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Title: Hamlet Notes
Description: Notes on William Shakespeare's Hamlet - made for Cambridge Pre U English Lit but useful for all studies of Shakespeare - be it English language or literature or Drama Contains context, setting, major themes, characterisation, analysis of the soliloquies and different productions - including textual and critical quotes
Description: Notes on William Shakespeare's Hamlet - made for Cambridge Pre U English Lit but useful for all studies of Shakespeare - be it English language or literature or Drama Contains context, setting, major themes, characterisation, analysis of the soliloquies and different productions - including textual and critical quotes
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HAMLET
Carla Cox
Context
• Classical definition of tragedy: Aristotle – “A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is
serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in appropriate and pleasurable
language;
...
Fated to
some great suffering, but they struggle against this
...
Usually
involve features such as a hesitating revenger, ghost, complex plotting, suffering heroine,
madness (real and feigned), play within the play, characters of noble birth
• “Hamlet’s situation is ambiguous, since he pursues not only a personal vendetta … which
Elizabethan commentators condemned but also official justice – which they tended to
approve” Robert Watson
• “The audience are entertained because they are asked to see, feel and understand a little more
about the hidden springs of action” Christian Alexander
• ‘Hamlet’ is innovative and challenging in the way of the Renaissance – examines and
questions the beliefs, assumptions and politics upon which Elizabethan society was
founded
• ‘Renaissance humanism’ generated a new interest in human experience, and also an
enormous optimism about the potential scope of human understanding
» Hamlet’s famous speech in Act II, “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in
reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in
action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god—the beauty of the world,
the paragon of animals!” is directly based upon one of the major texts of the
Italian humanists, Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man
» For the humanists, the purpose of cultivating reason was to lead to a better
understanding of how to act -‐‑ coordination of action and understanding could lead
to benefits for society
• In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a more sceptical strain of humanism developed,
stressing the limitations of human understanding
...
Hamlet is faced with
the difficult task of correcting an injustice that he can never have sufficient
knowledge of
...
The world of other people is a world of appearances, and Hamlet is, fundamentally,
a play about the difficulty of living in that world
• The preoccupation with decay in ‘Hamlet’ can be accredited to a fin de siècle feeling that
there there was ‘something rotten’ in the state of dying Tudor England – John Guy
...
Human society
occupied a middle place in this chain, with angels and God above and plants and animals
-‐‑ 2 -‐‑
•
•
•
•
below
...
Sovereign ruled by Divine Right
...
Therefore, killing a king and usurping of a throne was a gross
violation of order, which would inevitably be punished by God
...
However, there was
also poverty, suffering, homelessness and hunger at the same time – Graham Holderness
called it “a world of violence, disorder and fragmentation”
...
Traditional readings of Shakespeare’s plays are often focused around
the idea of imperfect men who revolt against the order of the universes, but at the end
moral order triumphs and harmony is re-‐‑established
...
Criticise own monarch therefore, using disguise of
foreign ruler
-‐‑ 3 -‐‑
Setting
Denmark and Elsinore
-‐‑ Hamlet grapples with his position in a corrupt court, where surveillance intrudes on
individual’s lives, and there is an apparent lack of justice: “Denmark is a prison” (2
...
g
...
o Scene 1 – sense of urgency and panic in first lines
...
Stichomythia (“who’s there” and “Barnardo?” / “He”)
furthers this – tension conveyed in language
...
Horatio states that the ghost “bodes some strange eruption to our state” and
Barnardo links “this portentous figure” with threat of invasion
...
Extended metaphor of
warfare (“usurp’st” and “warlike form” Preparations for invasion from young
Fortinbras (“Of unimproved mettle hot and full”) too shows war
...
g
...
-‐‑ Denmark was a Protestant nation at the time Shakespeare wrote the play – Hamlet
idealised as Protestant child, goes to school in Wittenberg (where Martin Luther went) and
sceptical of the ghost’s ‘purgatory’
-‐‑ Denmark’s royal court is high-‐‑powered and manipulative
...
Hamlet’s behaviour is a liability to his parents and therefore
to the court and the state – they have a political interest in bringing him under control –
“madness in great ones must not unwatched go”
-‐‑ Motifs of spying and deception are helped by setting of Elsinore – castle is claustrophobic
and guards spy (Hytner version, Gregory Doran RSC production use CCTV)
-‐‑ Importance of appearance vs reality (“one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; / At least
I’m sure it may be so in Denmark”)
-‐‑ Positive and negative connotations of light and dark – e
...
“this majestical roof fretted with
golden fire” vs darkness of first scene and encounter with ghost
Graveyard
-‐‑ Constant brooding about death and humanity comes to a head in graveyard scene – after
philosophical contemplation of mortality, he literally looks death in the face
-‐‑ Highlights commonness of death and the vanity of life
...
