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Act 3: Misogyny & Metatheatricality Staging the Play’s Central Questions

Act 3: Misogyny & Metatheatricality Staging the Play’s Central Questions. Scene 1: Hamlet confronts Ophelia “I was the more deceived” (3.1.121) – is Hamlet’s perspective really to be trusted? Scene 2: The play-within-a-play Hamlet confronts (?)Claudius

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Act 3: Misogyny & Metatheatricality Staging the Play’s Central Questions

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  1. Act 3: Misogyny & MetatheatricalityStaging the Play’s Central Questions • Scene 1: Hamlet confronts Ophelia “I was the more deceived” (3.1.121) – is Hamlet’s perspective really to be trusted? • Scene 2: The play-within-a-play Hamlet confronts (?)Claudius “To hold, as ’twere a mirror up to nature” (3.2.20-21) – what is the value of plays, acting and art? • Scene 3: Hamlet’s missed opportunity for revenge “O, this is hire and salary, not revenge” (3.3.79) – what is revenge and why can’t Hamlet act? • Scene 4: Hamlet confronts Gertrude – the closet scene “I essentially am not in madness/But mad in craft”(3.4.176-7) – is Hamlet acting or is he really mad?

  2. Meta-theatricality • Hamlet’s use of the play-within-a-play • Art: metaphors of doubling, mirroring of parts, and the focus on playing acting, action, show • “Seems madam, I know not seems” (Act One) but he uses a play to discover Claudius’s guilt • Hamlet refers to remembering his father’s words “while memory holds a seat/in this distracted globe” (1.5. 95-6) • Hamlet’s speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire—why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man …. quintessence of dust (2.2.297-306) Watch Mel Gibson in Zefferelli’s 1990 version: http://youtu.be/NUmvOAGCJIc This speech begins Almereyda’s version (2000) Above: The Reconstructed Globe Theatre Below: Detail of the Globe’s Ceiling

  3. Misogyny in Hamlet – How far is this Shakespeare’s view of Women? • Act 1, Claudius to Hamlet: “'tis unmanly grief” (1.2.94) • Act 1, Hamlet: “frailty, thy name is woman!” (1.2.146) • Act 1, Ghost to Hamlet: “my most seeming virtuous queen” (1.5.46) • Act 1, Ghost to Hamlet: “So lust, though to a radiant angel linked/ will sate itself in a celestial bed/ and prey on garbage” (1.5.55-7) • Hamlet’s soliloquy in Act Two: Why, what an ass am I! Ay sure. This is most brave,That I, the son of a dear father murdered,Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,A scullion! (2.2.571-576) • Act 3: Polonius: ….. with devotion’s visage/ and pious action we do sugar o’er the devil himself. Claudius: (aside): How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience. /The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plast’ring art/ Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it/Than is my deed to my most painted word. O heavy burden. (3.1.48-55) At low points men compare themselves to women Whore = prostitute, or a promiscuous woman Drab = prostitute Scullion = kitchen maid Harlot = prostitute, or a promiscuous woman

  4. Act 3, Scene 1. Why does Hamlet treat Ophelia so badly? “Are you honest?” (3.3.104) Honest = 1. truthful 2. chasteDoes Hamlet know he is being spied on? Does this knowledge influence his treatment of Ophelia? Why is he blaming Ophelia for his mother’s incestuous behaviour?What do you think of his assessment of women?Who is “the more deceived” in this scene?Watch and compare the scenes http://youtu.be/3xc5h3JvZ-w http://youtu.be/7PcUQyXNYe0 http://youtu.be/fO-wxlavDQI

  5. Act 3, Scene 1: “Get Thee to a Nunnery”Nunnery = Convent or Brothel: Obedient Virgin/Wanton Whore? Hamlet: Where’s your father? Ophelia: At home, my lord. Hamlet: Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in’s his own house. Farewell. …. Hamlet: …. Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell. .... I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. (3.1. 131-150) Insert Boyfriend here Do women behave as they do because they are innately bad or because they are following a social script?

  6. Act 3, Scene 2: ThePlay-within-a-play • “a dozen or sixteen lines” – Hamlet adds both extra lines and his own vocal interpretations to The Murder of Gonzago. • In Hamlet’s speech to the players Shakespeare coins the word “groundling” • Hamlet is out to determine Claudius’s guilt – in a heightened state, hyped up and tense. • Every word he speaks seems to almost betray his purpose. He tells Claudius the play is called “the Mousetrap” • Hamlet’s wordplay with Ophelia before the • play opens is full of sexual innuendo: “Lady, may I lie in your lap?” “Did you think I meant country matters” “I think nothing my lord” …. “No-thing” • Much of the play and his commentary on it focuses, like Hamlet himself, on the fickle nature of women Ophelia: Tis brief, my lord Hamlet: As woman’s love. (3.2.143-144) • WATCH: The play within a play in Zefferelli’s 1990 version http://youtu.be/KOGjVUa_iIE • Watch: Hamlet’s play, “The Mousetrap,” as a film/video in Michael Almereyda’s 2000 version http://youtu.be/khFAUmze6HE

  7. Act 3: Hamlet’s Delay in Revenge “Thy Almost Blunted Purpose” 3.3: HAMLET comes across the guilty Claudius trying to pray Now might I do it pat. Now he is a-praying. And now I’ll do ’t. And so he goes to heaven. And so am I revenged.—That would be scanned. A villain kills my father, and, for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven. O, this is hire and salary, not revenge. 3.4: Hamlet kills Polonius thinking he is Claudius GERTRUDE: what a rash and bloody deed is this! HAMLET: A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king, and marry with his brother. GERTRUDE: As kill a king! HAMLET: Ay, lady, 'twas my word [Lifts up the arras and discovers POLONIUS] Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;  

