Hamlet

1
Hamlet

• Day One
• ENGL 305
• Dr. Fike

2
Business

• Your outlines are due today.
• I will hand back your midterm exams at the end of
  todays class. Please remind me.

3
Looking Forward

• Upcoming assignments heavy lifting.
• Full researched draft
• Final draft
• Cover letter
• Conference abstract
• Final examination on our last 3 plays
• Timing I wish that I could give you more time
  however, revision requires the schedule that I
  have mapped out on the calendar.

4
Outline

• Day One
• Background Aristotle, Denmark
• The kings opening speech
• The ghost
• Hamlets uncertainty
• Day Two
• Three of Hamlets soliloquies 1.2.129ff.,
  2.2.549ff., and 3.1.56ff.
• Group activity.
• Day Three
• Psychology Elizabethan, Freudian, Jungian
• Hamlet as scourge and minister
• The ending and closure
• If time allows Ophelias mad songs, Gertrudes
  mermaid speech. For the latter, see Fike, A
  Jungian Study of Shakespeare The Visionary
  Mode, chapter 5.

5
Cards

• Hand out cards.
• Please return the cards at the end of the hour.

6
Bedford Companion

• Problems gt characters ? unhappy ending
• Aristotles Poetics
• Fear and pity ? catharsis (purgation) see 101.
• Tragedy is an imitation of an action.
• A whole has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
• Reversal (peripety) and discovery (anagnorisis,
  an-ag-nawr-uh-sis).
• Hamartia some great error (105) an error in
  action i.e., a mistake rather thana fatal
  weakness of character (88).
• How might these characteristics apply to Hamlet?

7
Bedford 90

• It is worth pointing out that a philosophers
  reflections on the emotional effect of Greek
  tragedy may be of limited relevance to a
  sixteenth-century English audiences experience
  of Shakespeares efforts in that form, and also
  to our own.
• Another model Sidneys Defense in Bedford
  99-100
• delight ? teach ? moral improvement.
• Comedyfollytragedytyranny

8
Why hasnt Hamlet become king by succession?

• 1, 5.2.65 357-58 The office is elective
  (11th century Danish court).
• 2, 3.4.99ff. His position is that Claudius
  stole the throne he is a usurper.
• Claudius is a legitimate king, but Hamlet thought
  that he would succeed his father by election if
  not by primogeniture.

9
The Kings Opening Speech

• 1.2.1ff.
• How is the speech organized?
• Lines 5-14 What is he saying?
• Does how he says it bother you? Does this reveal
  anything about him? (See next slide.)
• How do tone and style change at line 17?
• What policy does he propose? Is he successful?
  See 3, 2.2.60ff.
• Cf. busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.
• What qualities do Claudius and Hamlet have in
  common?
• 3, 5.2.60ff. mighty opposites
• Why was it wrong in Shakespeares day to marry
  your brothers widow?

10
Stephen Booths Comment

• The simple but contorted statement, therefore
  our . . . Sister . . . Have we . . . Taken to
  wife, takes Claudius more than six lines to say
  it is plastered together with a succession of
  subordinate unnatural unions made smooth by
  rhythm, alliteration, assonance, and syntactical
  balance. . . . What he says is overly orderly.
  The rhythms and rhetoric by which he connects any
  contraries, moral or otherwise, are too smooth.
  Look at the complex phonetic equation that gives
  a sound of decorousness to the moral indecorum of
  With mirth in funeral and with dirge in
  marriage. Claudius uses syntactical and
  rhetorical devices for equation by balanceas one
  would a particularly heavy and greasy cosmeticto
  smooth over any inconsistencies whatsoever. Even
  his incidental diction is of joining
  jointress, disjoint, Colleaguèd (I.ii.9,
  20, 21). The excessively lubricated rhetoric by
  which Claudius makes unnatural connections
  between moral contraries is as gross and sweaty
  as the incestuous marriage itself. The audience
  has double and contrary responses to Claudius,
  the unifier of contraries.

11
The Point

• So heres a new king who is excessively concerned
  with creating the appearance of propriety. Right?

12
This heavy-headed revel (1.4.17)

• The king doth wake tonight and takes his rouse
  carouses,
• Keeps wassail carousal, and the swaggering
  upspring wild German dance reels dances
• And as he drains his drafts of Rhenish down,
• The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out
• The triumph of his pledge his feat in draining
  the wine in a single draft. 1.4.8-12
• (Notes borrowed from Bevingtons anthology.)

13
The Ghost

• http//faculty.winthrop.edu/fikem/Courses/ENGL203
  05/30520Hamlet20Chart20Handout.doc
• Parts of the next section of this presentation
  reflect insights in Sister Miriam Josephs
  Discerning the Ghost in Hamlet (PMLA 76 1961
  493-502).