Mature acceptance of human fate, rather than
individualism earlier in play (“O cursèd spite / that ever I was born to set it right”), and his
dwelling on suicide
-‐‑ Hamlet is revealed to be older than audience thought
...
More mature too – could be mistake on SS part, or has literally
aged
...
In act 1 the court is where
Hamlet is told “not to ever with they vailèd lids / Seek for thy noble father in the dust” and told
that “your father lost a father / That father lost, lost his” – no allowance to dwell on the dead
...
Happiness
disrupted on learning of Ophelia’s death
-‐‑ 4 -‐‑
Themes
Revenge
-‐‑ Francis Bacon called revenge as “a kind of wild justice” and even later in 1773 Dr Johnson
called revenge “an act of passion; vengeance is justice”
...
Fittingly, they are
seen as completely destructive and thus it shows how in Tudor England private acts of
revenge “presented both a theoretical and literal challenge to Elizabeth I’s legislative bodies”
(Hannah Lavery)
-‐‑ Church did not accept revenge – they thought it wouldn’t be accepted under any
circumstances no matter what the original deed was: “it is repugnant on theological
grounds, since Christian orthodoxy posits a world ordered by Divine Providence, in which
revenge is a sin and a blasphemy, endangering the soul of the revenger
...
Although Elizabethan society loved
to see revenge in plays, it was considered sinful and condemned in practice
-‐‑ Ancient Roman religion of Fame prized family honour above all things -‐‑ man’s
reputation lives after him so a son’s duty was to seek revenge
...
g
...
Originated from plays of Lucius Seneca (4BC – 65AD) and
the Senecan play set the basis for Elizabethan revenge tragedy – five part
structure: Exposition (usually by ghost), Anticipation, Confrontation, Partial
Execution, Completion
...
Hence Hamlet is torn between a ghost who may be his father and obedience
to his God -‐‑ “Revenge is tragic because (like ambition) it divides the protagonist against
himself in incompatible roles” – R N Watson
-‐‑ Play ultimately highlights the inadequacy of revenge –
-‐‑ Hamlet says he is “bound to hear” what the ghost has to say yet this automatically
presents the major problem – the ghost responds “so art though to revenge, when thou
shalt hear”
...
“If thou didst even thy dear father love -‐‑ / Revenge his foul and
most unnatural murder”
...
Later reason
for Hamlet to not kill Claudius when he is apparently at prayer
-‐‑ 5 -‐‑
-‐‑ “I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records … And thy commandment all alone shall live” ironic,
not true? Compare to his soliloquies where he struggles to obey this
‘commandment’ – his nature is “philosophical, reflective, prone to questioning and
therefore aware of the larger moral implications of any act” (Mary Salter)
-‐‑ He is a man “bereft of the sense of purpose” and “no act but suicide is rational” yet “the
command of a great act – revenge” means “a sick soul is commanded to heal, to cleanse, to
create harmony
...
Shows how murder
isn’t simple, Laertes reaction is more typical of revenge tragedy
Women
-‐‑ In Elizabethan era women were categorised and classified by their sexuality –
virgins, wives, widows and whores
-‐‑ It was still an acceptable idea that all women, since Eve in the Bible, were
responsible for humanity’s fall into evil – think about Hamlet’s constant repetition
of his mother being stained etc
...
Hamlet is exhibited with good dispositions, and struggling with
untoward circumstances
...
From the start he is resentful of Claudius (“A little
more than kin, and less than kind” but the fact this statement is an aside is significant – he can’t
express this directly) and his mother’s suicide is already driving him to consider suicide – “that
the Everlasting had not fixed / His canon ‘gaist self-‐‑slaughter”
...
This is
highlighted in his focus on incest and her (e
...
“a father killed, a mother stained”) – “the text never
states or implies that Gertrude gives or receives the … “reechy kisses” that so obsess … the
imagination of Hamlet and the Ghost” (Rebecca Smith)
-‐‑ His ‘fatal flaw’ (hamartia – Aristotle’s tragedy) is his procrastination but this shows how
humane a character he is
...
“In order to act the part of the revenger, he must become a
bloody villain himself” (John Hunt) but he fundamentally is not this character – he is noble and
an intellect
...
Claudius
• “Machiavelli states that [a king] should seem to have [certain virtues] … a good king must be
a good actor” Jonny Patrick -‐‑ CHARACTER OF CLAUDIUS
Ghost
• “The ambiguity of the ghost is of fundamental importance” – Philip Edwards
• Elizabethan England underwent significant religious change – Henry VII’s move
away from the Catholic Church opposed to Mary Tudor’s later switch back to
Catholicism, then Protestant Elizabeth took the throne
...
Affected how people
saw ghosts
...
If souls were sent to purgatory, they were to work off their sins until allowed into
heaven
...
