THE DEEP ONES: "Four Ghosts in Hamlet" by Fritz Leiber

"Four Ghosts in Hamlet" by Fritz Leiber

Discussion begins December 6, 2017

First published in the January 1965 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.



ONLINE VERSIONS

No legal online versions found to date.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?53965

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Masters of the Weird Tale: Fritz Leiber
Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories
The Ghost Light
Ghosts: A Treasury of Chilling Tales Old and New
You're All Alone

MISCELLANY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Leiber
https://cthulhuwho1.com/2010/10/07/fritz-leiber-audio-files-part1-being-intervie...
http://www.marclaidlaw.com/fritz-leiber/
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/uhsc/00021/hsc-00021.html#did
https://cthulhuwho1.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/journal-of-the-h-p-lovecraft-soc...
http://tinyurl.com/y7525mn7

The Ghost Light for me.

Weird. I have several FL anthologies and none contain this story. Just bought the short story edition listed here.

>3 jpi:
The wrong sort of weird.

I will visit the local library this weekend and hope to snag one of the titles listed.

I fear I may have to sit this one out.

I'm lucky enough to have all of the print versions above, but I'll be reading from my Ace You're All Alone paperback, complete with full-color insert for True cigarettes. "True has nothing to hide". :-D

The title looks really tantalizing but no dice with local libraries with this one.

I've got this story in Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories.

Fortunately my local had The Ghost Light on the shelves, so I'll be dipping into that. Unexpectedly this edition has "decorations".

My copy arrived today. Will try and read this over the weekend. Looking forward to it. I've not read much of Leiber. I am teaching a class this semester called, "Famous Monsters in Classic Literature." And we've read two of his stories: "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" (vampire story) and "The Hound" (werewolf story). I enjoyed both of them.

Couldn't resist.

>10 jpi:

We had a pretty lively conversation about "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" here.

Same with "The Hound" here.

Oh, "The Hound" story that we read was from Leiber, not Lovecraft, although they have stories of the same title. Leiber's story involves a mystery werewolf that lives in a city. I say "mystery" because it's unclear whether the creature actually exists or if it is inside the main characters mind.

>12 jpi:

I should have realized - HPL's canine is hardly a werewolf. But the good thing is that now I need to read Leiber's tale!

Most of the students were disappointed with Leiber's story. It came from a collection that I used as one of our text, Otten (ed.), The Literary Werewolf. A number of stories included in that collection left me scratching my head. But I have put together a similar anthology of Mummy stories and I am sure some would question the selections I included in that - I guess that's the advantage of being the editor, I can include whatever I want! :-) With that said I liked Leiber's story, in fact, I did a little investigating, since I did not know much about him, I purchased a number of anthologies of his stories. Unfortunately though, none of them included the story you all are currently reading!

>14 jpi:

Leiber wrote a number of stories over nearly forty years, from (correct me if I'm wrong, fellow Deep Ones!) 1943's "Smoke Ghost" to Our Lady of Darkness in 1977, which explore the idea of the modern city creating new monsters and demons suited to the new age, or perhaps absorbing the angst and stress of the modern city-dweller and reflecting it back, amplified and distorted.

"The Hound" is one of these works, and maybe what Leiber's driving at isn't entirely clear when it's read in isolation.

It's included in his first collection Night's Black Agents. There seem to be plenty of inexpensive paperback copies on AbeBooks (although, it's possible there was a second edition with revised contents. If so, I don't know whether or not "The Hound" was dropped).

>14 jpi:

I have "The Hound" in Horrible Imaginings. I actually prefer head-scratchers! Many of Leiber's stories are simply top-notch, but it can add quite a bit of nuance if you know something about his background, including his theatrical experience and his actor father, his battle with alcoholism, and his relationships. If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend his long "Not Much Disorder and Not So Early Sex: An Autobiographic Essay", which pops up in a couple of volumes.

>15 housefulofpaper:

...which explore the idea of the modern city creating new monsters and demons suited to the new age, or perhaps absorbing the angst and stress of the modern city-dweller and reflecting it back, amplified and distorted.

That's right! Megapolisomancy. That's my favorite Leiber subject. I've said it here before, but Our Lady of Darkness is probably my favorite horror novel and is the culmination of those ideas .

