HAMLET - Context and Analysis
45 likes51,543 views
The document outlines the plot and themes of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet,' focusing on Hamlet as the prince of Denmark facing family betrayal, particularly after the ghost of his father reveals that he was murdered by Hamlet's uncle, now king. It provides historical context of the Elizabethan era, emphasizing themes of uncertainty, perception, and moral ambiguity, with Hamlet embodying doubt and existential crisis. The analysis includes character introductions, Hamlet's soliloquies, and the significance of espionage and deception within the play.
![Act 1 scene 3
characterisation of Polonius
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel,
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear ’t that th' opposèd may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear but few thy voice.
[…refer to entire speech and annotate key statements of
advice..]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/hamlet-contextandanalysis-150805041438-lva1-app6891/85/HAMLET-Context-and-Analysis-14-320.jpg)
HAMLET - Context and Analysis
- 1. THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK By William Shakespeare
- 2. You are Hamlet: • You are the only child of a mother and father who are married. They have been married your whole life. • Your father is King of Denmark. Your mother is queen. You are next in line for the throne. • Your father (before his death) had battled and killed-in-war Fortinbras, the King of Norway. Fortinbras Junior seeks revenge on you, your King and all of Denmark. • Your father dies. Your mother remarries in less than 2 months. • Your new step-dad is your uncle, your father’s brother. • You are the only person who is not celebrating. • Your best friend tells you that he has seen your father’s ghost ... it wants to see you... • The ghost tells you it is the spirit of your father and that ‘he’ was MURDERED by his brother, your uncle, your mother’s new husband, your step-father ... the man who is THE NEW KING.
- 3. Historical Context • 1588 Shakespeare was 24. Spanish Arnarda is on the way. The coast is heavily watched. Victory helps create the myth of Queen Elizabeth. • Elizabethan England was a police state. Spies recorded everything. • The national religion changed from Catholicism to Protestantism, a religious revolution started by Henry the Eighth. (Three changes within 12 years)
- 4. Elizabethan Age characterised by turmoil and uncertainty. • A time of religious doubt and fear of the supernatural spirit world • A time of spies and plots • Queen Elizabeth was obsessive about keeping records of EVERYTHING that happened in her Kingdom (hence all the spies!) • Threat of foreign invasion – from Catholic countries • People did not know who to trust or what to “believe” • Problems of succession, Queen Elizabeth had ruled Briton for 45 years but she was getting old, who would lead the country? (James 1 1603)
- 6. The Poisoned State • The Elizabethan’s believed that the ruler (King) was the life giving center of the kingdom, with power bestowed by God. • The sickness or death of the King is a national calamity. • Hamlet is the story of a ruined kingdom. • Claudius’ reign looks impressive but is hollow • Discrepancy and ambiguity between appearance (performance) and reality. Hamlet, Polonius, Lartes, Ophelia…??? • Everything is rotten: sickness, madness, poison (both literally and figuratively).
- 7. Questions Questions are about the limits of our perception; what we can and cannot see. “A play about doubt, about being unsure, about ambiguity. ‘Who’s there’ reverberates though the entire play.” Huw Griffiths • Act 1, scene 1, sets the atmosphere for the play. Doubt, limited perception… who can see who?
- 8. Act 1 .1 • MARCELLUS: Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy And will not let belief take hold of him Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us. Therefore I have entreated him along With us to watch the minutes of this night, That if again this apparition come He may approve our eyes and speak to it.
- 9. HAMLET “Seems,” madam? Nay, it is. I know not “seems.” 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly. These indeed “seem,” For they are actions that a man might play. But I have that within which passeth show, These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
- 10. (lines 1-129): How are we introduced to Hamlet? How are we introduced to Claudius? • There is ambiguity surrounding Claudius’s intentions? His tone, attitude & treatment of Hamlet? Is he: • warm & supportive? • hard & uncompromising? • rebuking Hamlet? • reasonable & sincere? • addressing the court rather than Hamlet personally? • What is the significance of introduction to Hamlet through an aside? • Characterisation of Hamlet? is he: • emotional? Melancholy? grief-stricken? (remember – he has no idea that his father was – allegedly – murdered!!) • What is the attitude towards masculinity? (“unmanly grief”)
- 11. Allusions and analysis of Hamlet’s first soliloquy Hyperion- one of the Titans (Greek)- a sun-god Satyr- half human but with the legs of a goat.. synonymous with lechery. Niobe- the mythical mother whose fourteen children were slain by the gods…she wept until she was turned to stone-and still the tears flowed.
- 12. Explore Hamlet’s soliloquy. • What does he feel about the world right now? • What does Hamlet think of Gertrude? • “O” creates an air of heaviness, depression and woe. • Notice the use of commas before and after “thaw” slow the language down. • Repetition is it used to indicate Hamlet’s desperation and incomprehension at the speed at which his mother remarried? • Explain the metaphor of the “unweeded garden”. • Hamlet’s problems are seen as titanic and thus impossible to overcome. • Notice the tone of fury and disbelief.