Protestants did not believe
in purgatory but they did concede that ghosts existed
...
-‐‑ 8 -‐‑
o Thomas Browne (protestant) wrote “I believe … that these apparitions and ghosts
of the departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of
devils, prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood and villainy”
o Therefore, just as Hamlet questions the ghost’s trustworthiness, so would
Shakespeare’s audience
...
Ghosts could haunt sinners and threaten retribution
...
They also served to uphold a
conservative society’s belief that the wishes of ancestors should be honoured
...
A medium somewhere
between life and death and between heaven and hell is something to be reckoned
with and taken seriously
...
The ghost in Hamlet signified more than an interesting
theatrical device to them, it was the presence of a danger that perhaps some
Elizabethans feared they would have to grapple with
...
Shakespeare wants to cleanly and clearly establish in the audience’s mind the
subject of the speech, but it also shows that there will be no working out or self-‐‑
discovery
...
1:2:128 – “O that this too too solid flesh would melt”
Hamlet speaks these lines after enduring the unpleasant scene at Claudius and
Gertrude’s court
...
-‐‑ First impression of Hamlet – shows mix of his character and the polar influences
of thinking and doing
-‐‑ Starts calm but crescendos
...
Overarching framework of the
four hierarchical elemental levels in the play
-‐‑ Highlights his pain that mother’s marriage has impended this on him
-‐‑ “the Everlasting had not fix’d / His canon ‘gainst self-‐‑slaughter!” – religious impact on him,
shows the tensions in his situation
...
“Things rank and gross in nature / Possess it merely” reflect
something rotten in state of Denmark and this pervades Hamlet
-‐‑ “But two months dead!”
-‐‑ “So excellent a king … Hyperion to a satyr” – admiration of father, using to justify hatred
of Claudius
...
(“no more like my father / Than I to Hercules”)
Certainty with which he hates Claudius here emphasizes his procrastination (also
“Heaven and earth!”)
...
“Frailty, thy name is woman!” – anger towards woman
triggered by his anger with Gertrude but also his own “disgust with the feminine
passivity in himself” (Leverez)
...
Similar to after first sighting of the ghost – lack of action resolved
Many of the plays major imagery and themes are introduced here
...
-‐‑ 10 -‐‑
1:5:92 – “O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?”
Having heard the ghost’s testimony, Hamlet is distressed and impassioned
...
-‐‑ “all you host of heaven! O earth … shall I couple hell?” – doesn’t know where to turn for
witness due to enormity of what he has heard
...
His anger is more about her intimate betrayal
-‐‑ “O villain, villain, smiling damnèd villain” and “one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; / At least
I’m sure it may be so in Denmark” – anger with Claudius about his mother and his
inability to return to Wittenberg, rather than predominantly the murder
-‐‑ “The ghost is the spirit of war and symbol of the devil; corrupting Hamlet with his instruction to
kill” – Philip Edwards
-‐‑ “I have sworn’t”
This speech is duplicative, contains much tautology and is fragmented and
confused
...
2:2:501 – “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!”
Hamlet’s mood shifts from self-‐‑loathing to a determination to subdue passion and
follow reason, applying this to the testing of the Ghost and his uncle within the play
...
g
...
Opens as Hamlet usually speaks – contemplative and measured, yet on
realising the player’s passion he speaks like him, trying to act like him (“For Hecuba!
/ What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, / That he should weep for her? What would he do, / Had
he the motive and the cue for passion / That I have?”)
-‐‑ The first half of this soliloquy is highly rhetorical – full of lists, insults and
repetitions of vocabulary (“Bloody, bawdy villain! / Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous,
kindless villain!”) suggesting he is “like a whore” unpacking his heart and channelling
his rage with words
...
And, out of his thoughtfulness and
talking he decides upon the play, something which allows him to confirm his
suspicions
...
Shows one of Hamlet’s major conflicts (life or death) and, coming just after Polonius
and Claudius’s spying, renders their actions cruel and trivial
...
In
3:1 the speech is at the centre of the play and Hamlet has therefore suffered further
betrayals and has more reason to entertain suicidal thoughts
-‐‑ Uses general ‘we’ and ‘us’ and makes no reference to Hamlet’s personal dilemma
-‐‑ Technically not a soliloquy as Ophelia is present and Claudius and Polonius
overhear – shows spying in Denmark, Hamlet’s most vulnerable moment is
infiltrated
-‐‑ “To be, or not to be” – suggest he is simply existing, not living – ‘be’ is an evasive choice
of word
...
Shows how little purpose he feels he has
-‐‑ “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind” – he suffers a lot of mental anguish and his thoughts
(and conscience) are his biggest trouble
-‐‑ “Outrageous fortune” – his destiny has been fated (“O cursèd spite”)
...
