Digital Docent Dispatch from Diane Shages and Caitlin

Well, Docents, the printed and emailed Docent Dispatch is the last as we have known it.

Now that Caitlin has set up this Docent Blog and has trained at least some of us in accessing it (and is willing to teach others), the Docent Board has decided it is time to GO GREEN! Many of us will miss opening our mailboxes to find the Dispatch and holding it in our hands. However, there are some positives to this: information will be more current than has often been the case in the past, and we don’t need to worry about losing track of the paper Dispatch because the contents will always be available on the Blog.

Further, JC will continue to send out the monthly Calendar with other tidbits of useful information. For the Docents who do not have computers, we hope this will keep you in the loop. Also, we will continue to call those Docents who are not on the computer with important information which might not make the Calendar.

The next training session will take place in January. Stay tuned for details.

August Film Inservice: Was Hamlet Criminally Responsible? by Sarah Rosenbaum

Hamlet killed Polonius. Was it murder, self defense, manslaughter or something else? But before there can be a trial to resolve this question, there must first be a preliminary trial to determine whether Hamlet is sane (the legal term is criminally responsible) and able to stand trial or mad (so unfit to be tried.) In this first trial, Hamlet’s Attorney attempts to prove him mad and the Prosecutor attempts to prove him sane.

This is the set up for a mock trial held in the Supreme Court building in 1994 with Justice Anthony Kennedy presiding. The whole thing was part of a fund raiser for the Shakespeare Theatre; the participants and attendees were mostly lawyers. Most of the audience were not identified, but the docents enjoyed a game of "Spot the Celebrity." Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a member of the jury. Hamlet was present at the defense table, dressed in the traditional Elizabethan black suit; he stood and sat as requested, but never spoke.

The two lead attorneys were Abbe Lowell and Theodore Olson. They stuck close to the facts as given in the source document; i.e. Hamlet. A side shot showed that at least one of them was using the Folger edition. The key issue was whether Hamlet was feigning madness: it was pointed out that he acted mad only in the presence of people that he didn’t trust. A psychiatrist was called for each side. The one for the defense diagnosed Bipolar Disorder. Key symptoms in this diagnosis were hearing voices (no one else hears the ghost speak), a feeling of grandiosity and special mission (but as the opposition pointed out, he was in fact the prince.), mood changes and finally a habit of word play, puns, etc. In the "to be or not to be" soliloquy, was he contemplating suicide or meditating on the human condition? The parallel was drawn between him and Ophelia; both had a father murdered by someone too highly placed to bring to justice. She clearly went mad.

Was his response madness or cunning cloaked in madness?

The jury verdict was that Hamlet was sane; they also recommended that the prosecutor consider prosecuting him for the destruction of Ophelia. The judge remanded him to pages of our Literary Canon.

Chest in Founders' Room

One of our curators recently spoke to a reader who was surprised to learn that the chest in the Founders’ Room once belonged to Francis Bacon...

Unfortunately this is not true.

The initials on the left panel look like FB, but they’re more likely TB (based on the style of T in the inscription along the top). And even if they were FB, there’s no evidence FB was Francis Bacon except that a previous owner wanted it to be Bacon.

Please take a chance to make sure this change (cleared up in 1991) has been made to the Docent Handbook at the desk!