Bohannon, Laura (1971), from
Conformity and Conflict: Readings in
Cultural Anthropology, eds. James P. Spradley and David W. McCurdy
Boston: Little Brown and Company.
Shakespeare in the Bush
Just before I left Oxford for the Tiv in West
Africa, conversation turned to the season at Stratford. "You
Americans,"
said a friend, "often have difficulty with Shakespeare. He was, after
all, a very English poet, and one can easily misinterpret the universal
by misunderstanding the particular."
I protested that human nature is pretty much
the same the whole world over; at least the general plot and motivation
of the greater tragedies would always be clear--everywhere--although
some
details of custom might have to be explained and difficulties of
translation
might produce other slight changes. To end an argument we could not
conclude, my friend gave me a copy of Hamlet to study in the
African
bush; it would, he hoped, lift my mind above its primitive surroundings,
and possibly I might, by prolonged meditation, achieve the grace of
correct
interpretation.
It was my second field trip to that African
tribe, and I thought myself ready to live in one of its remote
sections--an
area difficult to cross, even on foot. I eventually settled on the
hillock of a very knowledgeable old man, the head of a homestead of some
hundred and forty people, all of whom were either his close relatives or
their wives and children. Like the other elders of the vicinity,
the old man spent most of his time performing ceremonies seldom seen
these
days in the most accessible parts of the tribe. I was delighted.
Soon there would be three months of enforced isolation and leisure,
between
the harvest that takes place just before the rising of the swamps and
the
clearing of new farms when the water goes down. Then, I thought,
they would have even more time to perform ceremonies and explain them to
me.
I was quite mistaken. Most of the ceremonies
demanded the presence of elders from several homesteads. As the swamps
rose, the old men found it too difficult to walk from one homestead to
the next, and the ceremonies gradually ceased. As the swamps rose
even higher, all activities but one came to an end. The women
brewed beer from maize and millet. Men, women, and children sat on
their hillocks and drank it.
People began to drink at dawn. By midmorning
the whole homestead was singing, dancing, and drumming. when it rained,
people had to sit inside their huts: there they drank and sang or they
drank and told stories. In any case, by noon or before, I either
had to join the party or retire to my own hut and books. "One does
not discuss serious matters when there is beer. Come, drink with
us." Since I lacked their capacity for the thick native beer, I spent
more and more time with Hamlet. Before the end of the second
month, grace descended on me. I was quite sure that Hamlet
had only one possible interpretation, and that one universally obvious.
Early every morning, in the hope of having
some serious talk before the beer party. I used to call on the old
man at his reception hut--a circle of posts supporting a thatched roof
above a low mud wall to keep out wind and rain. One day I crawled
through the low doorway and found most of the men of the homestead
sitting
huddled in their ragged cloths on stools, low plank beds, and reclining
chairs, warming themselves against the chill of the rain around a smoky
fire. In the center were three pots of beer. The party had
started.
The old man greeted me cordially. "Sit
down and drink." I accepted a large calabash full of beer, poured
some into a small drinking gourd, and tossed it down. Then I poured
some more into the same gourd for the man second in seniority to my host
before I handed my calabash over to a young man for further
distribution.
Important people shouldn't ladle beer themselves.
"It is better like this." the old man said,
looking at me approvingly and plucking at the thatch that had caught in
my hair. "You should sit and drink with us more often. Your
servants tell me that when you are not with us, you sit inside your hut
looking at a paper."
The old man was acquainted with four kinds
of "papers": tax receipts, bride price receipts, court free receipts,
and
letters. The messenger who brought him letters from the chief used
them mainly as a badge of office, for he always knew what was in them
and
told the old man. Personal letters for the few who had relatives
in the government or mission stations were kept until someone went to a
large market where there was a letter writer and reader. Since my
arrival, letters were brought for me to be read. A few men also brought
me bride price receipts, privately, with requests to change the figures
to a higher sum. I found moral arguments were of no avail, since
in-laws are fair game, and the technical hazards of forgery difficult to
explain to an illiterate people. I did not wish them to think me
silly enough to look at any such papers for days on end, and I hastily
explained that my "paper" was one of the "things of long ago" of my
country.
"Ah," said the old man. "Tell us."
I protested that I was not a storyteller.
Storytelling is a skilled art among them; their standards are high
and the audiences critical--and vocal in their criticism. I protested
in vain. This morning they wanted to hear a story while they drank.