Death is to be feared
because of its mystery, and reason will always counsel us to stick with what we
know
-‐‑ “The heart-‐‑ache and the thousand natural shocks / That flesh is heir to” – first recognition of
what he later accepts as “Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust”
– everyone will suffer, pessimistic view but idea that all people are fated to the
same life is central
-‐‑ C
...
Lewis claims that Hamlet does not suffer from a fear of dying, but from a fear of being dead,
of the unknown and the unknowable – “To die, to sleep; / To sleep: perchance to dream”, his
only hope in contemplating suicide is that there is something after death
...
“Pangs of despis’d love” suggests he is heartbroken over Ophelia (compare
to “I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my
-‐‑ 12 -‐‑
-‐‑
-‐‑
-‐‑
-‐‑
-‐‑
sum” and that Polonius ordered that she not “give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet”)
...
“The spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes”
essentially means the insults that the good take from the bad – his predicament
with Claudius, but also that the ghost may be evil
...
He describes death as “the undiscover’d country from whose bourn / No traveller returns” –
suggests lack of authenticity of ghost
...
To be capable of reason means
inevitably to recognise one’s guilt, and both thought and guilt make us fear
punishment in the next life
...
Hamlet’s melancholy and
doubt show through the use of hendiadys, the stress on disease, burdens, pains
and weapons, and the generally jaundiced world view
...
Polonius
has told him that his mother wishes to see him
...
-‐‑ Imagery is similar to in Macbeth – “the very witching hour”
-‐‑ “When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out” – important, same time that he saw
his father
...
This is also watch witches were
said to do – strong witching imagery
...
/ O heart, lose not thy nature” – worry is doing what is unnatural
and behaving like a monster (like Claudius) – Hamlet’s morality is central
...
“Let me be cruel, not unnatural”
-‐‑ “I will speak daggers to her but use none” – his passion juxtaposed against intellectual side,
his tongue is his weapon
-‐‑ 13 -‐‑
-‐‑ Impressionable to the theatrical performance – trying to motivate himself to be the
stage villain
...
Dramatic irony though as the audience knows that Claudius is
struggling to pray
...
” – most decisive utterance in the play
-‐‑ Soliloquies show his logical struggle – disintegration and fragmentation of
language
-‐‑ “now I’ll do’t – and so a goes to heaven” pause significant, hesitancy reflects hesitancy to
kill him
-‐‑ “this is hire and salary, not revenge” – worried about his nature and soul but also about
successfully revenging his father, in an impossible predicament
-‐‑ “full of bread / With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May” – shows how Hamlet
manipulates things do they adhere to his wishes
...
g
...
/ Words without thoughts
never to heaven go
...
-‐‑ Soliloquy is a turning point for Hamlet
-‐‑ The idea that the world is against him is prevalent – “all occasions do inform against me”,
his “dull revenge” has to happen
-‐‑ “What is a man, / If his chief good and market of his time / Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no
more” – beast reoccurring, sees action as important to a worthy life
-‐‑ “God-‐‑like reason” throughout the whole play he is exercising his reason
-‐‑ Monosyllables show his frustration with himself
-‐‑ Calls Fortinbras a “delicate and tender prince” – critics dispute whether he is condemning
himself and admiring Fortinbras or he has realised how ridiculous the quest for
honour is
...
-‐‑ Envies the men who have purpose of going to their graves, if only for “fantasy and trick
of fame”
-‐‑ The grammatically obscure lines also add to the confusion
-‐‑ Negative diction of “puff’d”, “straw” etc and the alliteration of plosives throughout work
against his positive conveying of Fortinbras so it seems he can’t be persuaded of
-‐‑ Trocheic ‘d’ sounds vs fragile “egg-‐‑shell” illustrates his delicateness against Fortinbras,
but also the weakness of their battle and gain
-‐‑ the alleged honour to be gained
-‐‑ NB he once again is not really alone as R&G are still on stage
-‐‑ “to find quarrel in a straw” – this is what King Hamlet did too (conception of what a ruler
should be) but he fell, so not a good thing
-‐‑ “father kill’d, a mother stain’d” – mother still in mind, can’t separate or forget
-‐‑ “My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth” – firstly only thoughts are bloody
...
Kinnear handcuffed at this point – irony as he can’t act
Title: Hamlet Notes
Description: Notes on William Shakespeare's Hamlet - made for Cambridge Pre U English Lit but useful for all studies of Shakespeare - be it English language or literature or Drama Contains context, setting, major themes, characterisation, analysis of the soliloquies and different productions - including textual and critical quotes
Description: Notes on William Shakespeare's Hamlet - made for Cambridge Pre U English Lit but useful for all studies of Shakespeare - be it English language or literature or Drama Contains context, setting, major themes, characterisation, analysis of the soliloquies and different productions - including textual and critical quotes