William Shakespeare(1564-1616) in Context

English Renaissance

-used to celebrate the rapid development of art, literature, science, and politics

-but women did not share in the advancements of English culture

-no sudden explosion of culture but a much more gradual transition between the Middle Ages and Shakespeare’s time

Early Modern England(1450-1750)

Elizabeth I (1558-1603)

James I (1603-1625)

-established many of the foundations of our modern culture

Intellectual context

Cosmology

-believed in the astronomy of Ptolemy(an intellectual from Alexandria in the second century A.D.) : the earth stood at the center of the universe, surrounded by nine concentric rings, the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the stars

-In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published his theory of a sun-based solar system, in which the sun stood at the center and the planets revolved around it

-in 1610, Galileo confirmed this theory using his telescope

Universal hierarchy

-a hierarchical view of the universe, the Chain of being

-God existed at the top, followed by the angels, men, women, animals, plants, and rocks

-Elizabeth I, “out of order”

Elements and humors

-four different elements composed everything in the universe: earth, air, water, and fire

-four qualities of being: hot, cold, moist, and dry: air was hot and moist; water was cold and moist; earth was cold and dry; and fire was hot and dry

-human body contained all four elements in the form of humors— blood corresponding to air(hot and moist), phlegm to water(cold and moist), yellow bile to fire(hot and dry) and black bile to earth(cold and dry)

-the humors determined personality and temperament

-If dominated by blood one is light-hearted; by yellow bile(or choler), irritable; by phlegm, dull and kind; if by black bile, melancholy and sad

Religious context

The Reformation

-Before the Reformation, the only Christian church in western Europe was the Catholic, or “universal,” church

-In 1527, the Reformation in England began during the reign of Henry VIII

-In 1533, he divorced his queen, Catherine of Aragon, without the Church’s approval

-In 1534, the Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, naming Henry the “Supreme Head of the Church in england.”

-During Edward VI’s reign, Henry’s son by Jane Seymour(the third wife), (crowned in 1547), the foundation of Anglican Church was established with the adoption of the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549.

-Bloody Mary(Henry’s daughter by Catherine, succeeded the throne in 1553) restored Catholic authority and obedience to Rome, executing protestants in large numbers

-Elizabeth I, Henry’s daughter by Anne Boleyn reigned in relative peace from 1558 to her death in 1603

The Great Bible

-in 1525, William Tyndale translated the Bible in English

-in 1539, the first authorized Bible in english published, the Great Bible later revised as the Bishop’s Bible(Shakespeare was probably familiar with )

-the Geneva Bible

-in 1611, King James Bible appeared

Political context

Elizabeth I

-took a middle road on the religious question

-believed in the divine right of kings

-Parliament reserved some power such as the authority to levy taxes, for itself

-called into question many of the prejudices and practices against women but did nothing to increase the status of women in England

-separated her body politic from her body natural brilliantly negotiating between domestic and foreign factions still remaining unmarried throughout her 45-year reign

James I

- a strong believer of the divine right of kings and their absolute authority

-had problems with the Puritan sect of the House of Common

-James’s court, a site of wealth, luxury, and extravagance, commissioning elaborate feasts, masques, and pageants.

Social context

-divided into two social classes: the aristocrats(or nobility) and everyone else

The status of women

-patriarchic society where men controlled society beginning with the individual family

-the husband was the king of his family

-the practice of primogeniture- a system of inheritance that passed all of a family’s wealth through the first male child

-when married, women lost almost all of their already limited legal rights

In Hamlet, if Gertrude had remained the widow of the king, she would have been excluded from society and confined to a small household where she would be dowager queen.

-did not generally receive an education, could not enter certain professions including acting

-unmarried daughters were expected to be obedient to their fathers above all others, so Ophelia’s action, not a betrayal of Hamlet but a moral and responsible one

Daily life

-began before sunup, ended around sundown or 5 p.m.