They threatened to tell me no more stories until I told them one of
mine.
Finally, the old man promised that no one would criticize my style "for
we know you are struggling with our language," "But," put in one
of the elders, "you must explain what we do not understand, as we do
when
we tell our stories." Realizing that here was my chance to prove
Hamlet universally intelligible, I agreed.
The old man handed me some more beer to help
me on with my storytelling. Men filled their long wooden pipes and
knocked coals from the fire to place in the pipe bowls; then, puffing
contentedly,
they sat back to listen. I began in the proper style, "Not yesterday,
not yesterday, but long ago, a thing occurred. One night three men
were keeping watch outside the homestead of the great chief, when
suddenly
they saw the former chief approach them."
"Why was he no longer their chief?"
"He was dead," I explained. "That is
why they were troubled and afraid when the saw him."
"Impossible," began one of the elders, handing
his pipe on to his neighbor, who interrupted, "Of course it wasn't the
dead chief. It was an omen sent by a witch. Go on."
Slightly shaken, I continued. "One of
these three was a man who knew things"--the closest translation for
scholar,
but unfortunately it also meant witch. the second elder looked
triumphantly
at the first. "So he spoke to the dead chief saying, 'Tell us what
we must do so you may rest in your grave.' but the dead chief did not
answer.
He vanished, and they could see him no more. Then the man who knew
things--his name was Horatio--said this event was the affair of the dead
chief's son Hamlet."
There was a general shaking of heads round
the circle. "Had the dead chief no living brothers? Or was
this son the chief?"
"No," I replied. "That is, he had one
living brother who became the chief when the elder brother died."
The old men muttered: such omens were matters
for chiefs and elders, not for youngsters; no good could come of going
behind a chief's back; clearly Horatio was not a man who knew things.
"Yes, he was," I insisted, shooing a chicken
away from my beer. "In our country the son is next to the father.
The dead chief's younger brother had become the great chief. He had
also married his elder brother's widow only about a month after the
funeral."
"He did well," the old man beamed and announced
to the others, "I told you that if we knew more about Europeans, we
would
find they really were very like us. In our country also," he added
to me, "the younger brother marries the elder brother's widow and
becomes
the father of his children. Now, if your uncle, who married your
widowed mother, is your father's full brother, then he will be a real
father
to you. Did Hamlet's father and uncle have one mother?"
His question barely penetrated my mind;
I was too upset and thrown too far off balance by having one of the most
important elements of Hamlet knocked straight out of the
picture.
Rather uncertainly I said that I thought they had the same mother, but
I wasn't sure--the story didn't say. The old man told me severely
that these genealogical details made all the difference and that when I
got home I must ask the elders about it. He shouted out the door
to one of his younger wives to bring his goatskin bag.
Determined to save what I could of the mother
motif, I took a deep breath and began again. "The son Hamlet was
very sad because his mother had married again so quickly. There was
no need for her to do so, and it is our custom for a widow not to go to
her next husband until she has mourned for two years."
"Two years is too long," objected the wife,
who had appeared with the old man's battered goatskin bag. "Who will
hoe your farms for you while you have no husband?"
"Hamlet," I retorted without thinking, "was
old enough to hoe his mother's farms himself. There was no need for
her to remarry." No one looked convinced. I gave up.
"His mother and the great chief told Hamlet not to be sad, for the great
chief himself would be a father to Hamlet. Furthermore, Hamlet would
be the next chief: therefore he must stay to learn the things of a
chief.
Hamlet agreed to remain, and all the rest went off to drink beer."
While I paused, perplexed at how to render
Hamlet's disgusted soliloquy to an audience convinced that Claudius and
Gertrude had behaved in the best possible manner, one of the younger men
asked me who had married the other wives of the dead chief.
"He had no other wives," I told him.
"But a chief must have many wives! How
else can he brew beer and prepare food for all his guests?"
I said firmly that in our country even chiefs
had only one wife, that they had servants to do their work, and that
they
paid them from tax money.
It was better, they returned, for a chief to
have many wives and sons who would help him hoe his farms and feed his
people; then everyone loved the chief who gave much and took
nothing--taxes
were a bad thing.
I agreed with the last comment, but for the
rest fell back on their favorite way of fobbing off my questions: "That
is the way it is done, so that is how we do it."
