Hamlet : An Introduction

1. Hamlet: An Introduction

2. Objectives • Define by example the terms tragedy and tragic hero • Show Hamlet to be an example of Renaissance tragic hero • Identify and discuss the characteristics of this play that mark it as a Shakespearean tragedy • Trace Hamlet’s evolving psychological and emotional state and how his condition is reflected in his soliloquies • Analyze the characters of Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, Polonius, and Ophelia and their relationships to each other • Discuss the techniques Shakespeare uses to convey character and character relationships to his audience • Identify and analyze the use of comic relief • Offer a close reading of Hamlet and support all assertions and interpretations with direct evidence from the text, from authoritative critical knowledge of the genre, or from authoritative criticism of the play

3. Notable Aspects • Genre • Tragedy, specifically a revenge tragedy • Structure • A play in five acts, but the elapsed time span divides the action into three parts • Character • Seven soliloquies articulate the Prince’s state of mind • Even the villain has a conscience • Parents and children, especially fathers and sons • Ideas and Imagery • A ghost evokes more issues about the soul and afterlife than about the supernatural • A garden, graves, make-up, theater/acting/role-playing, and other imagery

4. English Tragedy Usually Involves… • Someone in a high place (ruler, general, noble) whose own flaws and choices feed the downfall or who gets set up by an unscrupulous villain • Ambition is a common tragic impetus in the Renaissance, as is love or a conflict of values (as in Hamlet with revenge) • Tragic protagonists eventually have to recognize their faults and mistakes or the failure of their willful wrongdoing and accept responsibility for it • In most tragedies, there is a point of no return, at which the protagonist is inescapably bound to disaster

5. Perspectives on the Action: Revenge Murder is as old as Cain and Abel. Between brothers, through time, it may be the legacy of primogeniture and the attendant jealousy of younger sons, or it may be the continuation of an infant’s wanting the toy a sibling has. Usually an urge to strike back follows. It points to a deep and violent aspect of the human character—the willingness to take the law into one’s own hands—prompted by an equally deep and destabilizing sense of being wronged. Pain, suffering, and violence keep audiences entranced by the stage or the screen. How many stories and songs share the “I’ve been done wrong” or “You’ll be sorry” motif, one of the primal human themes, as potent as young love, which is often a contributing factor. Hamlet is a tale of two brothers, a crown they both wear, and the woman they both marry. Not surprisingly, those events occur by means of murder, and, consequently, Hamlet also becomes a tale of three sons of slain fathers, each seeking vengeance or restitution.

6. Common Revenge Elements • The discovery of a murder or other wrong • A need to find “who done it,” for that is unknown or secret for a time • A need for justice but the inability to get it because the murderer is in power or closely linked to that power • Derangement or madness on the part of the avenger • A passage of time between discovery of the wrong and the enactment of revenge • A play within a play as part of the elaborate plan for revenge • A pile of bodies at the end • The avenger not surviving his revenge

7. I. Shakespeare and His Times Ideas that characterized the Renaissance of 1500-1650: • Humans had the potential for development. • The idea of medieval Christianity, that this world is a preparation for eternal life, was questioned. Instead, people began to see everyday life as meaningful and an opportunity for noble activity. • This was a time for heroes. The ideal Elizabethan man was a talented courtier, adventurer, fencer, poet, and conversationalist. H was a witty and eloquent gentleman who examined his own nature and the causes of his actions.

8. Marriages were arranged, usually for wealth. • Women had a lower social status than men. • People were concerned over the order of things. They felt there was “a great chain of being.” This concept originated with Plato and expressed the idea that there is a proper order within all things from the tiniest grains of sand to heaven and God. When everything was in its proper position, there was harmony. When the order was broken, everything was upset, and everyone suffered. • People felt that their rulers were God’s agents. To kill a king was a heinous crime; the heavens would show ominous signs when such evil was present.

