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Hamlet
Lecture Notes

Themes & Topics
Click here for general background

Revenge Play genre


Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy (1588)
classic Greek tragedy of destiny / curse of family
- Senecan tragedy
- Thomas Kyd / "ur-Hamlet" / The Spanish Tragedy
- assault on family / justified retaliation / feigned madness
Titus Andronicus (c. 1590) as cartoon for later tragedies of character in extremis (Lear, Othello)

Principle of retaliation
- lex talionis
- Biblical "eye for an eye" = principle of balance as well as revenge (license)
- in "civilized" societies, state takes over role of retribution
-- system of laws replaces blood feud
- but what if the offender is the King?
--- conflict of personal vengeance with public obedience

Shakespearean concept of character
- early-modern cultural invention of identity-as-theatre
- public playhouses as space for projection & identification
- creation of dramatic hero (Marlowe & others)
- Shakespeare's focus on internality (esp. in Hamlet)
-- importance of soliloquy as monologue of self-disclosure & self-interrogation
-- Hamlet as most famous dramatic character in Western literature
-- early-modern bridge between medieval & modern notions of character: click here for diagram

Hamlet

1.1.1 ("Who's there?")
- conventional challenge (public speech) + personal interrogation (private speech)
- confusion of speakers
- "unfold yourself" (metaphor)
- motto for entire play: question, doubt, hidden essence


 

 

 

 

"A Melancholy Lover," from Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1620)
1.1.8-9 ("'Tis bitter cold, / And I am sick at heart.")
- external v. internal weather
- heart-sickness & melancholy
--- click here for another image of melancholy
Horatio's skepticism v. guards' credulity
- intellect v. emotion
1.2 Hamlet's entrance "dressed in black"
- costume of mourning + melancholy
--- melancholy as pathology + pose // affect + affectation
--- Hamlet as actor
1.2.65 ("A little more than kin ...")
Hamlet's first words = aggressive riddle
- spoken to himself
- language that both reveals and conceals


1.2.76-86 ("Seems, madam? ...)
- appearance & reality // acting & pretense
- limits of language & behavior to show true feeling
- metadrama ("actions that a man might play")
- concept of secret personal core ("that within")
--- partially demonstrable only through convention (posture, action, language)

1.2.129-159 ("O that this too too sullied flesh ...")
Try reading this speech aloud.
- textual crux of "sallied" / "sullied" / "solid" flesh
- What is the focus of Hamlet's grief & anger?

1.2.244-256 ("If it assume ...")
- Hamlet shifts from the conditional to the definite. What has happened in this brief moment?

1.4.38-45 ("Look, my lord, it comes....")
- theological problem
- "questionable shape"
- Hamlet identifies the ghost

1.5.1-112 (Hamlet meets with the ghost)
- "my prophetic soul!" (unconscious awareness)
- "incestuous, ... adulterate ..." Are these terms accurate?
- What is the ghost's vindictive focus? What is Hamlet's?
- models of memory as "table" (writing) & "distracted globe" (cerebral playhouse)

2.1.74-120 ("How now, Ophelia...")
- distracted Hamlet described but not seen
-- issue of Hamlet's "madness"

2.2.242-256 ("Denmark's a prison....")
- "For there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."
--- What assumptions lie behind this assertion?
- "O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell ..."
Click here for a personal response to this moment in the play ("O God...bounded in a nutshell...")

2.2.543ff. "(Now I am alone.") [another speech to read aloud]
- What sort of character announces his solitude? (To whom is he speaking?)
- What are the relations between Hamlet and the Player (who acted Hecuba)?
--- in terms of acting styles & in terms of genuine emotion
- Reconsider the question of how real emotion gets enacted through behavior.
- How does Hamlet understand the question of the ghost ("the devil," "my melancholy")?
--- How does he understand the relation between proof of the ghost & proof of Claudius's guilt?

3.1.55-87 ("To be, or not to be ...")
What is the question?
Click here for a mini-lecture on "Hamlet and Early-Modern Philosophy"

3.2.379-390 ("'Tis now the very witching time of night ...")
- conventionally primed for revenge
- focus of his vengeance?
--- "soul of Nero"

3.4 (The Closet or Bedroom Scene)
- "... a glass / ... inmost part of you"
--- idea of secret interiority / hidden / shameful ("black ... spots")
--- "... murder me?" -- idea of guilt & vengeance
Click here for QuickTime video

3.4.23 S.D. ("S.D. Thrusts his rapier through the arras.")
- Whom does Hamlet believe he is stabbing?
- Why now? (Recall 3.3 in this context.)

3.4.88-96 ("O Hamlet, speak no more ...")
- Gertrude's black spots
- daggers in the ears

4.5.4-15 ("She speaks much ...")
- question of distinguishing authentic speech from gesture
- issue of audience
- metadrama

4.7.165ff ("Your sister's drown'd ...")
- potent poetic description
- question of agency
-- Ophelia as agent or victim
-- suicide, accident, or something between

5.1 (Graveyard Scene)

Click here
for a mini-lecture on "Hamlet and Death"

5.1.15-20 ("Here lies the water...")
- relate to the tragedy of Hamlet
5.1.89-91 ("Here's fine revolution ...")
- What is "the trick to see't"? Look carefully.
See the mini-lecture on Hamlet & death

5.1.178ff ("Alas, poor Yorick. ...")
- Consider image of young Hamlet
--- Click here for image
--- Click here for QuickTime video (6.6MB)
- Stare hard at this skull. (Study Question 6)
- Click here for vanitas tradition in art
- And here for another vanitas painting
- And here for a contemporary actualization

5.2.4-11 ("Sir, in my heart ...")
- "rashness" as praiseworthy motive
- balance of "indiscretion," "plots," and "divinity"
--- Question of nature + location of divinity
--- internal impulse ("conscience") equivalent to external rule

5.2.27-56 ("But wilt thou hear ..?")
- Hamlet enters & rewrites his own play (metadrama)
Cartoon drawing of John Barrymore (19c stage)
Still photo of Kenneth Branagh (20c film)

5.2.212-220 ("If your mind ...")
- relate Hamlet's melancholy suicidal wishes to reliance on Providence
- what is "readiness"?

5.2.222 ("Give me your pardon ...")
- Hamlet distinguishes himself from his "madness"
--- true admission or continued guise?

5.2.318 ("Treachery! Seek it out." / "It is here ...")
- internal v. external threat
- see Act One, Scene One
--- guarding against external invasion & surprised by internal ghost

5.2.329-333
Hamlet kills Claudius. Why? Is this his revenge?

5.2.337-345 ("I am dead ...")
- metadramatic gesture toward audience
- promise of narrative deferred

5.2.400-408 ("Let four captains ...")
- Fortinbras constructs his own projected image of Hamlet
--- Would Hamlet have approved?



Glossary Terms
Cartesian
cartoon
character
Cogito ergo sum.
epistemology
"Idols of the Cave"
lex talionis
license
melancholy
metadrama
Montaigne
soliloquy
vanitas


Page last updated: September 16, 2005

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Send comments to: Professor David Willbern