I decided to skip the soliloquy. Even
if Claudius was here thought quite right to marry his brother's widow,
there remained the poison motif, and I knew they would disapprove of
fratricide.
More hopefully I resumed, "that night Hamlet kept watch with the three
who had seen his dead father. The dead chief again appeared, and
although the others were afraid, Hamlet followed his dead father off to
one side. When they were alone, Hamlet's dead father spoke."
"Omen's can't talk!" The old man was
emphatic.
"Hamlet's dead father wasn't an omen.
Seeing him might have been an omen, but he was not." My audience
looked as confused as I sounded. "It was Hamlet's dead father.
It was a thing we call a 'ghost'." I had to use the English word, for
unlike
many of the neighboring tribes, these people didn't believe in the
survival
after death of any individuating part of the personality.
"What is a 'ghost?' an omen?"
"No, a 'ghost' is someone who is dead but who
walks around and can talk, and people can hear him and see him but not
touch him."
They objected, "One can touch zombis."
"No, no! It was not a dead body the witches
had animated to sacrifice and eat. No one else made Hamlet's dead
father walk. He did it himself."
"Dead men can't walk," protested my audience
as one man.
I was quite willing to compromise, "A 'ghost'
is the dead man's shadow."
But again they objected. "Dead men cast
no shadows."
"They do in my country," I snapped.
The old man quelled the babble of disbelief
that arose immediately and told me with that insincere, but courteous,
agreement one extends to the fancies of the young, ignorant, and
superstitious,
"No doubt in your country the dead can also walk without being zombis."
From the depth of his bag he produced a withered fragment of kola nut,
bit off one end to show it wasn't poisoned, and handed me the rest as a
peace offering.
"Anyhow," I resumed, "Hamlet's dead father
said that his own brother, the one who became chief, had poisoned him.
He wanted Hamlet to avenge him. Hamlet believed this in his heart,
for he did not like his father's brother." I took another swallow
of beer. "In the country of the great chief, living in the same
homestead,
for it was a very large one, was an important elder who was often with
the chief to advise and help him. His name was Polonius. Hamlet
was courting his daughter, but her father and her brother...[I cast
hastily
about for some tribal analogy] warned her not to let Hamlet visit her
when
she was alone on her farm, for he would be a great chief and so could
not
marry her."
"Why not?" asked the wife, who had settled
down on the edge of the old man's chair. he frowned at her for asking
stupid questions and growled, "They lived in the same homestead."
"That was not the reason," I informed them.
"Polonius was a stranger who lived in the homestead because he helped
the
chief, not because he was a relative."
"Then why couldn't Hamlet marry her?"
"He could have," I explained, "but Polonius
didn't think he would. After all, Hamlet was a man of great importance
who ought to marry a chief's daughter, for in his country a man could
have
only one wife. Polonius was afraid that if Hamlet made love to his
daughter, then no one else would give a high price for her."
"That might be true," remarked one of the shrewder
elders, "but a chief's son would give his mistress's father enough
presents
and patronage to more than make up the difference. Polonius sounds
like a fool to me."
"Many people think he was," I agreed.
"Meanwhile Polonius sent his son Laertes off to Paris to learn the
things
of that country, for it was the homestead of a very great chief indeed.
Because he was afraid that Laertes might waste a lot of money on beer
and
women and gambling, or get into trouble by fighting, he sent one of his
servants to Paris secretly, to spy out what Laertes was doing. One
day Hamlet came upon Polonius's daughter Ophelia. He behaved so oddly
he frightened her. Indeed"--I was fumbling for words to express the
dubious quality of Hamlet's madness--"the chief and many others had also
noticed that when Hamlet talked one could understand the words but not
what they meant. Many people thought that he had become mad."
My audience suddenly became much more attentive. "The great chief
wanted to know what was wrong with Hamlet, so he sent for two of
Hamlet's
age mates [school friends would have taken long explanation] to talk to
Hamlet and find out what troubled his heart. Hamlet, seeing that
they had been bribed by the chief to betray him, told them nothing.
Polonius, however, insisted that Hamlet was mad because he had been
forbidden
to see Ophelia, whom he loved."
"Why," inquired a bewildered voice, "should
anyone bewitch Hamlet on that account?"
"Bewitch him?"
"Yes, only witchcraft can make anyone mad,
unless, of course, one sees the beings that lurk in the forest."
