Hamlet contezt
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- Created on: 12-05-17 08:59
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- Hamlet Context and Critics
- Family relationships
- Elizabethan families were often based on political gain, suspicion and oppressive standardised roles
- Revenge Tragedy: Family ties rather than being rooted in love and affection become a distorted relationship based on power, domination and submision
- Robert Burton 'Anatomy of Melancholy': 'The impulse cause of all these miseries in man was the sin of our first parent Adam'
- Michael Mangan: 'Hamlet's dilemma involves a negotiation of the contrasting imperatives of the moral codes' which Hamlet and his father re[resent
- Elizabethan period saw a shift from the Medieval chivalric code of masculinity and feudal order based on military prowess, to a humanist moral code
- Hamlet's philosophical thought parallels to Montaigne's concern with the self
- Bart Vanes: 'Hamlet is a play about change...divided between a feudal order and a morder world of realpolitik'
- Elizabethan period saw a shift from the Medieval chivalric code of masculinity and feudal order based on military prowess, to a humanist moral code
- Caroline Spurgeon- disease imagery of an 'ulcer' reoccurs throughout the play, with Claudius' murder of his brother contributing to the unwholesome state of Denmark
- Claudius' parallels to Cain, with his first murder catalysing the tragic events of the rest of the play
- Michael Mangan: 'Hamlet's dilemma involves a negotiation of the contrasting imperatives of the moral codes' which Hamlet and his father re[resent
- Psychoanalytical Critic: Ophelia becomes an 'object' of male power
- Women fall below men and only one level above animals on the 'Great Chain of Being'
- Protestant theologian: John Knox: 'Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man'
- John Knox: women are 'weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish'
- Protestant theologian: John Knox: 'Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man'
- Cornelius a Lapide: 'Woman is an excellent ornament to man...over which many may exercisehis jurisdiction and authority
- The security of society and peace of mind of men was dependent upon women's virginity, making them a bargaining tool for advantageous marriage to benefit the father's social status
- Women fall below men and only one level above animals on the 'Great Chain of Being'
- Women during the Elizabethan era were considered subordinate and dependent on the male members of the family
- Capulet's cruelty towards Juliet when she disobeys his 'decree' to marry Paris reflects how Elizabethan families were allowed to punish and beat the women in the family into submission
- Sir Thomas Elyot: 'The good nature of a woman is to be mild, timorous, tractable, benign;
- Women were possessions, financially dependent on father, until they were handed over to the rule of their husbands, whom they had to honour and obey
- Capulet's cruelty towards Juliet when she disobeys his 'decree' to marry Paris reflects how Elizabethan families were allowed to punish and beat the women in the family into submission
- Robert Burton 'Anatomy of Melancholy': 'The impulse cause of all these miseries in man was the sin of our first parent Adam'
- Revenge Tragedy: Family ties rather than being rooted in love and affection become a distorted relationship based on power, domination and submision
- Late- Victorian critic A.C Bradley: Hamlet's preoccupation with his mother's sexuality is a 'perfectly natural' response to the location of a perverse sexual drive in the maternal figure
- Kenneth Brannagh production: Shows Hamlet violently throwing his mother onto the bed, signifying the return of a repressed oedipal complex
- Psychoanalytical critic Ernst Jones: Hamlet's repressed oedpal complex is 'stimulated to unconscious activity by the sight of Claudius usurping this place exactly as he himseld had once longed to do'
- Elizabethan families were often based on political gain, suspicion and oppressive standardised roles
- Psychological conflict
- The Elizabethan theatre had started to present the self as internally divided, bringing these fractured minds into the public domain
- Conventions of Revenge Tragedy: preoccupied with the divided self and the moral dilemmas that arise from the shift in authority from the state to the individual
- Despite it being a dramatic convention to present revenge as a moral imperative, the orthodox view of the Elizabethan establishment was that revenge engendered the deterioration of the mind and soul
- Timothy Bright's 'Treatise on Melancholia': Melancholia and madness were believed to be a disorder in the psyche, associated with allowing the passion to overcome reason
- Elizabethan ideas of rulership closely connected to ideas about human psyche- A man should make reason king over passion: Reason equivalent to king and nobility
- Conventions of Revenge Tragedy: preoccupied with the divided self and the moral dilemmas that arise from the shift in authority from the state to the individual
- A contemporary view of 'foolishness' was that it offered a kind of divine prophetic insight
- Corinthians 1:25: 'foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom'
- Maynard Mack: the psychological conflict of characters provides them with 'intuitive and unformulated awareness' into the flaws of character's around them
- Michal Magnan: Hamlet's psychological conflict arises from continually searching for 'models on which to construct his masculinity'
- A. C. Bradley: 'the suffering and calamity of the Revenge Tragedy extends past the hero'
