Context: Kingship, Power, Authority and Political Stability

Question 1

Type of monarchy used in Denmark

Answer 1

• an elective monarchy- the King was chosen by those in authority- the dying king having considerable say in the election
• examples in Hamlet: 1) the fact that Claudius become the king after Old Hamlet and not Hamlet
  2) Hamlet declaring Fortinbras to be the new king

Question 2

Hierarchy of the human pysche

Answer 2

In Shakespeare’s time ruler-ship was used as a metaphor to dictate the human pysche and how it should be controlled. Reason (located in the head) was equivalent to King and Clergy and should rule over Passion (located in the heart) which was equivalent to soldiers and nobility, which should, rule over appetite (located in the liver) which was equivalent to the artisans and peasantry

Question 3

explain Elizabethan concepts of Sacred Kinship

Answer 3

a religious and political concept by which a ruler is seen as an incarnation, manifestation, mediator, or agent of the sacred or holy (the transcendent or supernatural realm). The concept originated in prehistoric times but it continues to exert a recognisable influence in the modern world.

Question 4

King James I - ‘works’ on the divine right of kings

Answer 4

‘the state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth; for kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself are called Gods. There are three principal similitudes that illustrate the state of monarchy. I n scripture kings are called Gods and so their power after a certain relation compared to the divine power. Kings are also compared to fathers of families, and lastly a king is compared the the head of the microcosm of the body of a man.

Question 5

what does the term ‘body politic’ refer to and what was believed to happen to it in the 16t and 17th centurary

Answer 5

the metaphor to describe leadership of a country. The king is the heady of the microcosm of the state, and the lower you go down the body the lower you go down social hierarchical structures. During the 16th and 17th century analogies were made between diseases afflicting the physical body and the social and moral disorders that could infect a body politics

Question 6

Francis Bacon on the body politic

Answer 6

• the king had two bodies a natural body (physical and mortal) and his political identity
• bacon believed that the kings bodies were intrinsically combined as the ‘natural body of the king hath an operation and influence into his body politic, as well as his body politic hath upon his body natural, yet nevertheless his natural person which is one hath an operation upon both and createth

Question 7

Key passages in which the body politic is explored textually

Answer 7

• 1,5:35-90 (when the ghost tells Hamlet about the nature of his murder)
• 4,2:22-6 when telling Rosencratz where polonius’ body is

Question 8

Explain Elizabethan cosmology

Answer 8

The universe is bound together by harmony or concord. The music of the spheres orders the heavens, and music alike orded by and tempers human passions and social forces

Question 9

Why was Elizabeth I rule a terbulent socio-political period

Answer 9

• her reign was challenged by disputes about the legitimacy of her birth, and religion
• the catholic powers tried continually to overthrow her rule in order to re-impose Catholicism in England

Question 10

Man=in message of St Paul when he explians the chain of disobedimce

Answer 10

A king/ ruler is ‘the minister of God’ and thus should be respected and obeyed regardless of their virtue or vice

Question 11

Queen Elizabeth I in ‘homily on Obedience’ on a ‘wise and good prince’ vs a ‘undiscreet and wicked prince’

Answer 11

‘it is evident… both by scripture and by daily experience that the maintenace if all virtue and godliness, and thus the wealth and prosperity of a kingdom doth stand in a wise and good prince… the decay and utter ruin of a realm and people doth grow and come more by an undiscreet and evil governor… when the wicked reign then men go to ruin’

Question 12

John Dixon Hunt on the effect of a bad leader

Answer 12

in a political context personal evil hath wider, social implications; personal ambition can disrupt government and law

Question 13

Passages that relate to order vs anarchy

Answer 13

• 1,1:67-126 - talking about the aftermath of Hamlets defeat of old fortinbras
• 3,3:1-23-
• 4,5:78-106

Question 14

who was Niccolo di Bernardo dei machiavelli + reception in 16th cent. England

Answer 14

• 1469-1527: an Italian Renaissance historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist and writer. He is often referred to as the founder of modern political science. His most renowned work is the Prince (1513)
• The prince was a subject of both fascination and notoriety in the 16th cent. and significantly influenced contemporary drama-especially Shakespeare

Question 15

What does the term Machiavellianism refer to and why

Answer 15

• used to characterise unscrupulous politicians of the sort Machiavelli described most famously in the prince
• Machiavelli described immoral behaviour such as dishonesty, killing innocents, as being normal and effective in politics

Question 16

quotes from the prince that are relevant to Hamlet

Answer 16

• ‘A man who wants to acts virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous’-> could be used to defend 1. Claudius’s actions against Hamlet and 2. criticise Old Hamlet for not adopting a more Machiavellian model of leadership
• ‘A prince never lacks legitimate reason to break a promise’ -> used to support Hamlet delay/ relunctancy to fulfill his duty to the ghost

Question 17

extracts that support the view that Claudius is a Machiavellian leader (3)

Answer 17

1) 3,3: 1-23 Where Claudius decides to send Hamlet to england and orders his execution
2) 4,2: 14-21 Where Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildernstern of the Kings exploitation of them
3) 4,3:1-11 When trying to find Polonius’ body

Question 18

John Hunt on the body politic in (a thing of nothing; the catastrophic body in Hamlet)

Answer 18

‘the body politic is more than a metaphor for social organisation in this play; it describes a tightly integrated world where reality stems papably from the centres of political and religious authority’

Question 19

Francis Barker on the body politic in Hamlet

Answer 19

the abundant corporeal images used in the text of this period were not the dead metaphors that they are now but indices of a social order inn which the body has a central and irreducible place. with a clarity niw hard to recapture the social plenum is the body of the king’

Question 20

Ernest Kantorowicz

Answer 20

the king has in fact two bodies, his own plu a superbody equivalent to the corporate life of his nation. When reflecting upon the body politic in Richard II he argued that it was Shakespeare that eternalised [this] metaphor’

Question 21

Hamlets role in fixing the body politic in Denmark according to John Hunt

Answer 21

'’the time is out of joint’ in Denmark and the young prince has been called upon to plant his foot in the socket and violently ‘set it right’ an action that involves him in causing still more violation and dislocation

Question 22

What was the source that triggered the motif of ulcerous infection and corruption

Answer 22

Wolfgang Clemens book on Shakespeare’s imagery

Question 23

what does John Hunt argue that the speech in which the ghost tells hamlet of his murder imoact the plot

Answer 23

-the figure of the dead king organises coroprea, imagery and those of plot forthe physical, pyschological, moral and political undoing suffered by the plays living characters

Question 24

Brown on hamelt’s in relation to his society

Answer 24

‘He is a thinker in a society of do-ers, a student surrounded by warriors’

Question 25

Brown: one possible reason that hamlet was not given the throne

Answer 25

-old hamlet perceived these qualities in his son [a university student, friend of actors, portrayed more often with a book in his hand than a sword] as failings’

Question 26

Brown on the tragedy of hamlet

Answer 26

‘the tragedy of Hamlet is not a single death nor the death of so many with him. It is that the possibilities die with him’

Question 27

Marxism reading on the main conflict in Hamlet

Answer 27

‘Hamlet is the tragedy of an emergent culture being destroyed by a tactic union of the dominant and regressive cultures… the hegemony of the state is such that it can reconcile a nation to its enemy and stifle the emergent new order which hamlet represents