-shared a small number of rooms

-midday meal at noon was the primary meal of the day, like dinner of today

-a light repast before an early bedtime

Mortality rates

-high mortality rate, especially among infants

-life expectancy was 41

-bubonic plague frequently raged, major outbreaks 1592-94 and 1603

-plague perceived as God’s punishment

-theatres were closed during these outbreaks

London Life

-the largest city of Europe with a population of about 200,000

- crowded with no sewer system

-crime rate was high

-the cultural, political, and social heart of england, a bustling metropolis

The theatre

-most theatres were located out of the city, usually on the south bank of the Thames River to avoid the strict city regulations

-performances took place during the day(they took laborers away from their jobs)

-Puritans believed they fostered immorality

-censorship from the Office of the Revels: politically, socially sensitive sections were cut prior to each performance

Performance spaces

-usually open-air relying heavily on natural light and good weather

-the rectangular stage extended out into an area called the pit— a circular, uncovered area about 70 feat in diameter which was ringed three covered tiers of seats

-at full capacity they could hold 2,000 to 3,000 people

-the stage had a covered portion called the heaven

- a trapdoor in the middle of stage provided stage graves and allowed ghosts to rise from the earth

- the Globe, the Rose, the Swan, the Blackfriars

Actor and staging

-performances employed no scenery

-theatre companies developed their costumes with great care and expense

-all actors on the stage were men

-young boys whose voices had not reached maturity played female parts

-this influenced cross-dressing

The printing press

-Many of the first editions of Shakespeare’s plays appear in quarto format

-author’s foul papers—a fair copy—a playbook called promptbook—printers used one of these copies to print a play

-Hamlet: the First Quarto(1603), “bad” reconstructed from an actor’s memory and sold to a publisher, significantly different from the other but works well on stage; the Second Quarto(1604), a more literary version; the Folio(1623), a more theatrically viable version

INTRODUCTION TO HAMLET

Shakespeare’s sources

-incorporated into written literature in the second half of the twelfth century when a learned clerk, Saxo Grammaticus, retold it in his Historiae Danicae, also called Historia Danica

-the basic elements of Shakespeare’s plot are there: the killing of the Danish ruler by his brother, the marriage of the brother and the widowed queen, the pretended madness and real craft of the dead king’s son, the son’s evasion of the sanity tests, his voyage to England with letters bearing his death warrant, his alteration of the letters, his return, and the accomplishment of his revenge: He kills his uncle, and he is acclaimed king. Some years later he dies a heroic death in battle against a descendant of an earlier king. Saxo also gives us, under different names, the chief characters of the story as we know it in Shakespeare: Claudius (Fengo), Gertrude (Gerutha), Hamlet (Amlethus), unnamed prototypes of Ophelia, Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, and perhaps even of Horatio.

FranÇois de Belleforest, Histoires Tragique published in 1570

Belleforest includes all these plot elements in his French prose translation, but he gives the characters added depth, thereby providing a starting point for the character development that Shakespeare would complete in his play. Belleforest expands upon Saxo’s reference to the battle with the Norwegian king, thus creating an opportunity for the introduction of the character of young Fortinbras. In addition, Belleforest writes about Amleth’s relationship with a young woman who has loved him since they were children and about the dead king’s “shade”(or ghost) demanding revenge from his living son.

-The next version of the Hamlet story was an English play of the 1580’s based on Belleforest. It was never printed, and the manuscript seems to be irretrievably lost. Since the late eighteenth century it has been attributed more or less confidently to Thomas Kyd (1557?-1595?). Kyd was a scrivener and playwright, the author of the well-known Spanish Tragedy. Kyd’s play on the Hamlet story, if, indeed, it is his, served as the immediate source of Shakespeare’s play and is called by scholars the Ur-Hamlet.

