The Tragedy of Hamlet Shakespeare’s Danish Revenge Drama.
Post on 31-Dec-2015
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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
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834
Concerned with Hamlet’s perceptions versus the reality
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)
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