  8. The influence of Freud’s Oedipal interpretation in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) Hamlet is able to do anything – except take vengeance on the man who did away with his father and took that father's place with his mother, the man who shows him the repressed wishes of his own childhood realized. Thus the loathing which should drive him on to revenge is replaced in him by self-reproaches, by scruples of conscience, which remind him that he himself is literally no better than the sinner whom he is to punish. Here I have translated into conscious terms what was bound to remain unconscious in Hamlet's mind.... The distaste for sexuality expressed by Hamlet in his conversation with Ophelia fits in very well with this

  9. The Closet Scene: Sexual Immaturity or Sexual Jealousy? GERTRUDE: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended HAMLET: Mother, you have my father much offended ……. HAMLET: Such an act, That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows As false as dicers' oaths …… HAMLET: Ha! Have you eyes? You cannot call it love; for at your age The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment Would step from this to this? Lawrence Olivier, 1948 HAMLET: Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty

  10. Feminist Revisioning and Rewriting of Shakespeare: Margaret Atwood’s short story “Gertrude Talks Back” (1992)Her imagined response from Gertrude’s point of view deflates Hamlet’s view of his father as perfect and god-like Yes, I've seen those pictures, thank you very much.   I know your father was handsomer than Claudius. High brow, aquiline nose and so on, looked great in uniform. But handsome isn't everything, especially in a man, and far be it from me to speak ill of the dead, but I think it’s about time I pointed out to you that your dad just wasn't a whole lot of fun. Noble. Sure, I grant you.  But Claudius, well, he likes a drink now and then. He appreciates a decent meal. He enjoys a laugh, know what I mean? You don't always have to be tiptoeing around because of some holier-than-thou principle or something.   ….. No darling, I am not mad at you. But I must say you're an awful prig sometimes. Just like your Dad. The Flesh, he'd say. You'd think it was dog dirt. You can excuse that in a young person, they are always so intolerant, but in someone his age it was getting, well, very hard to live with and that's the understatement of the year.   Some days I think it would have been better for both of us if you hadn't been an only child. But you realize who you have to thank for that. You have no idea what I used to put up with. And every time I felt like a little, you know, just to warm up my aging bones, it was like I'd suggested murder.  Oh!  You think what? You think Claudius murdered your Dad? Well, no wonder you've been so rude to him at the dinner table!   If I'd known that, I could have put you straight in no time flat.   It wasn't Claudius, darling.  It was me.

  11. Feminist revisionings and rewritings of Shakespeare:Margaret Atwood’s short story “Gertrude Talks Back” (1992) • READ Atwood’s story http://sites.khas.edu.tr/bukalemun/chl_number7-2-2-2.html • Read “Rewriting Canonical Portrayals of Women: Margaret Atwood's Gertrude Talks Back” by PilarCuder Dominguez —–—— http://www.lsj.org/web/literature/atwood-gertrude.php • Listen to Atwood’s story http://thetalkingpeoplepodcast.blogspot.com/2008/03/stories-gertrude-talks-back-by-margaret.html Dominguez: Post-colonial theorist Edward Said reminds us that "[t]he power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them" (xiii). Here as in other respects, the political agendas of feminism and post-colonialism overlap; both aim at challenging the canon and at inscribing the experiences of the marginal subject (female and/or post-colonial).

  12. “Who’s There?”: Hero? Madman? Who is This Player? • Mad or Antic disposition? • Flouting surveillance/Exposing corruption • But Hamlet’s revenge will be regicide. • Who is playing whom? • What will be the price of Hamlet’s obedience? • What is revenge? • “The spirit that I have seen/ may be a devil, and the devil has power/ to assume a pleasing shape” (2.2.587-589) • “For there is nothing/ either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (2.2.247-8) • “My uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived … I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw” (2.2.371-4) • Double speak  Multiple interpretations

  13. READ: More Resources on Feminist Criticism & Slut shaming • http://jezebel.com/slut-shaming-has-been-tossed-around-so-much-its-los-1478093672 • http://www.academia.edu/3378024/Misogyny_Thy_Name_is_Hamlet_Politics_of_Misogyny_Male_Domination_and_Female_Resistance_in_William_Shakespeares_Hamlet • http://womensglib.wordpress.com/2010/06/12/on-shakespeares-ophelia/ • Ophelia, The Evolution http://youtu.be/3xc5h3JvZ-w USEFUL web resource for close reading: • http://poetry.rapgenius.com/albums/William-shakespeare/Hamlet • http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/hamletscenes.html

  14. More Web resources: Hamlet in Gertrude’s closet and the women in the play • Hawke's Hamlet - 3.4 Presentation http://youtu.be/IW3BVNICzmE • Branaugh's Hamlet - Part 3 (Act 3, 4 & 5) - Change http://youtu.be/VvsTcOvr-wk • [Gibson] “A Bloody Deed - Hamlet (7/10) Movie CLIP (1990) HD” http://youtu.be/a38HZFbhB-M • [David Tennant] Doran Hamlet 3.4 http://youtu.be/ZXvQVMX6vJo • Ophelia, Gertrude, and Regicide - Hamlet II: Crash Course Literature http://youtu.be/nDCohlKUufs

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