No Safe Spaces: Re-casting Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality in American Theater

Three. Bodies Like Gardens: Classical Tragedy and Comedy in Color

chapter three Bodies Like Gardens Classical Tragedy and Comedy in Color ’Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners. —iago, Othello, i.3 He used to come to the house and ask me to hear him recite. Each time he handed me a volume of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare . . . . He wanted me to sit in front of him, open the book, and follow him as he recited his lines. I did willingly. . . . And as his love for Shakespeare’s plays grew with the years he did not want anything else in the world but to be a Shakespearean actor. —toshio mori, “japanese hamlet” They All Want to Play Hamlet Toshio Mori’s ‹ctional account of a young man’s growing ambition to become a Shakespearean actor would be unremarkable were it not for the fact that the character in question is named Tom Fukunaga, a Japanese American born and raised in California in the 1920s and 1930s. As things turn out in this particular story, years go by without any visible progress being made toward his goal of becoming a classical actor, until ‹nally the now not-so-young man’s family and friends urge him to grow up, forget his dream, and get a real job. Interestingly, however, it is never openly suggested or even indirectly implied that Tom’s ambitions are futile because of his race or ethnicity. Earle Hyman did hear such admoni64 tions in his real-life version of this story with its far more successful outcome . In an interview that appeared as he was about to open on Broadway in the role of Colonel Pickering in Shaw’s Pygmalion, Hyman recalled how as a young actor he adored Shakespeare and walked around with a volume of his work under his arm. An older actress who saw this asked why somebody hadn’t “told that boy that he’s colored?” But, Hyman said, “I couldn’t help it; I loved the plays that weren’t written for me.”1 Carl Sandburg’s poem “They All Want to Play Hamlet” could have been written for people like the young Earle Hyman and Tom Fukunaga: They all want to play Hamlet. They have not exactly seen their fathers killed Nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill, Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart, Not exactly the spinning circles of singing golden spiders, Not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of ›owers—O ›owers, ›owers slung by a dancing girl—in the saddest play the ink‹sh, Shakespeare, ever wrote; Yet they all want to play Hamlet because it is sad like all actors are sad and to stand by an open grave with a joker’s skull in the hand and then to say over slow and say over slow wise, keen, beautiful words masking a heart that’s breaking, breaking, This is something that calls and calls to their blood. They are acting when they talk about it and they know it is acting to be particular about it and yet: They all want to play Hamlet.2 Sandburg’s tribute to Hamlet and the actors who long to play him regards author, play and players alike with the same mixture of admiration and familiar affection. The solemn and the humorous are juxtaposed, as the most melancholy of the ink‹sh’s ill-fated creations is coveted by aspirants even though they cannot really relate to the characters or fully comprehend all aspects of the drama. They are irresistibly drawn by the power of the “wise, keen, beautiful words,” the striking images, and rending emotions; but just as in›uential, Sandburg reminds us, are the popular mystique and the professional prestige that envelope the role. The role’s iconic status carries with it a host of clichéd attitudes and expresBodies Like Gardens • 65 sions, the repetition of which constitutes a performance in itself. Until relatively recently, however, not every person and not every actor could aspire to the onstage and offstage performances described in the poem; to do so has been a sign of cultural privilege. The racial dimensions of this privilege become apparent when a turnof -the-century popular song titled “I Want to Play Hamlet” is considered alongside Sandburg’s poem. The lyrics of the song were written by...