Conclusion:

What, then, was the immediate source of Shakespeare’s Hamlet like? In answering this question it must be acknowledged that we are not on firm ground, but we can give some tentative answers. It was Senecan and, in name at least, a tragedy, though probably today we would call it a melodrama. A Senecan play would be gory, with the stage cluttered with corpses in the final scene. It was by Thomas Kyd. Why else should Nashe have associated “Kid” and “noverint” with the play? Kyd had been a scrivener, and unlike Nashe, he was not a university man. He had made translations from both Italian and French, and he had turned dramatist. He was able to read Belleforest in French. He knew Seneca intimately. In the play the ghost calls for revenge, and the revengeful ghost is found in Seneca (see page lxvii). In Saxo Grammaticus there is no ghost.

Commentaries

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... we see Hamlet still indulging in reflection, and hardly thinking of the task he has just undertaken: he is all dispatch and resolution, as far as words and present intentions are concerned, but all hesitation and irresolution, when called upon to carry his words and intentions into effect; so that, resolving to do everything, he does nothing. He is full of purpose, but void of that quality of mind which accomplishes purpose.

......................

He is a man living in meditation, called upon to act by every motive human and divine, but the great object of his life is defeated by continually resolving to do, yet doing nothing but resolve.

He never wrote anything without design.... (What is his design? To show a man through Hamlet):

A. C. Bradley

1) He gives to Hamlet a temperament which would not develop into melancholy unless under some exceptional strain, but which still involved a danger. In the play we see the danger realized, and find a melancholy quite unlike any that Shakespeare had as yet depicted, because the temperament of Hamlet is quite different(from other characters in his plays).

2) in Hamlet’s moral sensibility there undoubtedly lay a danger. Any great shock that life might inflict on it would be felt with extreme intensity. Such a shock might even produce tragic results. And, in fact, Hamlet deserves the title “tragedy of moral idealism” quite as much as the title “tragedy of reflection.”

3) It was the moral shock of the sudden ghastly disclosure of his mother’s true nature, falling on him when his heart was aching with love, and his body doubtless was weakened by sorrow. And it is essential, however disagreeable, to realize the nature of this (1)shock.

Hamlet’s (2)melancholy was no mere common depression of spirits; and I have no doubt that many readers of the play would understand it better if they read an account of melancholia in a work on mental diseases. If we like to use the word “disease” loosely, Hamlet’s condition may truly be called diseased. No exertion of will could have dispelled it. Even if he had been able at once to do the bidding of the Ghost he would doubtless have still remained for some time under the cloud. It would be absurdly unjust to call Hamlet a study of melancholy, but it contains such a study.

MAYNARD MACK

The World of Hamlet

Hamlet’s World: illusive

1. The first attribute ... is mysteriousness.

- pre-eminently in the interrogative mood

- a world of riddles

2. problematic nature of reality and the relation of reality to appearance

3. the theme of mortality

-conveyed (through) the play’s emphasis on human weakness,

- the instability of human purpose,

- the subjection of humanity to fortune

The ghost’s injunction to act becomes so inextricably bound up for Hamlet with the character of the world in which the action must be taken—its mysteriousness, its baffling appearances, its deep consciousness of infection, frailty, and loss—that he cannot come to terms with either without coming to terms with both.

ROBERT ORNSTEIN

From The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy

the most philosophical of Shakespeare’s plays: Honor, revenge, justice, political order, Stoicism, friendship, familial piety

Many questions are raised in the play but few are answered.

It is Hamlet (not the Romantic critics) who creates the problem of his delay in revenge. Were it not for the self-lacerating soliloquies in which he accuses himself of the grossness and insensitivity which he despises in his mother, the thought that he delays would not occur to us. During a performance of the play we do not feel that Hamlet procrastinates or puts off action.