I stopped being a storyteller, took out my
notebook and demanded to be told more about these two causes of
madness.
Even while they spoke and I jotted notes, I tried to calculate the
effect
of this new factor on the plot. Hamlet had not been exposed to the
beings that lurk in the forest. Only his relatives in the male line
could bewitch him. Barring relatives not mentioned by Shakespeare,
it had to be Claudius who was attempting to harm him. And, of course,
it was.
For the moment, I staved off questions by saying
that the great chief also refused to believe that hamlet was mad for the
love of Ophelia and nothing else. "He was sure that something much
more important was troubling Hamlet's heart."
"Now Hamlet's age mates," I continued, "had
brought with them a famous storyteller. Hamlet decided to have this
man tell the chief and all his homestead a story about a man who had
poisoned
his brother because he desired his brother's wife and wished to be chief
himself. Hamlet was sure the great chief could not hear the story
without making a sign if he was indeed guilty, and then he would
discover
whether his dead father had told him the truth.
The old man interrupted, with deep cunning,
"Why should a father lie to his son?" he asked.
I hedged: "Hamlet wasn't sure that it really
was his father." It was impossible to say anything, in that language,
about devil-inspired visions.
"You mean," he said, "it actually was an omen,
and he knew witches sometimes send false ones. Hamlet was a fool
not to go to one skilled in reading omens and divining the truth in the
first place. A man-who-sees-the-truth could have told him how his
father died, if he really had been poisoned, and if there was witchcraft
in it; then Hamlet could have called the elders to settle the matter."
The shrewd elder ventured to disagree.
"Because his father's brother was a great chief, one-who-sees-the-truth
might therefore have been afraid to tell it. I think it was for that
reason that a friend of Hamlet's father--a witch and an elder--sent an
omen so his friend's son would know. Was the omen true?"
"Yes," I said, abandoning ghosts and the devil;
a witch-sent omen it would have to be. "It was true, for when the
storyteller was telling his tale before all the homestead, the great
chief
rose in fear. Afraid that hamlet knew his secret he planned to have
him killed."
The stage set of the next bit presented some
difficulties of translation. I began cautiously." "The great chief
told Hamlet's mother to find out from her son what he knew. But because
a woman's children are always first in her heart, he had the important
elder Polonius hide behind a cloth that hung against the wall of
hamlet's
mother's sleeping hut. Hamlet started to scold his mother for what
she had done."
There was a shocked murmur from everyone.
A man should never scold his mother.
"She called out in fear, and Polonius moved
behind the cloth. Shouting, "A rat!" Hamlet took his machete and
slashed through the cloth." I paused for dramatic effect. "He
had killed Polonius!"
The old men looked at each other in supreme
disgust. "That Polonius truly was a fool and a man who knew nothing!
What child would not know enough to shout, 'It's me!'" With a pang,
I remembered that these people are ardent hunters, always armed with
bow,
arrow, and machete; at the first rustle in the grass an arrow is aimed
and ready, and the hunter shouts "Game!" If no human voice answers
immediately, the arrow speeds on its way. Like a good hunter Hamlet
shouted, "A rat!"
I rushed in to save Polonius's reputation.
"Polonius did speak. Hamlet heard him. But he thought it was
the chief and wished to kill him to avenge his father. He had meant
to kill him earlier that evening..." I broke down, unable to
describe to these pagans, who had no belief in individual afterlife, the
difference between dying at one's prayers and dying "unhousell'd,
disappointed,
unaneled."
This time I had shocked my audience seriously.
"For a man to raise his hand against his father's brother and the one
who
has become his father--that is a terrible thing. The elders ought
to let such a man be bewitched."
I nibbled at my kola nut in some perplexity,
then pointed out that after all the man had killed Hamlet's father.
"No," pronounced the old man, speaking less
to me than to the young men sitting behind the elders. "If your
father's
brother has killed your father, you must appeal to your father's age
mates;
they may avenge him. No man may use violence against his senior
relatives." Another thought struck him. "But if his father's
brother had indeed been wicked enough to bewitch Hamlet and make him mad
that would be a good story indeed, for it would be his fault that
Hamlet,
being mad, no longer had any sense and thus was ready to kill his
father's
brother."
There was a murmur of applause, Hamlet
was again a good story to them, but it no longer seemed quite the same
story to me. As I thought over the coming complications of plot and
motive, I lost courage and decided to skim over dangerous ground
quickly.
