The Beards of Hamlet

Recently, I’ve been watching as many film versions of Hamlet as I can. Last up was Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, notable for being the first unabridged film adaptation of the play, and the last film to be shot entirely in 70mm format.

Also notable, but too often overlooked? The facial hair.

Every instance of facial hair in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet is a character of its own. These beards and mustaches do a lot of strutting and fretting. They must have had a whole team of stylists just to maintain them.

Let’s examine some key beards.

Hamlet’s is a sharp, chiseled arrangement. His soul patch comes to a dagger-point. Even when Hamlet hesitates to carry out his bloody deed, his beard remains focused. It’s a beard built for revenge.

Brian Blessed is in the role of the ghost. His beard is white and full, and it glows. This is a beard that’s been to purgatory and back. It’s a ghost in its own right: a ghost beard.

His brother Claudius, played by Derek Jacobi, has a different kind of beard altogether. It’s about as neat as a beard can get. This beard wasn’t trimmed, it was carved from the stone of Jacobi’s face. This is a beard that’s trying hard to look good. Like Claudius, it has something to hide.

In one scene, Hamlet urges Queen Gertrude to act as judge in an impromptu beard-off. Here he is, showing her pictures of her two husbands.

The picture of the king reveals a beard in its prime, full and vigorous. That beard is Denmark.

Claudius’s beard appears thin and uncertain by comparison. This beard didn’t know there was going to be a beard-off.

In another scene, Polonius gives his son Laertes advice on the maintenance of his mustache.

There are other beards worth considering, but I’ll mention just two more. Billy Crystal, in the role of the gravedigger, sports an unkempt but jocular beard, as befits a man who says funny things while digging skulls out of the ground. After Yorick died, no one thought to hire another jester, so the gravedigger makes the jokes now. He doesn’t have time to shave.

Then there’s Robin Williams, as Osric. He appears toward the end, and mops the floor with everyone else’s beard. Minor part, major beard.

Some Pinkertonia

While working on The Manual of Detection, I did a good bit of research into the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. My own Agency’s logo (an open eye) and motto (“Never Sleeping”) were adapted from those of the Pinkertons, and intended in part as a nod to that outfit’s influence on the conception of my fictional mystery-solving organization. Both found their way onto the hardcover edition of the book, and that design, by Glenn O’Neill, was just voted best crime fiction cover of 2009 over on The Rap Sheet blog.

The Pinkertons have a fascinating history. Allan Pinkerton, founder of the agency, served as security to President Lincoln during the Civil War, and prevented an assassination attempt. (He wasn’t there at Ford’s Theater that other time.) The Pinkertons earned a degree of infamy during the events of the Homestead Strike of 1892. They were feared by outlaws, and were hired to track Jesse James as well as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There is, according to this wikipedia article, a federal law still on the books which prohibits Pinkerton employees from working for the United States government.

What I didn’t know until recently was that Allan Pinkerton published several collections of real-life detective stories, “transcribed from the Records” of the Pinkerton Agency. All are in the public domain, and have been made available in electronic editions at feedbooks.com. I’m looking forward to reading these, and I wish I’d known about them a few years ago. In the preface to one volume, Mr. Pinkerton writes:

If there be any incidental embellishment, it is so slight that the actors in these scenes from the drama of life would never themselves detect it; and if the incidents seem to the reader at all marvelous or improbable, I can but remind him, in the words of the old adage, that “Truth is stranger than fiction.”

Indeed. Feedbooks also has on display some of the wonderful old cover designs for those books. Of particular note—to me, at least—is the cover of The Expressman and the Detective, with its green cover and gold foil never-sleeping stare. And for reasons which anyone who’s read The Manual of Detection will understand, the title The Somnambulist and the Detectives came as a fine surprise.

The paperback design for my book is quite different—“Magritte noir,” I’ve been calling it. The paperback will be available from Penguin on January 26th, and I’ll have more to say about it soon.

Wonders & Curiosities: Ancient Modes of Mourning

“Amongst the ancient Jews, on the death of their relations or intimate friends, mourning was expressed by weeping, tearing their clothes, smiting their breasts, or lacerating them with their nails, pulling or cutting off their hair and beards, walking softly, i.e. barefoot, lying upon the ground, fasting, or eating upon the ground….

The Greeks, on the death of their friends, shewed their sorrow by secluding themselves from all gaiety, entertainments, games, public solemnities, wine, and music. They sat in gloomy and solitary places, stripped themselves of all external ornaments, put on a coarse black stuff by way of mourning, tore their hair, shaved their heads, rolled themselves in the dust and mire, sprinkled ashes on their heads, smote their breasts with their palms, tore their faces, and frequently cried out with a lamentable voice and drawling tone….

The tokens of private grief among the Romans were the same as those among the Greeks….

Each people assign their reasons for the particular colour of their mourning: white is supposed to denote purity; yellow, that death is the end of human hopes, in regard that leaves when they fall, and flowers when they fade, become yellow; brown denotes the earth, whither the dead return; black, the privation of light; blue expresses the happiness which it is hoped the deceased does enjoy; and purple or violet, sorrow on the one side, and hope on the other, as being a mixture of black and blue.”

—The Cyclopedia of Wonders & Curiosities, Chap. LX., Curiosities Respecting the Customs of Mankind

One Bumper Sticker to Rule Them All

For years I’ve been meaning to make this bumper sticker and now I have made it:

Inspired, of course, by the classic:

Available now at The Cat & Tonic. (Some items related to The Manual of Detection also available.)