herself.
As he travels back to Denmark, Hamlet meets Horatio in the same graveyard where Ophelia is being buried. Hamlet speaks to Laertes and they duel, and Claudius and Laertes create a plan to kill Hamlet. They decide that Hamlet will die via poisoned dagger or wine, but Gertrude drinks from the poisioned cup and dies. Laertes and Hamlet both get injured with the dagger and Laertes dies whilst Hamlet is suffering in pain. Hamlet then kills Claudius and dies himself from the poisoned dagger, which leaves Horatio to tell the King Of Norway what’s happened as he returns from battle.
Act II Scene 2 Summary
The speech talks about Hamlet’s reaction to the First Player’s performance as the group at putting together the play. He performs a speech about Hecuba and the performer, Polonius and Hamlet get emotional over this. Later Hamlet wonders how the actor has developed such an emotional connection with someone he doesn’t know and will never meet, and asks how Hecuba is important to the actor. Hamlet is also questioning how unaffected he is by the speech, and I think this shows the contrast between the First Player and Hamlet. The First Player is very emotional and is able to connect with someone they don’t know through a piece of acting, whereas Hamlet is very dull and instead of applauding the wonderful performance by the Player, he questions everything about it. Another contrast within this scene is between Hecuba and Getrude, as Hecuba was very emotional about losing her husband and famously wept over him, whereas Gertrude immediately married Claudius after the loss of her husband, showing how little she cared, leading to Hamlet become angry with her.
The line “What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba that he should weep for her?” in his soliloquy asks what does Hecuba mean to him to be so powerful and emotional whilst performing a speech about her, and how does this affect the audience, especially Polonius, so strongly. Hamlet also states that “had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have? He would drown the stage with tears and cleave the general ear with horrid speech” and this talks about how if the First Player had the emotion and sadness Hamlet has over his father, his speech would be so powerful, the stage would be filled with tears and anger in his words, making the speech feel much more realistic and even more relatable to how Hecuba feels about her husband's death.
Hecuba Summary
Written by Euripidies, Hecuba was written around 424BC and takes place around the time of the Trojan War. It’s about the grief of Hecuba, who is the current queen of Troy and how she suffers and gets revenge due to the loss of her family. It is very similar to Hamlet in the idea that both plays open with a Ghost explaining who they came to be killed, and in this case it's young Polydorus who has been killed by Polymestor as he was protecting him to gain the gold and jewellery he had with him. He also explains that many people have been captured and in order to set them free, they would need to sacrifice Polyxena, Poyldorus’ sister.
Hecuba is one of the people captured and she is currently mourning the loss of her husband and sons who have been killed whilst fighting in the war, and now she has the added stress of potentially sacrificing her daughter for herself and the other prisoners to be set free and return home. Odysseus comes to collect Polyxena for the sacrifice and tells Hecuba that she shouldn’t take the loss of her daughter too hard. In reply, Hecuba tries to shame Odysseus into setting her free but it doesn’t work, and Polyxena decides she’d rather die than be a slave.
Polyxena is killed and Hecuba states that no one can touch her corpse until he ritual cleansing is over, but the servant who fetches the water also finds the body of Polydorus on the shore. Hecuba immediately blames Polymestor, states that he has killed him for the jewellery and gold he had and begins to plot for her revenge.
She asks Agamemnon, the Greek leader, for his help and he helps her send a message to Polymestor about treasure that is buried in Troy, which he later arrives to discuss with his two sons. They go into Hecuba’s tent but are attacked by the Trojan women. Hecuba is triumphant and Polymestor and his sons crawl out suffering badly from the attack, and they curse Hecuba and the women inside the tent, threatening retribution for their actions.
Agamemnon is then asked to judge Hecuba and Polymestor after the event. Polymestor tries to make up an excuse for the death of Polydorus, but Hecuba states that he killed him only for the treasure. Polymestor states that there is a prophecy that Hecuba will die on the way to Greece, and Agamemnon’s wife will kill Hecuba’s daughter Cassandra, leading to Agamemnon banishing Polymestor to a desert island, where he lives out his final years.
Hecuba is a very female heavy piece of theatre and focuses on women being strong and independent. However, there are many moments where she shows signs of weakness, especially when losing her loved ones, and the play continues to get more depressing without any light at the end of the tunnel. As it’s stated in Hamlet, Hecuba gets very emotional when mourning her husband and the First Player recreates this moment inside his speech, but Hamlet doesn’t understand how he can get so emotional about someone he has never met. This is a very powerful speech as it shows how Hamlet loses interest in avenging his father straight away, as he wants to provoke a confession out of Claudius before doing something so evil, he states he doesn’t have enough evidence yet but he will if the King is honest about his actions.
In Attempts On Her Life, this line is mentioned as the directors are using Hecuba as someone Anne can aspire to be, if she can portray that level of power and emotion, she will eventually become a “megastar” and get everything she’s ever wanted, it’s like they are corrupting her and filling her mind with unrealistic ideas, which is exactly what the directors want so they can manipulate Anne and use her like a “cheap cigarette”, mentioned in The Girl Next Door. This research was really helpful in cracking the code of the Hecuba line, what Hamlet meant and why Martin Crimp has included it in his piece, and now that I understand the meaning behind it, I know we can do a lot with this moment to make it relate to that iconic Hamlet soliloquy!
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