- 13. Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God, God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on ’t, ah fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this. But two months dead—nay, not so much, not two. So excellent a king, that was to this Hyperion to a satyr. So loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly.—Heaven and earth, Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on, and yet, within a month— Let me not think on ’t. Frailty, thy name is woman!— A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she followed my poor father’s body, Like Niobe, all tears. Why she, even she— O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason Would have mourned longer!—married with my uncle, My father’s brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules. Within a month, Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her gallèd eyes, She married. O most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not nor it cannot come to good, But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue. A meditation on suicide (a sin and a crime) Hamlet established as a man with a fine mind, his world seems increasingly meaningless. long drawn out vowel sounds a tone of exhaustion, despondency and bitterness synecdoche- part represents the whole- flesh to represent his physical life metaphor of an unweeded garden indicating corruption Allusions to compare his father to Claudius rhetorical devices: repetition, rhetorical questions, exclamation Hamlet’s attitude towards woman moves from the personal to the general...relationships with woman continually disappoint incestuous sheets “Marriage to a brother’s wife was explicitly forbidden by the Church” drawn out vowels, sharp, rhythmic consonants imagery: organic, kinesthetic, tactile, visual...
- 14. Act 1 scene 3 characterisation of Polonius Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel, But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, Bear ’t that th' opposèd may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear but few thy voice. […refer to entire speech and annotate key statements of advice..]
- 15. Characterisation of Polonius? Is he: • a pompous bureaucra? a loving father? an authoritarian guardian? • What do Polonius’ 8 sentences of advice reveal about his character, values and beliefs? On - speech, friendship, quarrelling, judgement, dress, money & consistency? • Ophelia: lock/key analogy but doesn’t hold tongue? Why? • Analyse Polonius’ treatment of Ophelia & his view of Hamlet & young love?
- 16. Act 1 scene 4- Angels and ministers of grace defend us! 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 comest in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee “Hamlet,” “King,” “Father,” “royal Dane.” O, answer me!
- 17. Act 1 .4 • HORATIO: What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff That beetles o'er his base into the sea, And there assume some other horrible form, Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason And draw you into madness? Think of it.
- 18. Is he more: • Amazed? Questioning? Fearful? Pleading? • Analyse Hamlet’s steely determination & strong will to follow the Ghost? Ironic decisiveness? • Talk of courage &/or madness? • Analyse the rotting/corruption motif? Hamlet’s reaction to the Ghost?
- 19. Act 1:5- I am thy father’s spirit, Doomed for a certain term to walk the night And for the day confined to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part
- 20. Context • Renaissance-growth of liberal ideas that focused on the value of the individual. • This milieu valued intellect, ideas, philosophy and moral speculation. • Structured and ordered society with a strict hierarchy of class and position. • The disrupted state is restored to social and political stability at the end of the play Elizabethan values: a belief in Christianity and faith reinforcing the notions of sin, virtue, fixed moral laws, punishment and redemption.
- 21. Theory of Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy: Revenge Tragedies have a specific structure. Identify the key event that fits with the element in eachAct • Exposition Act 1 • Anticipation Act 2 • Confrontation Act 3 • Delay Act 4 • Completion Act 5
- 22. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! …What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have?... • Hamlet breaks iambic pentameter lack of control • Rhetorical questions put emphasis on Hamlet’s motivation and lack of resolve. Use of apostrophe*, exclamation and negative hyperbole to berate himself and incite himself to action. Self loathing (criticism)- indicative of his grief. *apostrophe = a rhetorical device in which an absent or imaginary person (or an abstract entity is addressed directly
- 23. Ha? 'Swounds, I should take it; for it cannot be But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall… Bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! Metaphor Hamlet berates himself as a coward? Is he? What is holding him back from taking revenge. The alliteration and exclamations break the rhythm and conveys Hamlet’s disgust at Claudius. He appears to work himself up into a frenzy with the repetition of rhythmic, poly-syllabic negative emotive words and the repetition of “villain”
- 24. O, vengeance!— Why, what an ass am I? Ay, sure, this is most brave, That I, the son of the dear murderèd, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words… The spirit that I have seen May be the devil, and the devil hath power T' assume a pleasing shape;.... I'll have grounds More relative than this. The play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King. How important is catching the “conscience of the King”? Rhyming couplet drives this idea home and reinforces Hamlet’s resolve. Use of monosyllabic words and confident tone emphasise the importance of the plan to test the ghosts’ words.
- 25. 12 cases of espionage. People watching others, people being watched. • Night watch • Polonius employs Reynaldo to spy on Laertes • Ros and Guil asked to spy on Hamlet • Polonius “loose” his daughter to Hamlet • “To be or not to be..” watched • The Mousetrap • Ros and Guil sent to England with Hamlet • Hamlet watches Claudius at prayer • Polonius behind the arras in Gertrude’s chamber • The ghost invisible to Gertrude • Ophelia to be followed and watched • Hamlet and Horatio watch Ophelia’s funeral “