What I require the student to do is do research on the author before we read any of their stories, I do believe it's important for us to know the historical context of the time/writer in order to understand the work. That's what drew me to him I think, his background. Very interesting man. I am not familiar with either of the things you all reference - so more research for me! I still have not read the story yet, hope to get to it tonight.

Leiber takes a more traditional route here with a fairly standard ghost story. What elevates it is the manner in which he vividly evokes the backstage life of the theatrical group. He knows this world inside and out, I think, thanks to his father, Fritz Leiber, Sr., who was a very well-regarded Shakespearean actor. As for the story itself, I think that the Weird factor is well attended to, although the horror component is more spectral than cosmic. Leiber successfully infects the expected "magic" of a theatrical production with ominous expectation, which is paid in full by the end.

I especially liked the paragraph questioning the dubious name of the "Ouija" board. Funny stuff! I've always thought that the logical name would be "OuiNon". Too late now, though! I was thinking that the Ouija board game (or is it a tool?) would have been relatively new in 1965, making it a typically modern plot device for Leiber to use, but it was actually introduced commercially in 1890.

I agree that the backstage theatrical setting is accomplished, and for me the main attraction. I was reminded of our recent read of Reggie Oliver's "The Skins". These two stories persuade me that the expected "magic" of a theatrical production is a fine setting for horror or Weird (I've recently purchased an Oliver collection but have yet to crack it).

I don't think Leiber failed at producing effects of horror, so much as he didn't see that as part of the story he was telling. There was more horror in Oliver's tale, and I found it better for it.

ETA ... "more horror" depending upon one's interpretation of what's going on in Oliver's tale, I'm reminded after revisiting our thread. My interpretation tends toward sentient skins and body horror.

I agree with >18 gwendetenebre: and >19 elenchus:. This is definitely a ghost story as opposed to a horror story, or a “strange” or “weird” tale.

It’s perhaps not quite as traditional a one as it appears, because it explains the haunting (or at least it suggests an explanation) such that the business with the ouija board merely prepares the ground for the “Billy Simpson was/is William Shakespeare” revelation at the end. It doesn’t (as I think would nearly every other ghost or horror story involving a ouija board) necessarily provide a conduit for Shakespeare’s spirit (and all the others) to come to Earth from another plane of existence.

I also felt that it was the theatrical background and the vivid characterisation, and the entirely believable interactions between the characters, that made the story. If I had a minor niggle, it was that Leiber’s psycho-analytic explanations (if that’s the correct term for them) of the dynamics of the group and of individual actions look a little “pat” and over-simplified if not mechanistic. I’ve felt similarly reading other stories of his. Still, I assume that kind of thing would be more readily accepted in 1965.

To more than balance that, you have insightful moments, such as the narrator being self-conscious about his ankles when he has to leave the theatre in costume to search for Guthrie.

As we’ve mentioned Leiber knew all about Shakespearian acting troupes, and about being an alcoholic, so that surely both informed the writing of the story and makes it feel like some kind of disguised autobiography (as much of his later writing did, featuring main characters who were thinly disguised versions of, or avatars of, Leiber).

However, I wonder if an autobiographical passage of Arthur Machen’s didn’t provide the inspiration for “Four Ghosts in Hamlet”. In The London Adventure he recalls an incident from his days as an actor, when the female members of the company were using a ouija board and one of them, who had shown the most interest, and had urged the rest to continue when nothing appeared to be happening, “told me that the second stage had been dreadful...A sense of great horror had come upon her...there had been the feeling of...the presence of a dear friend, who had died suddenly some four years before”. It may or may not be relevant that Machen was with Sir Frank Benson’s company, the actor-manager mentioned by name in Leiber’s story.

When I nominated this story, I had some doubts if people would like it in the Deep Ones context. I agree that's it's not really weird, but it is a great ghost story.

I really enjoyed the depiction of the theatrical life and its vividness and Leiber's knowing depiction of an alcoholic made it memorable.

If there is an element of horror here, I found it to be this: "Don't you find something very poignant in the idea of a mute inglorious Shakespeare spending whole humble lifetimes collecting the necessary stuff for one great dramatic burst?".

Interesting possibility about the Machen passage as inspiration.

As a purely local note, the name "Guthrie" kept creating a double association in my mind. Minnesota's Guthrie theater is named after its creator, William Tyrone Guthrie, a Shakespearean actor.

>20 housefulofpaper:

Very intriguing details about Machen's story and the Sir Frank Benson connection!