True to his father’s command, Hamlet engages in fierce struggle against the world without tainting his mind. False to himself and to his father’s advice, Laertes is corrupted and debased by the hunger for vengeance. Although Hamlet commits rash and bloody deeds and comes to take a sardonic delight in flanking policy with policy, he does not, like Vindice, become unfit for life. On the contrary, we feel that he dies just when he is ready to embrace life, when his cloud of melancholy has lifted and he stands before us the very quintessence of dust—beautiful in mind and spirit, noble in thought and feeling, alert, high-spirited, superior to the accidents and passions which corrupt lesser men. We do not feel that Hamlet must die because he has sinned. The inevitability of his death is an aesthetic, not moral, expectation created by the insistent imagery of death, by the mood of the graveyard scene, by Hamlet’s premonitions, and by the finality of Claudius’s triple-stopped treachery.

CAROLYN HEILBRUN

The Character of Hamlet’s Mother

Critics Views on Gertrude:

1. Professor Bradley describes the traditional Gertrude thus:

The Queen was not a bad-hearted woman, not at all the woman to think little of murder. But she had a soft animal nature and was very dull and very shallow. She loved to be happy, like a sheep in the sun, and to do her justice, it pleased her to see others happy, like more sheep in the sun. . . . It was pleasant to sit upon her throne and see smiling faces around her, and foolish and unkind in Hamlet to persist in grieving for his father instead of marrying Ophelia and making everything comfortable. . . . The belief at the bottom of her heart was that the world is a place constructed simply that people may be happy in it in a good-humored sensual fashion.13

2. Granville-Barker is not quite so extreme. Shakespeare, he says,

gives us in Gertrude the woman who does not mature, who clings to her youth and all that belongs to it, whose charm will not change but at last fade and wither; a pretty creature, as we see her, desperately refusing to grow old. . . . She is drawn for us with un-emphatic strokes, and she has but a passive part in the play’s action. She moves throughout in Claudius’ shadow; he holds her as he won her, by the witchcraft of his wit.14

3. Professor Dover Wilson sees Gertrude as more forceful than either of these two critics will admit, but even he finds the Ghost’s unwillingness to shock her with knowledge of his murder to be one of the basic motivations of the play, and he says of her “Gertrude is always hoping for the best.”15

However, Gertrude, if she is lustful, is also intelligent, penetrating, and gifted, with a remarkable talent for concise and pithy speech. In all the play, the person whose language hers most closely resembles is Horatio. “Sweets to the sweet,” she has said at Ophelia’s grave. “Good night sweet prince,” Horatio says at the end. They are neither of them dull, or shallow, or slothful, though one of them is passion’s slave.

Conclusion: Gertrude’s lust was, of course, more important to the plot than we may at first perceive. Charlton Lewis, among others, has shown how Shakespeare kept many of the facts of the plots from which he borrowed without maintaining the structures which explained them. In the original Belleforest story, Gertrude (substituting Shakespeare’s more familiar names) was daughter of the king; to become king, it was necessary to marry her. The elder Hamlet, in marrying Gertrude, ousted Claudius from the throne.18

CATHERINE BELSEY

From The Subject of Tragedy

When Hamlet differentiates revenge from hire and salary (3.3.79), he specifies the gap between vengeance and justice. Revenge is always in excess of justice. Its execution calls for a “stratagem of . . . horror” (Antonio’s Revenge, 2.1.48-50). Titus serves the heads of Chiron and Demetrius to their mother and the Emperor in a pastry coffin. Antonio massacres the innocent Julio and offers him in a dish to his father, after cutting out the tyrant’s tongue. Vindice prepares for the Duke a liaison with the skull of the murdered Gloriana, and the “bony lady” poisons him with a kiss (The Revenger’s Tragedy, 3.5.121). Hippolito holds down his tongue and compels him to witness his wife’s adultery while he dies.

