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HAMLET GOOD POINTS - Coggle Diagram
HAMLET GOOD POINTS
ROYALTY, DESTINY, DUTY
Hamlet and Laertes jump into Ophelia's grave to proclaim love for her - foreshadows their being doomed by revenge tragedy - STAGECRAFT
Reactions of three sons to their fathers' murders: Fortinbras = principle of revenge, doesn't matter who against, Laertes = revenge at all costs, even spiritual, Hamlet = morally righteous revenge
procrastination to pragmatism = moral regression IMO, as it brings about his death and undoes his attempts to complete righteous revenge
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ORDER AND CHAOS
juxtaposition of 'funeral bak'd meats' and marriage table = disorder, mixing of living world with dead like Ghost appearance
1948 Olivier TBONTB - fog behind = life/uncertainty/chaos, cliffs in front = certainty/death
Interpretation at the time = Ghost has returned because a) its wishes in life hadn't been fulfilled and b) the Great Chain of Being had been broken
IDENTITY
'Hamlet's soliloquys are conversations...' - .1.2 = griever, 2.2 = plotter, 3.1 = philosopher, 4.4 = warrior
Hamlet offence at R & G attempt to manipulate him ('you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?') - Marxist criticism that H looks down on them for their low class
'give me a man that is not passion's slave and I will wear him to my heart's core - Horatio = welcome contrast from brash Laertes and Fortinbras - 'Hamlet frequently admires...'
PLAYING, PERFORMANCE, META
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'Hamlet's antic disposition is the freedom of the fool to voice uncomfortable truths' - fool in Elizabethan England was outcast, not taken seriously
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern compared to pipe players and sponges - not real people but objects of others' desires
SIN AND RELIGION
'what if this cursed hand were thicker than itself...' - Claudius as a foil to Hamlet - questioning if one will be defined by their crime
'Hamlet's duty to God...' - conflict of Christian meekness/obedience with Renaissance Humanism and moral philosophy
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ACTION VS INACTION
4.4. as turning point - omitted from productions until C19, many critics disagree with H sense of clarity
Hamlet's delay - Romantic scholars saw him as procrastinator, later scholars as a guilty and conscientious character, then as a moralistic, Renaissance intellectual (new Historicist)
Laertes - 'I dare damnation' - unlike Hamlet 'fear of something after death - uncertainty and fear vs brashness
FAMILY
New Historicist - Elizabethan belief that there should only be one ruler in the house, as in the state - conflict between Hamlet, King Hamlet and Claudius for leadership of the family
'Hamlet's chief design is to save his mother's soul', 'Shakespeare reconstructs the nuclear family in 3.4' - Andrew Scott production touches Gertrude's hand to KH ghost's
WOMEN
'funeral bak'd meats' - love is a political tool, not genuine - 'I loved you not'
Hamlet use of misogyny to distract from his own weakness - plural 'frailty, thy name is woman' and 'God hath given you one face...'
SUPERNATURAL
Ghost interpreted now as supernatural but then was real and possible - so - realism of play i.e. changing register for lower/upper class characters
many Hamlet plays are portrayed anachronistically - universal issues rather than specific to Denmark or 16th Century England