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REVENGE TRAGEDIES (Context (Elizabethan Context (Divine right (Kings were…

- - - - Kings were considered to be appointed by God (James 1st)
        
        So killing a King was considered a greater crime to killing an unknown
- - - - Translation of Seneca in Elizabethan England popularises revenge tragedies
    - - Protagonist had a certain nobility - high birth, courageous, generous: megalopsychia (greatness of the soul0
      - The protagonist could not be a man who has totally good or the audience would only feel disgust at the injustice of his destruction in the play's catastrophe; if he was wicked the audience would rejoice at his fall
        
        Two extremes
        
        Not conspicuous of virtue and justice
        
        Fall from misery is not due to vice and depravity, but rather to some error
        
        A man who enjoys prosperity and a high reputation
  - - - Ghosts
      - Revenger
      - Play in play - w. sim. motif
      - Complex plotting (both of playwright and characters)
      - Suffering female cahractre
  - - - Dramatists decided that kings and princes were not the only candidates for the role of the protagonist
      - Shakespeare's tragedies typically concern noble figures
    - - Protagonist was considered a noble individual
      - Showed a wider interest in society
      - Questioned whether the universe is ruled by divine justice - a radical and dangerous perspective at the time
  - - - Drama centred around the protagonist who acts in a way that proves disastrous
      - Plot is limited and simple; limited time for action to lapse; limited location of action (the unities)
      - Calamitous outcome (the catastrophe) = emotional response in audience
      - Hamlet does not appear to follow the above
- - - - Is a rewriting of Aristotle's idea of Hamartia (error of judgement) - but note that hamartia is a matter of action, not character
      - What we do feel strongly, as tragedy advances to its close, is that calamities and catastrophe follow inevitable from the deeds of men, and that the main source of these deeds is character
      - He drew on ideas of the German philosopher Hegel
        
        He argued that political and soil progress is made by the synthesis of opposing and conflicting forces
        
        The character of the protagonist embodies such a conflict
        
        According to this view the protagonist is noble but possesses a flaw which means that their downfall is inevitable
        
        External factors are not as significant as the conflicted individual moral psychology which brings about the opposite of what the character intends
    - - Inability to act without explicit purpose/focus
        
        Kills P - FOR or AGAINST?
        
        Signs a death warrant for R+G - FOR
        
        Pirate ship - FOR
        
        Play in a play - FOR + AGAINST
        
        FOR - could be considered a delay
        
        AGAINST - may be a smart move to be sure - other protagonsits are rash and often make wrong choices - can compare H's methodical approach with L
        
        Madness - FOR + AGAINST
        
        FOR - What does his madness actually achieve? He is horrid to O and arguably drives her mad
        
        AGAINST - His actions may be unsuspicious (play in a play) no one assumes he knows anything
  - - - Excessive pride that brings about divine punishment
      - The protagonist in a classical tragedy commits hubris by choosing to defy the claims of the Gods
        
        Convectional Greek religion in the classical period saw the Gods as vengeful and selfish
  - - - Of the feigned madness of Hamlet there appears no adequate cause, for he does nothing he might 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...
      - Hamlet is, throughout the whole play, rather an instrument than an agent. ... and his [the King's] death is at last effected by an incident which Hamlet has no part in producing,
  - - - Thought that Hamlet was a ,am for whom the world of the imagination had become more real than reality, and thus he could not commit himself to action
      - The effect of this overbalanced of the imaginative power is beautifully illustrated in the everlasting brooding and superfluous activities of Hamlet's mind, which, unseated from its healthy relation, (...) us abstracted from the world without (...) Hence it is that the sense of sublimity [awe-inspiring ability to produce powerful emotions] arises.
  - - - Founder of psychoanalysis
      - Thought that the Romantics were wrong to think H does not act - kills Polonious, sends R+G to their deaths
      - Only thing that H is incapable of is to kill Claudius
      - Hamlet is able to anything - except take vengeance on the man who did away with his father and took that of his father's place with the mother (...) Thus the loathing which should rive him on to revenge is replaced in him by self-reproaches, by scruples of conscience, which remind him that he himself is literally no better than the sinner whom he is to punish.
- - - - Encourages us to reflect upon our response - about wider moral, religious, philosophical and political matters
  - - - Greek tragedies - the fear the audience feel sis a response to seeing the power of the gods, or face enacted on stage
  - - - Death of the protagonist causes us sorrow + a recognition of a sense of injustice
      - We are also aware of a greater justice at work, as the universe strives to become a better palce
      - Great sense of waste e.g. Ophelia
      - Despite the waste we are uplifted by the feeling that what happened was right and necessary - this is the experience of catharsis:
        
        Bradley: Sometimes we are driven to cry out that these mighty or heavenly spirits (...) are too great for the little space in which they move, and that they vanquish into nothingness and freedom. (...) bringing to birth, together with glorious good, an evil which is able to overcome by self-torture and self-waste. And this fact or appearance is tragedy.
      - Has Hegelian and Christian ideas
        
        For Christians, God became man and suffered on the cross in order to free man from original sin. The tragic mystery is the divine mystery, and is part of a world view that sees human progress as inevitable.
    - - Aristotle could mean that tragedy allows us to experience these negative emotions vicariously and thus we leave the theatre having expelled them
    - - This interpretation makes tragedy an unreflective experience and soothing, not a disturbing one
      - Forces the audience to confront feelings whihc typically have no solution
      - Is a politically neutral response - contrasts what is known about the status and role of tragedy in Greek society
        
        For the Greeks, tragedy was always a politically engaged art form - hard questions were asked about human cruelty and whether the gods have any care for mortals
    - - Toook catharsis to mean that our emotional faculties are 'cleaned up', refreshed, and allowing use to leave the theatre better able to judge what is worthy of profound emotion and what is not
      - Tragedy teaches us to have some scale of proportion in our responses to the world, and to exercise properly a crucial part of our human state
      - His interpretation makes tragedy something which seeks to control us; something sinister
- - - - Likening of his father to Hyperion emphasises his greatness and the regard in which Hamlet held his father - Does he idolise his father - is that why he accepts to avenge his death?
    - - Note that his anger is not directed towards the fact his father is dead (and although he is not yet certain that his father was murdered, 1,2 - 51 - 255: (...) All is not well;/ I doubt some foul play") but there are strong emotions about this presented here
    - - Maybe the memory of his father has been tainted
      - 1,2 - 48 - 158 (end line of monologue): But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
        
        Note the broken sentence structure
        
        Shows that he has great respect for his father and is not overcome by anger - he is able to keep his emotions in check - RELATES TO MADNESS