"The great chief," I went on, "was not sorry
that Hamlet had killed Polonius. It gave him a reason to send Hamlet
away, with his two treacherous age mates, with letters to a chief of a
far country, saying that Hamlet should be killed. But Hamlet changed
the writing on their papers, so that the chief killed his age mates
instead."
I encountered a reproachful glare from one of the men whom I had told
undetectable
forgery was not merely immoral but beyond human skill. I looked the
other way.
"Before Hamlet could return, Laertes came back
for his father's funeral. The great chief told him Hamlet had killed
Polonius. Laertes swore to kill Hamlet because of this, and because
his sister Ophelia, hearing her father had been killed by the man she
loved,
went mad and drowned in the river."
"Have you already forgotten what we told you?"
The old man was reproachful, "One cannot take vengeance on a madman;
Hamlet
killed Polonius in his madness. As for the girl, she not only went
mad, she was drowned. Only witches can make people drown. Water
itself can't hurt anything. It is merely something one drinks and
bathes in."
I began to get cross. "If you don't like
the story, I'll stop."
The old man made soothing noises and himself
poured me some more beer. "You tell the story well, and we are
listening.
But it is clear that the elders of your country have never told you what
the story really means. No, don't interrupt! We believe you
when you say your marriage customs are different, or your clothes and
weapons.
but people are the same everywhere; therefore, there are always witches
and it is we, the elders, who know how witches work. We told you
it was the great chief who wished to kill Hamlet, and now your own words
have proved us right. Who were Ophelia's male relatives?"
"There were only her father and her brother."
Hamlet was clearly out of my hands.
"There must have been many more; this also
you must ask of your elders when you get back to your country. From what
you tell us, since Polonius was dead, it must have been Laertes who
killed
Ophelia, although I do not see the reason for it."
We had emptied one pot of beer, and the old
men argued the point with slightly tipsy interest. Finally one of
them demanded of me, "What did the servant of Polonius say on his
return?"
With difficulty I recollected Reynaldo and
his mission. "I don't think he did return before Polonius was killed."
"Listen," said the elder, "and I will tell
you how it was and how your story will go, then you may tell me if I am
right. Polonius knew his son would get into trouble, and so he did.
He had many fines to pay for fighting, and debts from gambling. But
he had only two ways of getting money quickly. One was to marry off
his sister at once, but it is difficult to find a man who will marry a
woman desired by the son of a chief. For if the chief's heir commits
adultery with your wife, what can you do? Only a fool calls a case
against a man who will someday be his judge. Therefore Laertes had
to take the second way: he killed his sister by witchcraft, drowning her
so he could secretly sell her body to the witches."
I raised an objection. "They found her
body and buried it. Indeed Laertes jumped into the grave to see his
sister once more--so, you see, the body was truly there. Hamlet,
who had just come back, jumped in after him."
"What did I tell you?" The elder appealed
to the others. "Laertes was up to no good with his sister's body.
Hamlet prevented him, because the chief's heir, like a chief, does not
wish any other man to grow rich and powerful. Laertes would be angry,
because he would have killed his sister without benefit to himself.
In our country he would try to kill Hamlet for that reason. Is this
not what happened?"
"More or less," I admitted. "When the
great chief found Hamlet was still alive, he encouraged Laertes to try
to kill hamlet and arranged a fight with machetes between them. In
the fight both the young men were wounded to death. Hamlet's mother
drank the poisoned beer that the chief meant for Hamlet in case he won
the fight. When he saw his mother die of poison, Hamlet, dying, managed
to kill his father's brother with his machete."
"You see, I was right!" exclaimed the elder.
"That was a very good story," added the old
man, " and you told it with very few mistakes. There was just one
more error, at the very end. The poison Hamlet's mother drank was
obviously meant for the survivor of the fight, whichever it was.
If Laertes had won, the great chief would have poisoned him, for no one
would know that he arranged Hamlet's death. Then, too, he need not
fear Laertes' witchcraft; it takes a strong heart to kill one's only
sister
by witchcraft."
"Sometime," concluded the old man, gathering
his ragged toga about him, "you must tell us some more stories of your
country. We, who are elders, will instruct you in their true meaning,
so that when you return to your own land your elders will see that you
have not been sitting in the bush, but among those who know things and
who have taught you wisdom."