Bernardo?

Dear Blue,

The start of Hamlet, I have been arguing, draws attention to the authority of pretend and the nature of authority generally.  If you push it a bit, as I certainly have, and see the first few lines as not just uttered between the characters but also to the audience then our not answering Bernardo's question and our refusing to act as Fransisco demands confirms our status as ghosts, divided from the voice and the body we normally use to be "there" in the world.  Yet we all share this division, are all unified in this and by an authority that asks us to guard what we watch by maintaining, together, our separation from our selves.

In calling attention to what is,  in its way, true of drama, Hamlet  ask us to see what is not.  Though, being addressed, we are not there.  In the process we also become a mirror to what is on stage.  We guard guards and, like them, wonder what's going here may just as well ask them: "Who's there?"

To be clear, none of this would have crossed my mind the the first time I saw the play.

"Hey, look at that guard-person who does not recognize that other guard-person.  What's gonna happen now?"  Some version of that is, no doubt, what I was thinking the first time I saw the play, if I was thinking anything at all.

When I make these suggestions about the play it is less as if I come to you from the land of teachers, where we make too much of everything so as to sound clever to our students, and more because I am from the future, the one you will enter into should you read or watch the play.  I may be old and you may be young, but when we read the same book we are suddenly the same age, contemporaries in another world.

One thing my coming from the future means is that I have been comfortable calling the two figures on stage Bernardo and Fransisco.  In the theater, as a first timer though we would have no certainty about the names of these two figures on stage.

As if an agent conjured up by our need for information, Fransisco moves us away from uncertainty and towards possibility:  "Bernardo?"

Bernardo . . . question mark . . . is that you?

To discuss this line--a name and a question mark--I wish to offer three iffy assertions about how we are "there" when Fransisco utters it.  Perhaps, though, rather than calling these assertion I should call them "spiritual images" or "private impressions."  For my take on this line of the play surely says more about how the world feels to me than it does what my coming to you from the future or from the land of teachers ought to offer.  Indeed, much of what I am about to say lacks what you will have learned in Writing and Rhetoric class any such assertion demands: evidence.

(If I claim Bernardo is likely anxious and frightened, there is evidence to back this up.  It is late at night.  The question "Who's there?" conveys confusion.  Fransisco responds with tense commands rather than some form of relaxed, "O hi-ya Bernardo."  Thus I can claim these two people meet one another under the specter of fear and concern rather than safety and ease.  If, by contrast, I claim Bernardo is Simba the singing lion you should rightly wonder what is wrong with me and would be right to ask, "Mr. Ted, where's your evidence?"  While what I am about to say is not quite as wacky as 'Bernardo is Simba' neither do I have great evidence for making the assertions I do.  But this may lead us to some consideration of what makes evidence "evidence" in a world of imagination.  But before getting to that let me return to e make them and then see if I can justify, if not their veracity, the value of my making them.)

Let us see:

Bernardo?

As three things:

• A stake of knowledge in the geography of time and space.
• A closing door--or gate--in the wall of pretend that divides players from audience.

And, upon seeing the first two:

• The point at which those on stage become, for lack of a better word, "real."

About the stake of common knowledge . . .

Up until this moment everyone is lost.  Bernardo, Fransisco, all of us in the audience . . . no one knows where we are or who is who.  There is some form of "there" taking shape and some manner of "who" present but nothing else is defined enough to know, let alone re-know.  Yet now, at the time of this name--Bernardo?--guards and people pretending to be guards, those who ask and answer, any who unfold or would have the king live long, as well as those who come as ghosts of now or ghosts from the future can see this marker. established.  We have moved from a question formed in fear and uncertainty to one of hope and possibility.  An anchor, a cornerstone, a stake in what is happening: the figure who first asked "who's there?" might have a name we can return to  . . . Bernardo?

About the door--or gate--in the wall of pretend . . .

If we were invited to enter into the world of those on the stage via the play's first few lines, if there is some doorway (or gate) between what we see up their and our world in the audience, it is closing now as these two figures turn their backs on us and address each other.  If we were ever going to become part of the happenings in their world that opportunity is now passing.

Some forms of drama, as you may be aware, juggle the authority of pretend and let the actors address the audience.  In those plays the barrier between the world of the stage and our world is permeable, or more permeable than the one of Hamlet.  For that matter, in a few of Shakespeare's other plays characters speak directly to us to set the scene at the beginning or to ask for applause at the end. Thus it is possible to imagine a play that takes place after Nduta answers Bernardo or the rest of us stand to obey Fransisco.  But clearly that play would not be this play and that world entirely different from this one.