9. II. Features of Shakespeare’s Character and Theme Development 1. Formal versus informal forms of address • Two forms of second-person address: you (formal) and thou (informal) • Formal used when an inferior was speaking to a superior, when two business colleagues who were not close friends were speaking, or when the speaker wanted to maintain a distance • Informal was more intimate and used among friends, family members, and persons to whom the speaker wanted to imply closeness

10. Act I, Scene ii: Claudius addresses Laertes, inviting him to present his petition to return to France And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you? You told us of some suit. What is’t, Laertes? You cannot speak of reason to the Dane, And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes, That shall not be my offer, not thy asking? As the King shifts from the formal to the familiar, a reader can almost see him rise from the throne, step down from the dais, and place a warm and friendly arm around Laertes’ shoulders.

11. King Claudius: But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son— …How is it that the clouds still hang on you? Queen Gertrude: Good Hamlet, cast thynighted color off, And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. Queen Gertrude: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended.

12. 2. Motifs • The Garden/Serpent • Belief is that Hamlet’s father died after being stung by a snake while napping in his garden, but the Ghost says, “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life / Now wears his crown.” • Allusion to the Garden of Eden—what is it that is the sin for Adam and Eve? How does Hamlet also lose his innocence? • Act I, scene ii: Hamlet says the world is “an unweeded garden / That grows to seed” (ground is cursed, Gen. 3:18) • Ophelia’s flowers • Gravedigger’s reference to his graveyard as a garden and himself to Adam

13. Hamlet’s desire for (and concept of ) Death • Images of disease and decay • Meta-fiction/Meta-drama • Meta-fiction: comments on the very devices of fiction it employs; usually involves irony and is self-reflective • Meta-drama: calls attention to itself as a play or has occasion to comment on its own actions and devices

14. III. Dramatic Conventions and Author’s Techniques • Soliloquy: monologue with the character alone on stage; device used to give the audience insight into the character’s thoughts and emotions • Aside: device used to give the audience insight into the character, who is speaking to himself or directly to the audience; other characters do not hear it • Allusion: indirect reference to another event, person, or work with which the writer assumes the reader is familiar; used to establish character, build theme, and set mood (particularly Greek and Roman mythology, Roman history, and the Bible in Hamlet) • Use of the supernatural • Madness, either real or pretended (popular in Elizabethan drama) • Tragic hero • Conflict (primarily internal in Hamlet’s case)

15. IV. Ghosts, Girlfriends, and Graveyards 1. The Ghost of Hamlet’s father • For Shakespeare’s audience, a matter of great philosophical debate because Protestants did not believe in ghosts, simply an afterlife of heaven or hell from which the soul did not return; some did believe demons could assume the likeness of the dead • Catholics, however, believed in afterlife regions of Limbo and Purgatory, and it might be possible for souls to return to earth while existing in these regions • “I am thy father’s spirit, / Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, / And for the day confined to fast in fires, / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature / Are burnt and purged away” (in Catholic Purgatory… could honestly be Hamlet’s father) • Hamlet and Horatio are being educated in the very-Protestant Wittenberg (1517 – Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation in Wittenberg), which justifies their first thought that the ghost is a demon

16. 2. Ophelia • What role does she play in his madness? Does he really love her? What is the effect of her betrayal? • Why does she apparently go mad? • She is a young girl who has no choice but to obey her father. She will dutifully marry the man he chooses. • She is in love with a man who falls out of favor with everyone, including her father. • She sees Hamlet’s pain but is manipulated by her father and the king to spy on Hamlet. • Consider the effect of what occurs between her father and Hamlet and the effect on her, especially how guilty she may feel for her involvement. • Eve vs. the Virgin Mary • Seducing temptress vs. innocent and virtuous • Hamlet’s anger at his mother directed toward Ophelia (consider how he begins to view all women)

17. 3. Graveyards • Hamlet sees Death as the great equalizer, but the gravediggers complain that class distinctions exist even in death • Groups not eligible for full Christian burial in hallowed ground: unbaptized persons (including babies); suicides; unmarried, pregnant women; and any person who died in a state of mortal sin • Not uncommon to be buried in a preused grave, especially for lower classes • Allows comic relief and allows Hamlet to philosophize about dead and the purpose of earthly strife and his personal feelings for the dead • Treatment of the dead mirrors the statement about the rottenness of Denmark