Claudius causes a war between passion and responsibility when he murders the father of Hamlet, the main character, and then marries Hamlet's mother Gertrude. Claudius killed Hamlet's father and then married Gertrude only so he could take the crown and become King.
Young Hamlet's use of the word "nothing," consistently borders on the realm of something. Still, "nothing" is more than a mere lack of something, "nothing" is the catalyst that enables the reader to see the coalescency that exists between Hamlet, and. New Historicists analyze allusions to characteristics of the time period in which the work was written. By definition, new historicism seeks to discover the significance in a text by taking into account the work within the construction of the established ideas and assumptions of its historical era.
Literary texts are entrenched with historical context and the author is seen as subject to the forces of the culture. The suffering that he endures causes his character to develop certain idiosyncrasies. Morality has a significant importance to Hamlet. At the beginning of the play, Hamlet possesses a strong sense of morality. A sense that is stronger than all other characters. Hamlet's actions and feelings are controlled by his morality.
His morality grows weaker as the. The Ghost, though not a human character in most senses of the word, is crucial for the development of the play. This essay will analyze this interesting character. It touches the very spiritual underpinnings of the Denmark state. His depression and his tears are underlined by his initial failure to recognize Horatio; but he rouses himself sufficiently to make the bitter witticism about the funeral baked meats, and his cross-examination of the three men who have seen the ghost reveals that his intelligence has not been blunted by his grief.
Agboigba murdered. Hamlet had already referred in the second scene to the drinking habits of the new court, and one function of this speech is to show the deterioration of Elsinore in the reign of Claudius. Another function, equally important from the theatrical point of view, is to distract the attention of the audience so that they are surprised by the reappearance of the ghost, and this function is aided by the extreme complexity of the syntax, which would require the undivided attention of the audience.
He is, apparently, released from purgatory, although Shakespeare makes use of some of the characteristics of the classical Hades. Gertrude is to be left to the prickings of conscience; but the meaning of the first four words of this sentence is ambiguous. How can he kill Claudius in such a way that justice appears to be done, without at the same time exposing the guilt of his mother? The antic disposition is not merely a defence mechanism. II-ii Later on, off stage, he makes Horatio his confident; but he keeps the secret from Marcellus because he realizes that his own safety depends on secrecy.
The visitation of the ghost confirms the prompting of his prophetic soul that some foul deed has been committed. The ghost has then cast Hamlet in the role of avenging angel, when all his faculties cry out for him to be a moral scourge.
The ghost has asked him to be active, but his disposition is to be reflective, intellectually questioning, and in moral terms, admonitory. Whatever the intention may have been, the result is that the ghost affects imagination, not simply as the apparition of a dead king who desires the accomplishment of his purposes, but also as the representative of that hidden ultimate power, the messenger of divine justice set upon the expiation of offences which it appeared impossible for man to discover and avenge a reminder of a symbol of the limited world of ordinary experience with the vaster life of which it is but a partial appearance.
The appearance of the spectre means a breaking-down of the walls of the world and the germination of thoughts that cannot really be thought; chaos is come again. It is clear now that the ghost is solely concerned to speed Hamlet to revenge and to protect the queen which is the purpose of the second visitation by the ghost.
But the ghost, through all that precedes, seems not to be the only instigator of the revenge tragedy in Hamlet. Jealousy seems to be another cause. What he has to say cannot be part of the ordinary discourse of the court at Elsinore now that his father is dead. His first words are spoken aside: they are ostentatiously not part of the business being transacted, just as he is separated from the rest of the court by his mourning dress.
He speaks the ironic speech of the underdog, asserting his superiority by thinking it, and leaving it to others to see that this is what he is doing. Impact Factor JCC : 1. None of these would result in a sense that his own flesh was sullied Revulsion from sexual feeling might.
His reaction here would then anticipate the cruel treatment meted out to Ophelia by him later on. The view does not recommend itself, simply because it involves dramatic miscalculation. To start the play at such a pitch leaves little room for development.
We need therefore to consider whether there is not an alternative reason for Hamlet to feel that his flesh has been sullied. There is no suggestion that he feels himself corrupted. Hamlet and the ghost are the only characters to remark on the incest, and this might imply that the others are partners in a conspiracy of silence not to name the shameful aspect of the royal passion; but they might also be understood not to question it at all.
Neither Gertrude nor Claudius is troubled by the fact that their liaison is incestuous, though other things do waken guilt in them. But this shows the case whereby an incestuous marriage could be entered into that is, the weakness of the taboo just as much as the revulsion it was supposed to engender. Historical argument, as so often, is not very helpful here.
It is the dexterity that matters; the incest is a second thought. Similarly the ghost deplores the transformation of his bed to. This would have seemed quite natural to anyone with a concern of honour. The supposed dishonour to her kinsmen which follows when a widow remarries is a central concern in the Duchess of Malfi, and scholars have demonstrated some of its manifestation in the life and literature of the times in illustration of that play.
The widow who marries again threatens the division of the sexes necessary to the sense of honour by appropriating to herself the sexual aggressiveness which is supposed to be the property of the male. The speed with which Gertrude remarries only adds to the offence to honour which that marriage represents.
In some countries, at some times, repugnance for hasty remarriage has been expressed in the laws themselves. But the feeling exists at a level distinct from law in an honour-culture; Julio Caro Baroja says that the premature remarriage of widow was still, in , regarded as a cause of dishonour in certain parts of Spain. Thus, he was responsible for the protection of that weak and vulnerable woman, his mother. The scene of Laertes departure makes a very forceful point about a difference in temperament between the prince and the young nobleman.
Was his failure to act over the marriage then, the product of his youth rather than of a real deficiency of character? The question is not urgent to be answered, but it does put us at some distance from simple identification with Hamlet; and all the more so, of course, if we already have our reservations about the values associated with a dedication to honour. There is nothing historically implausible about such reservations.
But he was not relying on a specific view of the tradition to determine a response to Hamlet at the opening of the play. However unfavourable or unsympathetic our original response might be, it is held in check by this consideration. Essay, Pages 3 words. Don't use plagiarized sources. Get your custom essay on. Get quality help now.
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