Bernardo, if we go back, addresses an empty universe and the universe of the imagination too, that space even the Hulk or Simba might inhabit.  With Fransisco "there" the universe shrinks and goes from a place where anything can be anything to where some things are known or potentially re-knowable.  Bernardo and Fransisco may still be afraid of one another or of not knowing who the other is,  but rather than a world in which hulks exist or lion's sing, sounds and shapes you think you can identify even in the dark as belonging to people do indeed belong to people.  And all of this reminds us that though the play starts with "who's there?" that question is, in fact, a few steps down the logical progression of sensory experience and "re-knowing."  Bernardo does not say, "what's that?" which would leave open Hulky and Simba-ish possibilities and would, anyway, be the kind of thing one does not say out loud.  Instead Bernardo's question is built on information and presumption that comes having lived in the re-knowable world.  That sound?  It sounds human. Some person must be making it . . . Who's there?

One difference between a door and a gate is that even when closed you can often see through a gate and gates also often come with guards.   Or, at least, a gate with a guard differs from a door with a guard.  But let's talk about whay I have refered to what is closing here as both a door and a gate in the next post and move on now to my third belief about this line Fransisco utters trying to identify the other person on stage as, Bernardo?

 

About how the stake of tentative knowledge and the door--or gate--through which we might have entered into the world on stage begins to close suggests Bernardo and Fransisco can now become real or, perhaps, become real "there."

To push this last impression forward let us conduct a thought experiment and imagine that the person pretending to be Bernardo is exactly like Bernardo in every way: personality, physical make-up, spiritual characteristics.  The actor and the character share every X and each Y of who they are to make a seamless graph of "identical."  Under any inspection and every view--even God's--the person pretending to be Bernardo and Bernardo can not be divided one from the other, as if the role and actor were utterly 'solid.'

And yet unlike the person pretending to be Bernardo, Bernardo can not know we, the audience, are "there."

Actor and role can be absolutely identical except that the person pretending to be Bernardo knows full well that Nduta or someone like her is watching from the world of audience.

Were Bernardo to know that Nduta is there, then the question "Who's there?" will be asked with entirely different implications.

Who's there that is not from the audience?  Who's there that made a noise that sounds human but not the human noise you make when you are settling into your seat to watch a play?  Who's there who will not remain a ghost but will act like a real person?  (Oh, hey person pretending to be Fransisco . . . )

To think that I am not in the "real universe" and discover that, instead, it includes wizards like Harry Potter would be a shock.  I would be deeply surprised, late at night, to realize the cause of the noise I heard was a big green monster.  Yet just as those ideas must exist in some human mind, must have existed at least in the minds of those who invented them it is possible that late at night, not knowing anything about what is going on, I might imagine the unreal at work.  It may not calm me much to see someone I cannot identify rather than some thing I can not identify, but now I am out of the world of imagination and into the world I know.

 

 

It is an odd fact of how perception, imagination and language work that if I perceive Bernardo as more lion like than anything else or if my imagination leads me to wonder how Bernardo might sound as a singer, language allows me to say something that is clearly not the case anywhere except in my thoughts and my expressions of those thoughts.

To say it differently: Because they are fake, words allow us to point to things that are not true: Two plus two equals five, up is down, fire is cold.  As you can see, I've written things that are not true but I have done so in using the same  pixels I would ti write two plus two equals four or up is not down or fire is hot.  Whether I write it with a pen on paper or print it a book or use these pixels, the symbols which make up "2 + 2 = 5" are no more or less "real" than those which make up an equation that is true.

Because the same word-symbols we use might express an obvious untruth we might be better off drawing pictures for each other of what we mean rather relying on language.  Maybe, if I want to meet you by a tree I should draw you and myself and the tree I mean so we both know what I mean.  But in addition to all that drawing being kind of a hassle, many things--democracy, justice, decency, love, god, experience--are hard to draw.  Deep in the falseness of words and language is the way in which they make an imaginary--even fake--world for us.  After all

If this makes words and symbols dangerous, it also makes them powerful.

There are lots of times when to communicate accurately  and yet matter in our relationships to one another exactly because we have to work to define them together.  These things have no actual matter (like a tree) and yet matter to us far more than what is "real."

In a sense, when I write:

Bernardo is Simba

I use language to put a ghost of an idea into the world.  That there is no evidence for this idea does not mean that words cannot point to it, as I just have shown.  Now the idea that Bernardo is Simba exists not only in my thoughts but in the words which I present to you just as if the idea itself does have "matter."

