Heiner Müller
SHAKESPEARE A DIFFERENCE






"... For Carl Schmitt a consciously, due to political grounds, confused and obscure text, begun in the reign of
Elizabeth, completed after the seizure of power of the first Stuart, son of a mother who died under the axe, a Hamlet-figure.

The break-in of time into the play constitutes mythos. Mythos is an aggregate, a machine, to which ever new and different machines can be connected. It transports energy, until its ever-increasing acceleration explodes the realm of culture.

My first hurdle in the reading was Horatio’s disconcerting speech, disconcerting in the mouth of a student of
Wittenberg, during the entrance of the dead on the coast of Helsingoer.

IN THE MOST HIGH AND PALMY STATE OF ROME /
A LITTLE ERE THE MIGHTIEST JULIUS FELL /
THE GRAVES STOOD TENANTLESS AND THE SHEETED DEAD /
DID SQUEAK AND GIBBER IN THE ROMAN STREETS; /
AS STARS WITH TRAINS OF FIRE AND DEWS OF BLOOD, /
DISASTERS IN THE SUN; AND THE MOIST STAR /
UPON WHOSE INFLUENCE NEPTUNE’S EMPIRE STANDS, /
WAS SICK ALMOST TO DOOMSDAY WITH ECLIPSE…

History in the context of nature.Shakespeare’s gaze is the gaze of the epoch. Never before had interests been so nakedly displayed, without the fold of the weave, the costuming of the ideas.

MEN HAVE DIED FROM TIME TO TIME
AND WORMS HAVE EATEN THEM,
BUT NOT FROM LOVE.

The dead have their place on his stage, nature has the right to vote. That means,
in the language of the 19th century, which is still a conference-language between the Oder
and the Elbe; Shakespeare has no philosophy, no sense of history: his Romans are from
London..."