The Tragedy of Hamlet

Shakespeare’s Danish Revenge Drama

Background

First performed in 1600 Midpoint of his career

Shakespeare himself played the Ghost in the original production

Anglo-Saxon “Amleth” legend likely the source

Elizabethan Beliefs

Helpful to remember Elizabethans had different understandings than we do about:

Ghosts Depression/Melancholy Revenge

Edwin Booth (19th Century)

Ghosts and Apparitions

There were serious books about the etiquette of dealing with ghosts and apparitions

Lewes Lavater states: “Melancholic persons and mad

men imagine may things which in very deed are not.”

“What those things are which men see and hear: and first, that good angels do sometimes appear.”

“That sometimes, yea and for the most part, evil angels do appear.”

Melancholy

Elizabethans considered melancholy a physical response (ailment, illness) to events. It was not simply a “mood.”

Symptoms included being:wary, circumspect, sad, jealous, paranoid, doubtful, suspicious,insomnia, nightmares

Revenge

Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which, the more man's nature runs to, the more

ought law to weed it out.

This view, indicative of Elizabethan thought, runs counter to the Ghost and Hamlet’s seeming need for revenge.

Revenge

Francis Bacon’s essay on revenge provides insights into Elizabethan values about revenge “Nay rather, vindictive persons

live the lives of witches; who as they live mischievously, so their ends are unfortunate.”

The most tolerable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy [. . .]

What’s it all about?

Tragedy – mystery – revenge story – ghost story – political thriller

Human nature Characters are both good and evil No easy answers

Hamlet – so brooding

Brilliant, brave, charismatic, funny

Thinks in complex, ironic ways

Likes to ask difficult questions “To be, or not to be”

Literary Criticism in a Nutshell

Literary criticism studies literature and attempts to evaluate its literary merit as a standalone and in comparison to others

Criticism tries to provide a greater understanding and appreciation of

the work.

Harold Bloom

Literary Criticism in a Nutshell

Some schools include: Historical Biographical Social Psychological Archetypal New Structuralism Post Structuralism Reader Response Feminist

Northrop Frye

Schools of Criticism in a Nutshell

Plato and Aristotle are classical critics and theorists who examine art’s direction and impact on life.

17th-19th Century:neoclassical and Renaissance:revival of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, and Horace (the “classical critics” but began to rebel a bit.)

RomanticPost-romantic

Plato

Hamlet’s Literary Critics

John Dryden 1631-1700

Thought Shakespeare corrupted the language with false wit, puns, and ambiguity. The very thing later scholars

praised

Laurence Olivier 20th Century

Hamlet’s Literary Critics

Schlegel 1772-1829

A founder of German Romanticism

Saw Shakespeare as a romantic

Hamlet’s Literary Critics

Goethe 1749-1832

Hamlet’s masculinity

Hamlet’s Literary Critics

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834

Concerned with Hamlet’s perceptions versus the reality

Hamlet’s Literary Critics

Ernest Jones 1879-1958

Freudian Analysis

Oedipus Complex

Hamlet’s Literary Critics

T.S. Eliot 1888-1965

Viewed play as “artistic failure”

Hamlet’s Literary Critics

G. Wilson Knight: The Wheel of Fire

1949

Perhaps the characters are neither good nor evil

Sources

“Famous Hamlets” http://www.d.umn.edu/~kmaurer/hamlet/famoushamlets.html (8/30/03)

Department of Theatre, School of Fine Arts, University of Minnesota Duluth Lane, Steve. “Romantics Portrait Gallery”: William Hazlit

thttp://www.mala.bc.ca/~lanes/english/engl201/stc1795.htm

Delaney, Ian. "Short Course on Shakespeare's Hamlet". Teacher Created Materials. March 16, 1999. http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~iandel/essays.html (08/31/03)

Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, Copyright (c) 2003.Hamlet Images http://www.compusmart.ab.ca/hamlet/hamletimages/branagh.htm (08/31/03)

Sculpture Gallery “Plato” http://www.sculpturegallery.com/sculpture/plato.html (0/901/03)

Companions of the Order of Canada Gallery E-H “Northrop Frye” (09/01/03 Stanford Presidential Lectures and Symposia in the Humanties and Arts, “Harold

Bloom” http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html (09/01/03)