[.ca] Hamlet's Dresser: A Memoir (ISBN 0684852705)

From Amazon.com:
Of what do we write when we write of love? In Bob Smith's case, it is Shakespeare's poems and plays. Hamlet's Dresser braids two strands of his life into a modest, heartbreaking, and soaringly affirmative memoir. A bookish, lonely child, his crush on the Bard's work became love when, as an alienated teenager, he joined the American Shakespeare Theatre as Hamlet's dresser. In time he would dress other characters, perform in small roles, become a coach and a watcher, and eventually lead senior citizens' groups in Shakespeare-appreciation courses. But this ecstatic marriage was haunted by his sad, contorted childhood: an increasingly dysfunctional mother, a distant father, and Caroline, his profoundly retarded sister. "Art," he writes, "can be a brutal thing, not just some decoration placed over the truth, but the truth itself." Smith's prose is bluntly ineffable: a rundown theatre looks like "Miss Havisham's bride cake" and the first teacher who didn't like him was "Miss Shumaker. It was right after I stopped pleasing everybody." The book is thick with short passages from Shakespeare. Placed in perfect context, they leap from the pages, abrupt as panoramic pop-ups. --H. O'Billovich

Why did he ditch his sister?:
The single most powerful element in this very readable story is the relationship between the author and his beloved but severely retarded younger sister. Inexplicably, he allowed half his life to go by without visiting her, for which he felt guilty, and justifiably so. He doesn't offer a reason for his neglect. Are we supposed to assume it? Are we supposed to play amateur armchair shrink and say something empty like "it was too painful for him"? In an otherwise fairly well written book, I really can't get over the fact of his betrayal of the person he loved so, his complete abandonment of the love of his life, without any explanation. I began reading the BOMC selection "Genius" right after this one. It also begins with Shakespeare. Both books class Shakespeare as the Babe Ruth of literature. Don't we all? Isn't that a cliche by now? And yet, while much of Shakespeare's work is excellent, hasn't it occurred to anyone that some of the comedies are far short of excellent? Some of the comedies are worse than I Love Lucy reruns. Excuse me for being an iconoclast, but the emperor isn't always clothed. And while we're iconoclasting at Shakespeare's expense, does it not occur to anyone that both Othello and King Lear are as lurid and in a way disgusting as the HBO series Oz, which by the way receives poor ratings from an ex con critic who claims that Oz is not at all realistic, and is way over the top. Othello and King Lear are sickening stories. They go beyond sadness, beyond tragedy, into a perversion of the psyche that I can do without. A man strangling his faithful wife to death as a result of believing a liar, and a vain and foolish man ending up tortured by his own children. This is sick stuff. Sorry, it's too heavy and too sick for me. The perversion and cruelty in these plays goes far beyond Hamlet and Macbeth, which are much happier by comparison, dealing only in murder. As for The Merchant of Venice, which Bob Smith defends as being a reflection of the times rather than simply admitting that it is viciously racist (and was at one time titled The Jew of Venice), it must be admitted that if filthy racism is to be defended by the excuse that it represents its time and place, and therefore Shakespeare was not a racist, well then, you could almost make a case that Hitler was not a racist either, for the same reason. As FDR said, if a Goebbels emerged on the streets of New York City in the 1930s or early 40s, NYC would have run as red with Jewish blood as Berlin. So isn't it about time we stopped reflecting the prejudices of our time and place, and isn't it time we assigned responsibility to the individual for what he chose to write? Shakespeare must be admitted to have been a vicious racist himself. In that, he joins Chaucer, who was even worse, and of course was another "reflection of his time". I resent the deification of Shakespeare, not because Merchant of Venice was racist, not because King Lear and Othello are disgusting, but because frankly I believe that more than a few of his comedies were as bad as the worst of the Beatle songs, and they weren't all brilliant. Merchant, Lear, and Othello are all a lot better than some of those stupid comedies, and classing everything Shakespeare wrote as superior just nullifies one's credibility. You're giving the "right" answer, but is it really the right answer? Why not admit that he wrote a few "hits" that were pretty awful. Okay, the girl is dressed as a guy again, okay this character is pretending to be someone else, alright already, seen that one already under another name. Actually some of them would have fit in pretty well with I Love Lucy.

Needed more Shakespeare:
I picked up this memoir based on a blurb that mentioned the author's connection to the Stratford, Connecticut Shakespeare festival. Having had a single opportunity to attend this (Christopher Walken's Hamlet!) event, I was hoping for some insight and history of the event. Instead, I found out far too much about Smith's problems; of his difficulties coping with a family that was overwhelmed by having a severely disabled child in the home (Smith's sister), and very little about Stratford's festival. Well, shame on me for buying into a blurb, but I still found the book very disappointing. Focusing basically on his youth, and his later contributions to the community by running Shakespeare reading groups at senior centers in NYC, HAMLET'S DRESSER, needs far more Shakespeare. When Shakespeare does appear, the book comes to life. The joy senior citizens get from the reading groups, Smith's fascination with Shakespeare that led to a life immersed in his works, and especially in the sections where Smith discusses the actors he had an opportunity to work with is where this book truly becomes interesting. Katherine Hepburn, June Havoc, and Bert Lahr all make memorable appearances. The chapter where Smith discusses going on tour with Lahr gives the reader a wonderful glimpse into what it is like to work with a talented yet irascible actor on the road with all of its joys and pitfalls. Sadly, there are not enough of these journeys in this book. I feel some empathy for Smith's trials and tribulations, yet they didn't make for interesting reading. The troubled tales of his youth seem better suited to a therapist's office as opposed to a memoir. They truly pale in comparison to his tales of the theater, which when shared with the reader make for some fine storytelling. If the focus had stayed with Shakespeare and the theater I feel this could have been a wonderful book, as it stands it is a flawed a bit boring overall.