In part, the idea that Bernado is a singing lion now exists in its ghostly form is evidenced by the fact that you know it is not true, are able to deny it.  If that sounds bizarre, try something different:

Simba night lion Bernardo to Fransisco

Together, in this form, these words do not cohere even into the misty ether of an idea we know as wrong.  As an idea it is not even a ghost.

To say,

Bernardo is Simba,

is to something stupid, something silly, something psychotic, something random.

To say,

Simba night lion Bernardo to Fransisco,

while using recognizable words of the kind I might use to be dumb or playful or hallucinogenic or free-form lacks the coagulative property we need so that pretend might occupy an empty theater or such that you and I might debate an idea based on our assertions and evidence.  Despite using words made by human beings, "Simba night lion Bernardo to Fransisco" does not enter into "human" activity, even the human activity of being silly or wrong or conjuring ghosts.

So while what I wish to say here about "Bernardo?" may only come across as conjectures based on a belief too private to be anything more than silly or ghost like, they are at least not nothing, not not even a ghost.

---

This leads to an obvious question: How can I argue (assert, claim, imply) without evidence?

One immediate answer to that question is that I cannot or, rather, I cannot do it well.  Without more evidence than I intend to bring to my reading of "Bernard?" you have no reason to accept what I will assert, claim and imply.

But this also moves us into the territory of what words can and cannot do for us and since we are watching people on stage pretending to be real as we pretend to be ghosts

Maybe what I have to say comes from private belief rather than from publicly available evidence and about this I should say a little more before getting to my three iffy assertions because it brings

 

 

 

To think:

I wonder if that sound was not a person but a monster or something impossible like a singing lion?

May or may not be more or less imaginative than

I wonder if there is an audience out there watching me?

But both possibilities, wherever they exist on the fringe of one's imagination, are far easier to push away than to embrace when the reknowable world appears in the form--a sound, a shape--you can re-know enough to ask "who?" Rather than "what?" is there.

The steps of knowledge and presumption and expectation which a life without seeing the hulk or feeling an audience is watching you is the one we are dropped into here.  Because it is art, it might have gone otherwise and a play in which Harry Potter casts a spell or the audience speaks to the actors might have been ours to watch.  Instead, now, the pretenders become who they are.

A few more things to say about all this:

We are the divider that makes the thing (Bernardo) whole, solid, extant by not being there.

We are the ghosts which divide the person from the person pretending to be.

We are the pretenders who make Bernardo real.

They are the fake that makes us time travelers and able permeate what does (not) exist.

 

But that play would not be Hamlet.  The world in which Hamlet takes place disappears if we cross the invisible barrier between the universe Bernado calls out to (the one of imagination where we sit as ghosts) and the one of reality, the one even an unknown figure who may or may not believe in the same kingly authority, who may or may not be identifiable, now answers.  Almost a ghost too, Fransisco is more real than any of us by a degree, but now, as that degree increases--Bernardo?--and ours fades, the two figures can go about the business of being "real."

What is not there (us) and what is there (pretend) both contribute to the absolutely permeable absolute division a door--or rather a gate--which now swings shut.

 

This stake in the geography of time is not surbrisinlgy, perhaps, a a name, since names offten form such stakes themselves, contain or suggest travels past and into the future in a fashion I  suggested discussing the first line of the play.  That is:

Who are you?  Marubini, daughter of . . .

That's history as it gets recorded.

Who's there?

I can only know once we know (or re-know) one another and make a history together.

And the fact that the best Fransisco can do is offer a question, not a certainty, "Oh hey, Bernardo, great to see you," may be worth stopping over since it points to yet another kind of knowledge and way of being.  We've had total confusion (Who's there?) and the wall of certainty that often counters confusion (Nay, answer me) and the suggestion we might have something in common (the king) and now a guess towards togetherness  . . .. Bernardo?

If you think that kind of back and forth is not part of the drama of recognition and life consider the kind of conversation, or thought, that happens with a friend, or in your head, before you ask someone out:

Do you think s/he/they likes me? 

You should definitely find out.

Long live

To say Bernardo is Simba, which makes no sense in the context of the play itself, is one degree less sensible than to say something that makes no sense anywhere because it simple fails as language: "Bernardo night who lion ask."

To say Bernardo is like Simba because . . .

Will be difficult to

class in which we met.

Could it be you . . . question mark . . . who will love me?

But let's take up that more when we talk more about words as arrows and placeholder

For That is a game--a denial of knowledge on the actors part which mirrors the lack of imagination Bernardo, and all of us share.