The discourse of revenge reproduces the violence and the excess of its practice: “Look how I smoke in blood, reeking the steam / Of foaming vengeance” (Antonio’s Revenge, 3.5.17-18); “Then will I rent and tear them thus and thus, / Shivering their limbs in pieces with my teeth” (The Spanish Tragedy, 3.13.122-23); “Now could I drink hot blood, / And do such bitter business as the day / Would quake to look on” (Hamlet, 3.2.398-400); “I should ha’ fatted all the region kites / With this slave’s offal” (2.2.590-91). As Claudius assures Laertes, it is in the nature of revenge to “have no bounds” (4.7.128). The rugged Pyrrhus—avenging his father’s death, “roasted in wrath and fire, / And thus o’ersizèd with coagulate gore” (2.2.472-73)—is not, after all, entirely a caricature of the stage revenger.

The orthodox Christian remedy is patience: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Rom. 12:19). The Spanish Tragedy offers two contrasting models, dramatizes, in effect, two antithetical worlds, one authoritarian, divinely ordered and controlled, and the other disordered, unjust, incipiently secular and humanist.

Revenge exists in the margin between justice and crime. An act of injustice on behalf of justice, it deconstructs the antithesis which fixes the meanings of good and evil, right and wrong. Hamlet invokes the conventional polarities in addressing the Ghost, only to abandon them as inadequate or irrelevant:

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,

Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou com’st in such a questionable shape

That I will speak to thee. (1.4.40-44)

The Ghosts in revenge plays consistently resist unequivocal identifications, are always “questionable” in one of the senses of that word. Dead and yet living, visitants at midnight (the marginal hour) from a prison-house which is neither heaven nor hell, visible to some figures on the stage but not to others, and so neither real nor unreal, they inaugurate a course of action which is both mad and sane, correct and criminal. To uphold the law revengers are compelled to break it. The moral uncertainty persists to the end.

SYLVAN BARNET

Hamlet on Stage and Screen

There are, roughly speaking, two ways of cutting: one is to leave out some characters (for example, Fortinbras and everything connected with him, including the talk in 1.1 about the quarrel between Hamlet Senior and Fortinbras’s father); the other is to keep a little of everything, trimming down longer speeches, especially reflective or descriptive ones. Laertes’s advice to Ophelia, Polonius’s advice to Laertes, Hamlet’s disquisition on drunkenness, his musings on Alexander, and his advice to the players may be reduced to tokens. If one follows the first method, omitting, say, material concerning Fortinbras, one eliminates four speaking characters (Fortinbras, Cornelius, Voltemand, the Captain), and one thus focuses more sharply on Hamlet’s problem in a corrupt court. The play becomes more domestic, more personal, and in some ways more manageable, but it necessarily loses its political dimension, for instance in the contrast between the thinking man (Hamlet) and the active man (Fortinbras). It also loses, of course, Shakespeare’s ending, which shows order being restored after violence. If one follows the second method of cutting, thinning down the speeches, no single theme may be utterly neglected, but the play loses so much of its complexity or texture or depth that it may seem to be not much more than a melodrama.

Questions about Hamlet

1. What does Horatio’s doubt of the Ghost’s appearance mean?(1.1.33-36)

It reflects a tendency of the age on the one hand. During the Renaissance period people began to see everything in doubt. The appearance of ghosts was an unusual phenomenon back then. Only a few people could say they saw them and believed in them, and that with no definite proof. The fact that the Ptolemic view of universe, where the earth was the center, was overthrown by Copernicus’ theory of a sun-based solar system in 1543 and that his theory was later confirmed by Galileo using his telescope in 1610, contributes to this tendency. It is natural for an intellect like Horatio, who is a university student along with Hamlet, to doubt about the ghost.

On the other hand, because this is an unusual phenomenon and hard to believe, the fact that Horatio, Hamlet and the soldiers actually saw the ghost doesn’t mean anything at all to the people of Denmark; They wouldn’t believe it, either, until they see it with their own eyes. So if Hamlet says he  has done anything based on what the ghost said, especially killing the king at a critical moment of his kingdom, is as much as lying to the people, a dishonorable act. Here lies the trouble of Hamlet. Even though he himself is sure of Claudius’s crime, he cannot rush to revenge and kill Claudius as he first promised to his father’s ghost. The Ghost in this play is, unlike the deus ex machina in ancient plays, not a being solving a complicated problems but one presenting them.

