Hamlet Context
- Created by: epearce1998
- Created on: 04-05-17 20:25
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- Hamlet Context
- Historical
- Elizabeth I
- Risk of invasion from Scotland, Ireland and Spain
- Conspiracies were rife- Polonius as a comic take on spymaster (Walsingham)
- Uncertainty of lack of an heir
- Power from her virginity- lack of sexualisation
- Responsible for Mary Queen of Scots' execution 1587- validated the killing of a monarch
- Risk of invasion from Scotland, Ireland and Spain
- Concepts of Kingship
- Machiavellian ruler 'The Prince'- 'it is better to be feared to be loved'
- Sacred Kingship and Divine Right of Kings- rulers seen as a divine incarnation of God
- Chain of being linking Kings to God
- The Body Politic- all the people in the country a body with the King the head- 'something is rotten in the state of Denmark'
- Mary Queen of Scots marrying her husband (Lord Darnley)'s murderer (Earl of Bothwell- parallels Gertrude
- Henry VIII
- Used religion (Leviticus 20:21) to justify divorce from Catherine of Aragon
- Wars of the Roses as watershed for duelling between families/ centralised state punishment
- Henry VII outlawed aristocratic prerogative of personal vengence
- Elizabeth I
- Literary
- Influence of Seneca- rhetorical patterns and bloody revenge
- Montaigne's concept of the 'Everyman' (1580) - 'bearing the whole stamp of the human conditions
- Educated man's critique of revenge as shown in soiloquies
- Concepts of revenge tragedy: ghost, madness, physical horrors, noble birth, play within play
- Based on the Spanish Tragedy by Kyd
- Amleth- in Latin history of Denmark from 12th c. from Histoires Tragiques
- Social
- Science
- Galileo displaced the world as centre of the universe
- Four humours- too much black bile makes you melancholic and sardonic
- Contrasted by Decart's 1610 view that personality is mental not physical
- Religion
- England swinging from radical protestantism to Catholicism and back since Reformation
- Henry VIII
- Used religion (Leviticus 20:21) to justify divorce from Catherine of Aragon
- Henry VIII
- Hamlet student of Wittenburg- heart of reformation, would have been taught ghost was demon in disguise
- Influence of Scot's 1584 view that spirits exist but cannot take on physical form
- Catholic view that ghosts are spirits from purgatory to be believed
- England swinging from radical protestantism to Catholicism and back since Reformation
- Disease and plague rife at the time- Hamlet would have been considered old at 30
- Women in marriage literally become physical property of her husband
- Value based on their chastity
- Breitenberg: 'their chastity is a badge of honour for their husbands'
- 'Weak, frail, impatient and foolish'
- 'An excellent ornament of men'
- Below men on the chain of being
- Value based on their chastity
- Changing codes of masculinity
- Medieval idea among the elite of fighting to defend their honour and reputation
- New Renaissance ideas of honour as a matter of conscience and seeking ways to please God/ the state
- Renaissance humanitas- humanities should be studied and developed
- "What piece of work is man" directly based on Pico della Mirandola's 'Oration on the Dignity of Man'
- Science
- Biographical
- Shakespeare a possible Catholic- Warwickshire the heart of Catholicism
- Favourite of Lizzy I, Denmark used so as not to critises the political situation of England
- Son Hamnet died 1596- grief from this may have inspired play
- Shakespeare's play company- Lord Chamberlain's men
- Historical
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