14
Who or what is the ghost?

• 4 Is it a delusion? See 1.1.27.
• 5 Has it returned for the sort of reasons that
  one would expect? See 1.1.134ff.
• 6 Is it an evil spirit (a devil or damned
  soul)? See 1.4.40-44 and 2.2.599ff.
• 7 What does the ghost say about himself? See
  1.5.10ff. (Suggested answers appear on the next
  slide.)

15
What the ghost says about himself

• He is the ghost of Hamlets father.
• He is enduring temporary punishment in Purgatory
  for his sins in life
• Foul crimes, line 13
• Imperfections, line 80
• He is a saved soul, but he is in Purgatory
  because he died in his sleep without the three
  sacraments (line 77)
• Unhouseled communion
• Disappointed confession/penance
• Unaneled extreme unction/last rites

16
What is the ghosts moral character?

• Taint not thy mind nor let thy soul contrive /
  Against thy mother aught (lines 86-87).
• Cf. 3.4.117 O, step between her and her
  fighting soul!
• Nuke em all, and let God sort em out?
  Hardly.

17
Does Hamlet believe the ghost?

• 8 Initially, maybe. See 1.5.142. St. Patrick,
  as the note says, is the keeper of Purgatory and
  patron saint of all blunders and confusion.
• Later, no. What seems certain about the ghost at
  night does not seem so certain in daylight.
  Hamlet wants more than spectral evidence.
• 9 For the root of his uncertainty, see
  2.2.599-604.
• See also Browne (next slide).

18
More on the Ghost

• those apparitions and ghosts of departed
  persons are not the wandering souls of men, but
  the unquiet walks of Devils, prompting and
  suggesting us unto mischief, blood and villainy,
  instilling and stealing into our hearts that the
  blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves
  but wander solicitous of the affairs of the
  world. --Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici

19
Biblical Material

• Leviticus 19.31 Do not turn to mediums or
  spiritists in another translation wizards do
  not seek them out to be defiled by them. I am the
  LORD your God.
• Leviticus 20.6 As for the person who turns to
  mediums and to spiritists wizards, to play the
  harlot after them, I will also set My face
  against that person and will cut him off from
  among his people.
• Leviticus 20.27 A man or woman who is a medium
  or spiritist wizard among you must be put to
  death. You are to stone them their blood will be
  on their own heads.

20
POINT

• There is a theological context for Hamlets
  hesitation.
• Hamlet does not kill Claudius right away because
  of his uncertainty about the kings guilt.
  Whos there? (1.1.1) even sets this up to be a
  play about uncertainty, the difficulty of knowing.

21
Hamlet must look elsewhere for proof

• Ghost Inconclusive
• The play within the play in 3.2
• Hamlet initially claims that hell believe the
  ghost because of the kings reaction (10,
  3.2.284-85).
• But Hamlets uncertainty is unfounded the
  playlet delivers a DEATH THREAT the player king
  is killed by his NEPHEW, not his brother.
• Therefore, calling for lights proves only that
  Hamlet has scared his uncle, not that the king
  killed his brother.
• Therefore, Hamlet needs more proof 11,
  3.3.36ff., esp. lines 36-38 53-56 (see next
  slide).

22
Another Possiblity Claudiuss Failed Attempt To
Pray

• 11, 3.3.36ff. Claudius admits his guilt, but
  Hamlet does not hear him (too far away), much
  less KILL him (thinks Claudius would go to heaven
  rather than hell).
• Line 56 May one be pardoned and retain th
  offense? Forgiveness necessitates confession.
• Hamlet hesitates because of the Christian context
  of his actions (lines 80ff.) therefore, he is
  not a conventional revenge figure.

23
The Closet Scene 3.4

• Hamlet believes that Claudius is a murderer, and
  he says so to his mother. She sees her soul as
  being marked with black and grainèd spots (line
  92), but the detail may not indicate that she is
  complicit in the murder.
• Therefore, their conversation does not provide
  the evidence that he needs.
• 12, 4.5.17-20 She feels guiltybut about what?
  Maybe just incest. Her guilt, therefore, does
  not necessarily mean that she knows about the
  murder.

24
Cards

• Reminder to turn your cards back in.
• Summary on next slide.

25
Summary

• Succession the kingship is elective.
• The king is sensitive to appearances that is
  why he addresses what is on everyones mind, then
  turns their attention to foreign affairs.
• The ghost is Hamlets fathers spirit from
  Purgatory a saved soul, not a delusion, demon,
  or damned soul.
• Hamlets major problem is uncertainty
• The ghost, the playlet, and the closet scene do
  not suffice as proof of the kings guilt.
• Claudiuss attempt to pray is the sort of
  evidence that Hamlet needs, but he does not hear
  it. END