-Hamlet’s letter to Ophelia(2.2.115-123)

2. Why does the ghost appear in different clothes and what does it mean?

The ghost appears at first fully clad with armors, but later when he again appears in the Queen’s chamber he is wearing ordinary clothes. One way of explaining this is that the former occasion is public in purpose, while the latter  is private. That is to say, the ghost comes at first to give Hamlet an order to save the kingdom, not to revenge his personal griefs. But when he appears at the Queen’s chamber it’s totally private, for a family matter.

3. Why does Claudius want Hamlet to remain in his court as a cousin and son rather than going back to Wittenberg? (1.2)

-to spy on him(what if he joins Fortinbras?)

-for political stability(Claudius emphasizes Hamlet is his son, actually it’s ‘too much in the sun’〔calling him son〕)

- How Claudius is afraid of Hamlet’s power over people of Denmark is shown at   4.3.1-7.

-4.7.16-24)

4. When Hamlet finally accepts Claudius’ wish to stay in Denmark why does Claudius rejoice so much that he celebrates it by firing cannon for each toast of drink even at a moment of imminent foreign invasion?

-it is an actual inauguration celebration because he thinks that he has finally  Hamlet on his side who has a huge support from the people of Denmark. People love Hamlet so much that they even ignore his faults, which means that Hamlet is a real power and therefore a real threat to Claudius. Claudius feels now his kingship is stable with Queen and Hamlet on both sides.

-this also shows that Claudius is a man only interested in the maintenance of his crown, his power, not the safety of his kingdom.

5. What exactly is the Ghost’s order to Hamlet? What does he want Hamlet to do and how?

-Ghost’s order to Hamlet on the surface looks like a plain order to revenge his death, but carefully looked at, it is not an ordinary order to revenge. It is an order to save the kingdom, not just to kill Claudius, and executing this, Hamlet should not taint his mind. At the end of act 1, scene 1, Hamlet says, ‘The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,/ That ever I was born to set it right.’(196-7) This certainly shows that Hamlet thinks his duty is none other but to set right the kingdom which is in disorder because of Claudius’s unnatural act.

6. What does the so-called Reynaldo scene(2.1) mean?

-Shakespeare’s plays are organic in nature; nothing in his plays is superfluous. Every part is thematically related to every other part. So this scene, despite its seeming unrelatedness, provides a clue how Hamlet’s search for truth look like, the truth of what the Ghost has said concerning Claudius. This scene suggests that Hamlet’s search for the certainty of Claudius’s crime will be like Polonius’s search for the truth of his son’s life in Paris; It suggests that Hamlet too will take the ‘carp of truth’ by ‘encompassment and drift of question,’ ‘bait of falsehood,’ or ‘indirections.’

-Certainty is the foundation upon which an important decision must be based.

-It’s hard for Hamlet to be certain about Claudius because he is a villain hiding his crime.

-Claudius also uses this method of ‘indirections’ to get information of Hamlet’s transformation: ‘And can you by no drift of conference/Get from him why he puts on this confusion....?’(3.1.1-4). Actually the whole progress of the play is based upon ‘indirections.’

6-1. What are Hamlet’s indirections then?

-his antic disposition

-the play-within-the-play he puts on

7. Does Hamlet delay as most people think he does, or not?

-Yes and no.

-The indirect way, which Hamlet poses, of gathering evidences that Claudius  is a murderer naturally takes time; Some delay is necessary. Unlike other revenge heroes, who, on hearing who the wrongdoer is, swiftly rush to find ways to revenge, Hamlet doesn’t because he can’t believe his father’s spirit. Even if he believes it, he can’t act on what it has said, because as a responsible prince he can’t kill a king and say he did it because his father’s spirit told him to.

