Hamlet as a Renaissance Man. Understanding the Italian Renaissance society
Answers
I wrote a short essay on a similar topic a few years ago, which I may as well paste below. It may give you some inspiration. Actually it was a response in a History exam, so don't look for brilliant writing here, or indeed for literary analysis. Don't copy it either, or your marker will find out - they do internet searches for bits of plagiarism. If you have any questions about any of it, you can post them here.
QUESTION 5: Select an artefact and explain its importance for understanding the Italian Renaissance society.
Time and again this course has brought me back to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and the challenge here is irresistable: to demonstrate how this play assists an understanding of the ideology of the society of the Renaissance, with reference to Italy. The play gives the Renaissance a very human and three dimensional face. The story is set in Denmark, the author is English, and so perhaps the ideology is more generally European than specifically Italian; but that generality does not preclude the play’s bearing on the Italian Renaissance, especially when it is remembered that the general Renaissance sprang from and leant on the Italian one. Because of the constraints of word limit, this essay will confine its exploration to the character of Hamlet himself to exemplify the play’s reflection of the Italian Renaissance.
Hamlet is set up as a spirit of Renaissance against what Machiavelli would have seen as medieval Northern barbarism. Hamlet has received a humanist education which he recurrently demonstrates, and which he extends by virtue of his own intellect through his experience. Classical allusions, similes and metaphors litter his speeches and dialogue as evidence of his extensive reading of the classical authors and his learning on how to use them to exemplify as all the humanist writers do. He also takes great pleasure in the player’s speech from a classically- styled play which “pleased not the million [and was] caviar to the general”
I wrote a short essay on a similar topic a few years ago, which I may as well paste below. It may give you some inspiration. Actually it was a response in a History exam, so don't look for brilliant writing here, or indeed for literary analysis. Don't copy it either, or your marker will find out - they do internet searches for bits of plagiarism. If you have any questions about any of it, you can post them here.
QUESTION 5: Select an artefact and explain its importance for understanding the Italian Renaissance society.
Time and again this course has brought me back to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and the challenge here is irresistable: to demonstrate how this play assists an understanding of the ideology of the society of the Renaissance, with reference to Italy. The play gives the Renaissance a very human and three dimensional face. The story is set in Denmark, the author is English, and so perhaps the ideology is more generally European than specifically Italian; but that generality does not preclude the play’s bearing on the Italian Renaissance, especially when it is remembered that the general Renaissance sprang from and leant on the Italian one. Because of the constraints of word limit, this essay will confine its exploration to the character of Hamlet himself to exemplify the play’s reflection of the Italian Renaissance.
Hamlet is set up as a spirit of Renaissance against what Machiavelli would have seen as medieval Northern barbarism. Hamlet has received a humanist education which he recurrently demonstrates, and which he extends by virtue of his own intellect through his experience. Classical allusions, similes and metaphors litter his speeches and dialogue as evidence of his extensive reading of the classical authors and his learning on how to use them to exemplify as all the humanist writers do. He also takes great pleasure in the player’s speech from a classically- styled play which “pleased not the million [and was] caviar to the general”