BEST SHAKESPEARE WORK NOT BY SHAKESPEARE:
So little is known about William Shakespeare that we can only truly formulate the meaning of his plays through the filter of our own experiences. Even books that purport to be "biographies" can only offer their best guesses as to his life since all we basically have is his will and testament and the hearsay of other playwrights such as Ben Jonson. So I've never been one to read books about him or literary criticism after suffering through Harold Bloom's unenlightening Shakespeare. That is, until I came to this work. I was blown away by Hamlet's Dresser by Bob Smith. Bob Smith's early life was pretty unhappy. His parents show very little caring for him. His sister was born handicapped and is the equivalent of a walking vegetable. He is an outcast at school because the other kids make fun of his sister and want nothing to do with him. He has no idea what to do with his life. Bob has all the pressure points that would drive him to suicide or at least a bitterness towards life. One thing saves him though. The discovery of Shakepeare's plays. In them, Smith finds a world that he can inhabit beyond the reach of his unhappy home life. His life reaches another turning point when a friend invites him to work at a Shakespeare festival where he becomes the dresser of the actor playing Hamlet. He later becomes a writer, a director, and teacher of Shakespeare to the masses without any formal degree. This was a very passionate and honest account of one man's life. It was inspiring to me how he overcame so much loneliness and negativity to make his life amount to something. The account of his life is also interspersed with his present job, which consists of teaching Shakespeare to senior citizens. There is something very melancholy and mortal in that act because he remembers all those who have died in the course of his teaching. Not to say that this memoir is morbid. Far from it. I mean it more in the sense that it shows humility. Much like Shakespeare, Smith recognizes that Death settles all things and is one adventure we all share, so let go of the fear of it. It is a very Renaissance concept. I would recommend this work to any Shakespeare fan and any fan of good reading. I would also recommend Al Pacino's film Looking for Richard which this book reminded me of. In the sense that both are trying to bring a living Shakespeare to our age.

A real treat for anyone who grew up loving the theatre.:
This was the most enjoyable book I've read in quite some time. A rare and wonderfully detailed account of one young man's coming of age in Stratford, Connecticut. Not your standard sexual awakening tales. No, this is a story of a spiritual awakening - a discovered kinship with Shakespeare and the Muses of comedy and tragedy. Bob Smith tells his story with compassion, wit and elegance. He doesn't shy away from the troubling memories of dealing with a mentally impaired sibling, nor the profound impact she had on his life and the lives of his parents. What the reader is left with is a sure sense of the authors humanity. His Shakespeare classes for senior citizens - the special relationships and bonds that he has nutured with lovers of The Bard - those famous and those seemingly forgotten about. Bob Smith's story is inspiring on many levels. However, the greatest gift this book gives us is a beautiful articulation of the awe and wonder that can only be found in the thaetre.

A Life Intensely Lived:
Just how interesting could a memoir by someone whose (real!) name is Bob Smith ever be? As it turns out, Bob Smith is a fascinating man with a talent not often celebrated, but that is absolutely central to art: he is a supremely-gifted appreciator. He loves painting and music and, centrally, Shakespeare. He never went to college, never wanted to learn to drive. Art museums and live theater are his ideas of heaven. He's done directing, acting, painting. But basically he loves being an audience, and feels it is his job to teach others how, as audience, to participate fully in Shakespeare's art. For him the Bard is redeeming, and is just the tonic for those that have to peel life down to its essentials - the old and the dying. This is not a book that will teach you anything much about Shakespeare. True, chunks of his language punctuate the text, but Bob Smith is trying to talk about his own life. He tells his story in parallel threads - his present and his growing up. There is a terrific sadness coupled with an almost manic energy and feeling running through this narrative. Paintings and Shakespeare started out as ways for Smith to escape the pain in his life, but quickly came to provide their own meaning, interest, and, primarily, joy. Two or three centuries ago it was not uncommon for a person to have but one book - the Bible. He or she would read it daily, sometimes just for comfort, sometimes in bafflement, sometimes with understanding. It was vast and lasted a lifetime; its images and language permeated waking and sleeping. I don't doubt that Bob Smith reads the paper, devours an occasional trashy novel, and watches some television. But without his having explicitly said so, he leaves the definite impression that his central, focused, daily meditations are in the texts of Shakespeare. He has read them all many times, and still he finds and works new veins of meaning. What a glorious way to live, and how difficult, in the Age of Information.