-Seen from the perspective of the action of the play, however, he doesn’t delay at all.

-Hamlet’s ‘transformation’ immediately draws the attention of the whole court.

-The reaction of the whole court to find out the reason for Hamlet’s transformation forms most of the action of the play; Though Hamlet doesn’t take any significant action to revenge, the action of the play goes on quite swiftly to the conclusion.

8. Coleridge said of Hamlet, ‘He is a man living in meditation, called upon to act by every motive human and divine, but the great object of his life is defeated by continually resolving to do, yet doing nothing but resolve. Comment on this.

-Hamlet is meditative and continually resolving to do, even reproaching himself on not doing it, but he is not defeated by it. Rather, he should not do anything until he is certain of Claudius’s crime.

-Compare Hamlet with Laertes, his foil. When Laertes knows that his father Polonius is killed he rushes to the palace with riotous, revolting rabbles without knowing who the killer is. The result is that he becomes a means of Claudius’s to get rid of Hamlet. As a tool for Claudius he shows fury with no moral concern(4.7.125), actively contriving(4.7.138-147) but with no judgement, only consuming desire to revenge. If Hamlet had done as Laertes did, he would have been killed by Claudius, unable to fulfill his promise to his father’s spirit(4.5 and 7) not to mention that the audience wouldn’t like him.

-Once he succeeds in attracting the attention of Claudius, all he should do is watch him carefully. Even if he has a chance to kill Claudius secretly, he shouldn’t do it, because it would taint his mind and, most importantly, to kill Claudius alone would not be enough to restore the order. In short, he should endure the tediousness of not doing it and the humiliation the situation makes him feel; he should wait for ‘more horrid hent’ when he can kill Claudius with impunity. That is what ‘to be’ means: To endure all the ‘slings and arrows’ coming from not doing and living in a kingdom under a murderer as king.

9. Is Claudius an able king?

-He is a bad king even from a political point of view. He seems to be a king handling state affairs in a smooth and convincing manner. He sends his subjects to Norway to settle the imminent invasion of Fortinbras diplomatically. And he rejoices when they come back with the news that Fortinbras will not attack Denmark but asks Claudius ‘to give quiet pass’(2.2.76) through Denamrk on his way to fight Poland. At the news Claudius replies, “It likes us well.”(2.2.80). How can he like it when a foreign army, and that a former enemy, goes through his kingdom. How can he trust Fortinbras so quickly? What if he plays false?

10. Is Hamlet a Renaissance man?

-Yes, he is. He is a comprehensive man like Michael Angelo: He is a courtier, soldier, and scholar.(3.1.154). That Hamlet is a Renaissance man is evident when he asks the players to enact Aeneas’ tale to Dido(2.2.446-). In terms of his attitude toward his duty as a revenger, he is caught between the Classical culture and the Christian one. He is like Pyrrhus just before he kills Priam(2.2.473-178). While he is doing nothing, he reproaches himself, seeing himself from the point of view of a Classical hero: I should ha’ fatted all the region kites/ With this slave’s offal(2.2.575-6).

-Hamlet is a Christian: There’s a design by God in the universe(52.5-11). His belief in the Providence of God: 5.2.215-220)

11. Is Hamlet a misogynistic character?

-He was shocked by her mother’s betrayal of his father. He loved Ophelia(5.1.265-6) but he should abandon her not because he hates her but because he should concentrate on his duty which will rub against her family. His misogynistic speech in 3.1 reflects this shock.

12. Hamlet and Horatio

-Horatio is Hamlet’s confidante, for he is an ideal man in whom passion and judgement is so commingled that he is not a passion’s slave which Hamlet himself is afraid to be. Hamlet is sure to think that poise, the balance of passion and judgement is so important to his revenge. Without passion he cannot act, but without judgement he cannot succeed(3.2.53-74). The Palyer King speech on passion: 3.2.181-190, 206-210)

13. After the play-within-the-paly Hamlet becomes so passionate that he is in danger of losing his judgement. What is the result of losing his temper?

