Collection of Ideas and Themes from Hamlet

HAMLET MODULE PREPARATION – CHARACTER ANALYSIS

Hamlet

-Hamlet is a character of contradictions – he acts on impulse and is accustomed to rash thinking (e.g, when he stabs Polonius through the curtains in Gertrude’s chamber thinking it is Claudius spying on the proceedings), yet he is also hesitant and prone to over analysis, which arguably delays his vengeance of his father (e.g, as quoted by Hamlet, he falls prey to “thinking too precisely on the event”, and he questions the truthfulness of the ghost).

-Hamlet is very emotional and is greatly affected by his father’s death, yet he is particularly insensitive to others and subjects them to ruthless emotional attacks, (e.g, especially as shown towards Ophelia – “get thee to a nunnery”, “country matters”, Polonius “y’are a fishmonger”, “meddling old fool”)

-Hamlet could be interpreted as naturally cynical (e.g, “a little more than kin, and less than kind” – as an aside response to Claudius, who has although married his mother, is not yet known to be his father’s murderer), and is aware/critical/suspicious of human motive/actions (e.g, “they are actions that a man might play”, “post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets”, “O my prophetic soul! My uncle?”, “were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining?”

OR

Prey to his own obsessive idealism, which cannot be upheld through his negative interactions and opinions of others, (e.g, through Claudius’ and Gertrude’s dismissal of his mourning “why seems it so particular with thee?”, “’this unmanly grief”)
Critic Samuel Johnson states that “of the feigned madness of Hamlet, there appears no adequate cause, for he does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of sanity. He plays the madman most, when he treats Ophelia with so much rudeness, which seems to be useless and wanton cruelty”. The critic also states that “Hamlet is, through the whole play, rather an instrument than an agent”

He loves beauty. He loves reason. He loves honesty. He loves virtue. He loves balance, harmony and thought.
But he looks around him and see murder, lies, greed, stupidity, ignorance, hatred and chaos. The world makes no sense to him. So he does nothing.

Notes from podcast:
-a revenge plot
-is hamlet a nostalgic play? From which Sigmund Freud and carl cox based their psychological and economic (considered modern) theories?
-hamlet is a modern individual – soliloquies are focused on fraught and reflective consciousness – caught in the process of intellectual and emotional formation. -wasn’t popular at the time because it was too radical

-hamlet is name of dead father and living son. In none of the original inspiration sources is the difference in generation registered by overlapping names.
-fortinbras is also repeated.
-duplication is therefore deliberate.
-therefore we hear about the dead hamlet first, and of his values, curtesy of horatio, which seems to create an anticipatory atmosphere for the rest of the play, and potentially of the character of hamlet.
-Is hamlet, the living prince, overshadowed by his valiant father, a ‘hyperion’ who he so idolises? Is the play therefore named after the king, as he is an idolised figure?

-Hamlet (the son) answers the ghost with his own name: “I’ll call thee hamlet, king, father, royal dane” therefore these descriptions have already been allocated to the father.

-hamlet is preoccupied with the past, is restrospective. Ghost is recollective of past events, tense opening scene of the play indicates that previous events involving the appearance of the ghost have also occurred. E.g, in horatio’s description of the king hamlet, he describes his qualities in terms of past events, e.g, “when he th’ambitious Norway combated”, “he smote the sledded Pollacks on the ice”, “with martial stalk hath he gone by our watch”

-later descriptions of the ghost evoke a sense of a lost golden world of the past, direct reference to Eden, “the serpent that stole my crown”. Claudius also refers to the primal curse on Cain when he is praying later in the play “a brother’s murder”.

-did Shakespeare intend for it to be difficult to distinguish between the hamlets throughout the play, as when they are named it is not immediately known who is being referred to? The consequence is that Hamlet cannot form an independent identity for himself, and may be unable to escape the ‘burden’ of a ‘Hyperion’ father – especially one he idolises. Therefore links concerns with succession, political and psychological.

-when we first meet hamlet and laertes they are immediately distinguished – wherease laertes seeks and is granted permission to return to france, hamlet agrees with claudius’ wishes that he remain in Denmark – therefore establishing his position as a child in the sense that he can be manipulated by nearly patriarchal authority.

-the ghost commands hamlet to “remember me”, which is an imperative for hamlet to join him in the past and structures Hamlet’s role in the play – a past which is completely unreachable

-Claudius’ assertion that Hamlet’s mourning is “unnatural” is both insensitive/callous, and directing Hamlet’s world view in a different way. It is a pragmatic approach based on political succession, and is more forward thinking.

-hamlet’s actions in the play tend to be about undoing the past, and negation, rather than action and progress. E.g, he breaks off his relationship with Ophelia, doesn’t move on and return to university.

-technique where hamlet is sent to England, and whilst events supposedly transpire the action of the play involving hamlet is still only conducted in Denmark, this feature of the text emphasises hindered progress.

-hamlet’s primary attachment is to those who are dead, e.g, yorric.

-as critiqued by Freud, it is the psychological impediments of mourning and melancholy which prevent hamlet’s progress. However it may simply be cultural influences.

-importance of the face that at the time hamlet was written (17th century in England), cultural interests included the notion of political succession, and the fact that Hamlet doesn’t become king seems to be inadequately explored. The theatre was really the only venue where topics including the transfer of political power, e.g, who would be the next monarch, could be openly discussed.

-whilst the ending of hamlet is hardly presented as something to look forward to (and rather grim) (due to fortinbras taking over, “the rest is silence” – it is an image of late Elizabethan anxieties, however, since the play is retrospective rather than forward looking it fits Elizabethan culture more widely.

-one of the big issues in the play is what is a catholic ghost coming back from catholic purgatory doing in a play where the main characters are protestant and where it is viewed by a protestant society? This is an issue concerning history and looking backwards, it is an anathema to protestant theology.

-laertes is more orthodox than hamlet, (and goes to a distinctly protestant university – wittenburg), questioning what the ghost intends, warning hamlet realising that the ghost may “deprive your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness”

-Critic Paul Cantor interprets Hamlet’s belief in an afterlife as a direct threat to heroic impulses, in that it alters the terms of heroic action.

“thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action”

-Hamlet is a child of reformation? Religious identity.

-Final aspect of the play’s nostalgia – themes and ideas taken from a predecessor play by another author “the Spanish tragedy” : e.g, name of horatio, description of the ghost, murder in a garden, woman running mad, device of play within a play.

-however, the dynamic of past and future is distinctly altered in hamlet, whilst the protagonist of the Spanish tragedy is mourning the loss of his son, horatio, hamlet is mouring the loss of his father.
-play’s nostalgia looks back to the tudor interludes – the “mousetrap” is a dumb play style

-the dumb play is a choreograph of the king’s death, and then the verbal play causes Claudius to leave

-dramatic split between doing and saying, dumb play and verbal play, is a theme which applies to the whole of hamlet, as he doesn’t do what he intends or promises for quite some time.

-in Kenneth branner’s drama version, the use of older actors is a reference to a previous theatrical generation, deeply nostalgic, e.g, not kid actors.

-the name hamlet is just like the dramatic treading of water (fraught), as it pulls the play into the past, so that it resists its own progression out of a doomed world. In this play, hamlet cannot progress with action and is limited to revenging and remembering. hamlet has to go back and rewrite his history in order to create his future. Like prium “things were better in the past”. This structure is related to the historical and cultural identity of Elizabethan culture at the time – nostalgia.

-shakespeare wrote hamlet immediately after his father’s death, so perhaps this grief may have refreshed his memories and provided his inspiration.

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