Hamlet

Hamlet

1. Complexity of character – makes him more like a real person/relatable

2. Words = central to his characterisation

   • Used as weapons + defence
   • Used as deception
   • Root flaw – make him indecisive

3. Bad relationship with women

   • Verbally abuses Ophelia
     • Sexual innuendos
     • Calls her a "prude" tells her to become nun
     • "Get thee to a nunnery"
       • "Nunnery" was common Elizabethan slang for "brothel"
       • Ironic + paradoxical because of the double entendre – blaming her of being a prude and too promiscuous/sexual
       • Sexist comment
   • Disgusted by Gertrude's sexuality
     • Jealous of Claudius? Oedipus Complex
       • VIEW OF CLAUDIUS: "Oh villain, villain, oh damned smiling villain"
     • REBECCA SMITH: "Claudius shares same conception as Hamlet of Gertrude as an object."
   • "Frailty, thy name is woman!"
     • View of women as deceptive/weak – misogyny theme
   • Women have no voice in this play
     • ELAINE SHOWALTER: "Ophelia is deprived of thought, sexuality and language."
   • ELAINE SHOWALTER: "Hamlet's disgust at the feminine passivity in himself is translated into violent revulsion against women and brutal behaviour towards Ophelia."

4. Hates deception but pretends to be mad + plots against Claudius

   • "The play's thing thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King"
     • Using deception of a play (play within play) to get truth

5. Extreme melancholy about dad, state of Denmark and family in general

   • Contemplates suicide and own death
     • ACT 1 SCENE 2 – "Oh this too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into dew"
     • SOLILOQUY: "To be or not to be – that is the question: / Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles"
       • Poses the question on the most metaphysical level – not only life + death, but existence itself
       • Unsure of himself + his thoughts waver between 2 extremes: life and death
       • Wonders whether he should live and suffer hardships that his life offers him, or die to end suffering – life is synonymous to suffering

6. Action vs Inaction

   • "What a piece of work is a man! [...] in apprehension, how like a God! / Yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"
     • Doesn't see the point in life + doesn't see himself as a man
     • Shows motif of obsession with physicality of death
     • "Apprehension" = thought – thinking is what men are good at
   • WILLIAM HAZLITT: "Hamlet [...] whose powers of action have been eaten up by thought."
   • SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE: "Hamlet is obliged to act in the spur of the moment."
   • Teaches us what it is to be human – making big decisions

7. Obsessive thinking

   • Obsessively contemplates every action – this is contradicted by killing of Polonius and Rosencrantz + Guillernstern
     • Feels no remorse + impulsive actions
   • "There is nothing neither good or bad, but thinking makes it so"

8. Fortinbras

   • Antithesis of Hamlet: a man of action. The Fortinbras subplot also illustrates how Elsinore is so involved with internal affairs that Denmark falls. In the end, none of the conspiracies or vengefulness was worth it, because now Fortinbras is king.

9. 1600 written

10. Highly analytic; idealist in a world where it is throwned upon, Hamlet put through an extreme position

11. Ppl can't speak with their mind because of the watchiveness in play – 6 soliloquies symbolic

12. Ghosts do not appear – to believe? would you kill somebody? Known as delayer in revenge tragedy, if it was written today it wouldn't be seen as delay ; pretends he's mad – when play is performed you realise he knows exactly what he's doing; he has become the danger

13. 7 soliloquies

    • 1st (Act 1 S2)
    • 2nd (Act 1 S5)
    • 3rd (Act 2 S2)
    • 4th (Act 3 S1)
    • 5th (Act 3 S2)
    • 6th (Act 3 S3)
    • 7th (Act 4 S4)