-He says after the play, ‘Now could I drink hot blood....’(3.3.381-2). Hamlet is now so excited as to lose his temper. But he seems to recover his calmness for a moment: ‘Let not ever/ The soul of Nero ....’(3.3.384-390) This calmness can prevent him from killing Claudius who is praying alone but he kills Polonius in his mother’s chamber, losing his temper.

-When Hamlet is at a climax of his passion the Ghost enters and says that he came only ‘to whet thy almost blunted purpose.’(3.4.110-111) Isn’t it strange that the Ghost says Hamlet’s purpose is ‘almost blunted’ at the moment when Hamlet can drink hot blood and he, by mistakenly killing Polonius thinking him to be Claudius, almost killed Claudius if he had been behind the arras instead of Polonius? This certainly shows that the Ghost’s injunction to revenge lies not in killing Claudius at all.

14. In the play-within-the-paly the character who kills the king is not a brother but ‘a nephew to the king’. What does this mean?

-Unlike Hamlet’s assertion that he could catch the conscience of the king with the play, it must have been construed by Claudius just as a prank, a threat from a mad man.

-Anyway, right after the play, Claudius decides to kill Hamlet by sending him to England. At long last, Claudius himself takes an important step which will prove he is a villain. Hamlet says he perceives that there’ll be ‘knavery’(3.4.207)

15. What does the grave-digger scene mean?

-a comic relief

-provides a hint to understanding the whole play, especially Hamlet’s revenge

Two grave-diggers are talking about whether Ophelia’s death is a natural one or suicide(5.1.1-13). A grave-digger asserts that Ophelia’s death must be se offendendo〔se defendendo〕. This gives us a hint that Hamlet’s killing of Claudius a killing in self-defence, a killing with no taint of mind. This is a grotesque parody of ‘To be or not to be.’

16. Was Hamlet really mad?

-Yes and no

-his antic disposition explains most of his strange acts.

-when he kills Polonius and when he jumps into Ophelia’s grave he was out of his mind, mad. He himself says he was mad: 5.2.233.

17. When Hamlet is dying Horatio too tries to kill himself. Hamlet, with all his might prevents him from it. Why is it so important?

-Horatio is an important witness who can testify Hamlet’s was a legitimate revenge to regain the fallen order.(5.2.343-4, 351-354)

-till the  last moment Hamlet is concerned that he killed Claudius for a just cause.

18. At the end of the play, Fortinbras orders his captains to ‘bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage.’(5.2.400-1). What does this mean?

-Hamlet was an actual king. He has never acknowledged Claudius as king. The moment he has come beck from the voyage and jumps into Ophelia’s grave he declares that he is ‘the Dane’(5.1.250-1), king of Denmark.

-Like his father, who courageously fought the Norwegian King one-on-one at a war, Hamlet has fought a war against Claudius like a soldier with patience, endurance, courage, honor, and, above all, his love of the kingdom.

19. Is Hamlet a revenge play?

-Yes and no.

-It is certain that revenge is a main theme of the play

-But, unlike other contemporary revenge plays, this play adopts a new mode of revenge in which the hero is heaven’s ‘scourge and minister’(3.4.174-176).

20. Why Fortinbras?

-Fortinbras is not a revenger; His father was not wronged by old Hamlet; He died fighting for his kingdom’s cause. He died a brave, honorable death. As a son, Fortinbras tries to recover the land his father lost. When deterred, he goes to Poland to fight back an island just for the cause of honor. He is a man who is never afraid of dying when honor is at stake. This reminds us of Hamlet. So it is natural that he becomes Hamlet’s successor. There’s no doubt that under his rule Denmark will regain its former order.