Hamlet Essay Planning Flashcards
Madness - Guise for free speech
-Maynard Mack argues that madness is both a positive and a negative thing; it can be viewed as divine punishment but also as a guise for free speech. Mack says that those who are perceived to be mad have an “intuitive unformulated awareness”. Both Hamlet and Ophelia make
Action and Inaction- Gertrude
Janet Adelman: “it is the specter of his mother, not his uncle-father, who paralyzes his will” - Gertrude’s actions cause Hamlet’s confusion over morality - disagree, Though her character can be seen as passive for the first part of the play, it is in Act 5, Scene 2 that she fully realises her dramatic potential. She wilfully disobeys Claudius by drinking the poisoned wine. She dies with cries of ‘the drink! the drink! I am poisoned’ (5.2.264), and in so doing identifies Claudius as her killer. This, then, gives Hamlet the clarity of purpose, and the means and motive for revenge, which he has soliloquised over and struggled with throughout the play. As the scholar Marguerite Tassi says of Gertrude, ‘[i]n fulfilling her tragic role, the end crowns all; in the final moments of her life, she performs an extraordinary act that gives Hamlet motive and cue for killing the King’
Action and Inaction - Hamlet
As William Hazlitt argues: “He seems incapable of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion” - e.g. killing Polonius, or sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths.
This theory can even be translated into the final catastrophe, the stichomythia demonstrating the chaos of the scene.
However, can argue that the delay serves a dramatic function to emphasise both the catharsis and the catastrophe. Seneca, a Roman dramatist, philosopher and statesman whose dramas were very influential and are thought to have been the inspiration for the “Revenge Tragedy”, employed the use of 5 Acts in his plays. As he was very popular in Shakespeare’s time, one can argue that Shakespeare is just emulating the great.
Action and Inaction - Laertes and Fortinbras.
Eleanor Prosser: Laertes “is a hurricane. He rushes into the palace in an uncontrolled rage, roaring for blood, having no idea whom he seeks but ready “swoopstake”, to small all in his way.”
Laertes and Fortinbras are both typical Revenge Heros and serve an antithetical purpose as they highlight Hamlet’s inability to act and his philosophical nature that causes him so many problems.
Laertes fits the Roman honour- he is too concerned with family honour, Polonius’s funeral: “hugger-mugger”, without the appropriate “noble rite”. Ophelia too, as her funeral lacks “ceremony” - his family honour has been compromised.