- Late-Victorian Critic A.C. Bradley: Hamlet's obsession with his mother's sexuality is 'perfectly natural'
- Kenneth Brannagh production shows Hamlet violently throwing mother onto bed
- Late-Victorian Critic A.C. Bradley: Hamlet's obsession with his mother's sexuality is 'perfectly natural'
- The Elizabethan era saw a shift from the old chivalric order based on military prowess to a new humanist code based on realpolitik- Hamlet represents this liminal state between codes
- Fortinbras and Laertes are presented as archetypal Machiavellian figures, acting as foils to highlight the inadequacy of Hamlet, as he fails to carry out his role as revenger
- Hamlet's preoccupation of the self reflects the increasing concern with internal dualism during the Elizabethan era, with the writings of Montaigne calling for introspection
- Sense of increasing optimism in human reason during Renaissance, reflected in the scientific writings of Francis Bacon and Leonard Diggs
- Conflict between two cultural movements unfolding during the 16th c: Renaissance belief that human nature could be reformed, moving from medieval era modern culture based on reason, where Protestantism during Reformation was founded upon a pessimistic belief in the frailty of the human condition- seven deadly sins, either damned or saved, no chance of redemption in purgatory
- Sense of increasing optimism in human reason during Renaissance, reflected in the scientific writings of Francis Bacon and Leonard Diggs
- A. C. Bradley: 'the suffering and calamity of the Revenge Tragedy extends past the hero'
- The Elizabethan theatre had started to present the self as internally divided, bringing these fractured minds into the public domain
- Women
- Conventions of Revenge Tragedy: presentation of female virginity and monstrous nature of sexually transgressive females, coheres to Elizabethan preoccupation with values of chastity and virtue
- Early 20th c Critic A.C Bradley: Hamlet's repulsion towards female sexuality and the threat it poses to his identity results in the 'suffering and calamity that extends past the hero' and destroys the female characters in the play
- A.C Bradley: Hamlet's obsession with his mother's sexuality is 'perfectly natural'
- Kenneth Brannagh production shows Hamlet violently throwing mother on bed- way of exerting masculine power over her
- Late 20th c feminist critic Elaine Showalter posited that Ophelia's madness records the detrimental effects of stifling the female voice
- Kate Flint: Ophelia's madness does not endanger anyone but herself
- Late 20th c feminist critic Elaine Showalter posited that Ophelia's madness records the detrimental effects of stifling the female voice
- Kenneth Brannagh production shows Hamlet violently throwing mother on bed- way of exerting masculine power over her
- Gertrude presented as an Eve figure, poisoning the world and the self for her son
- Caroline Spurgeon: imagery of disease is 'reiterative' in the play- Hamlet directs it towards what he views as the corrupt female sexuality
- Mariah Gale's Ophelia draws attention to Elizabethan sexual double standards as she points out that Laertes has contraceptives whilst warning her against expressing her sexuality
- World of the play becomes a microcosm for the Elizabethan court, in which the language of women was heavily circumscribed
- John Hunt: the image of the body in the play becomes one 'rooted in disgust', something that is particularly clear in the case of the female body
- Caroline Spurgeon: imagery of disease is 'reiterative' in the play- Hamlet directs it towards what he views as the corrupt female sexuality
- Bridget Lyons: 'Ophelia is most persistently presented in terms of her symbolic meaning'; her presence is more iconographical rather than physical
- Hence the later pictorial tradition from the pre-Raphaelites to modern artists of depicting Ophelia in highly aestheticized terms- Millais' 'Ophelia'
- A.C Bradley: Hamlet's obsession with his mother's sexuality is 'perfectly natural'
- Early 20th c Critic A.C Bradley: Hamlet's repulsion towards female sexuality and the threat it poses to his identity results in the 'suffering and calamity that extends past the hero' and destroys the female characters in the play
- Conventions of Revenge Tragedy: presentation of female virginity and monstrous nature of sexually transgressive females, coheres to Elizabethan preoccupation with values of chastity and virtue
- Politics and power
- John Dixon Hunt: 'personal evil has wider social implications' than that of a state
- Play reflects contemporary Elizabethan fears concerning the e threat of rebellion and war- The Earl of Essex Rebellion 1601
- Elizabethan era was a time of political destabilisation and anxiety- Elizabeth didn't have a successor; prompted question of who had legitimate right to rule
- Richard II- about overthrow of a king, performed on eve of Earl of Essex Rebellion
- Catholic church authorised assassination attempts on Elizabeth's life, published homilies of obedience- fragility of power
- C.S Lewis- 'the ghost signifies a breaking down of the walls of the world'
- Francis Bacon- believed in the idea of the divine body of the king
- Kosintev's Russian production of Hamlet
- Machiavelli 'The Prince'- moral men don't survive, belief that successful political rulers have to seize power
- 'Ragio de Stato'- reasons of state, rulers often have to do things which are seen as immoral to achieve power
- Play reflects contemporary Elizabethan fears concerning the e threat of rebellion and war- The Earl of Essex Rebellion 1601
- John Dixon Hunt: 'personal evil has wider social implications' than that of a state
- Family relationships
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