Hamlet

Lecture notes 2

1) Introduction
We will be seeking elements that go into enabling the character of Hamlet
to exist. And then start to address question of why Hamlet in 1600 seems
so modern. We will be focusing on the self to answer these questions.
Skipping a great deal here -make historians blanch but we will be
bold.
2) Summary Last week from the Greek to the medieval Christian world
through the Reformation and Renaissance to 1600 changes internal to
Christ and vs it certainties going + more thing
3) Scientific Revolution Copernican shift in 1500s to Galileo in early
1600s from earth centred not moving view (see Dante) to sun-centred
solar system. A touch later than Hamlet with 1610 Starry Messenger but
vs Aristotles differentiated movement and matter, ie between circular
unblemished eternal stuff of heaven to the corruptible stuff of earth. All
now one and subject to laws of nature -as science can discover. Old
medieval cosmos in which could find place coming apart even if
Copernicus and Galileo didnt see this side of it very clearly.
4) The self in Hamlet theme: lack of certainty all reference point
fail to tragic consequences
i)

Ophelia the gendered self

For Hamlet the male/masculine aspects can be seen as vital
Claudius tells him that his grief is unmanly (Act 1,2) and his
hesitation can be seen partly as his battle to match the male
ideal especially as represented by his father
Feminine side being criticized,
Hamlet is seen as sweet- by horatio, feminine side of hamlet.
good night sweet prince
But it is with Ophelia that this gendered self is dominant where to find place/meaning in the plainly patriarchal unequal
world for women. In fact all lost father gone, but especially
romantic love relation to male- Hamlet. He did love and then
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not and sex defining this self Arguable that spleen H feels
for mother transferred to all women (Frailty thy name is woman
Act 1, 2 in first soliloquy)
Think she is loved by hamlet, dies perhaps she kills herself.
Cant find a place, goes mad and commits suicide. get thee to a
nunnery- brothel- convent (double meaning)
But see just in famous attack by Hamlet Act 3, 1, line 122 just
after To be or not to be Get thee to a nunnery. Just this phase
sets up a whole raft of often termed binaries that O has to
negotiate and cannot. See in double of meaning of brothel and
convent:
Pure/impure; sacred/profane- religious/wordly understanding,
worldly/heavenly, love/sex, duty/disobedience: dualities
And then reason/madness she sees this in Hamlet
reason/mind overthrown just after this attack
They are not greek ideologies, the notion of nunnery is a
Christian order. Modern term. The fate of christianity
OPHELIA
O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! (3,1, line149)
But then she falls prey to madness - no place for her- all gone
and even at end death not certain - did she kill herself no
clarity for what she should do or did even here and even when
dead. In the graveyard scene if she did kill herself then cannot
have Christian burial + the clowns/gravediggers banter on
whose grave it is - doubts/ideas there that even in death she
has no place she is no one.
Her death is questionable- if suicide she cannot be buried there
What man dost thou dig it for?
For no man, sir.
What woman, then?
For none, neither. (5,1. Line 15)
Unworthy if dead. She escapes grief by committing suicide

ii)

Hamlet

First a few big points then I will put these into a longer list.
a) Loses assurances/points of authority of both Renaissance
and Christianity. In text Renaissance speech (II,2, 255 p46)
-humanism shown and doubted and in end reference to Julius
Caesar as bunghole (V, 1, 183, 191 p113) + on Christianity lots of references to God, heaven, hell but in end doubtful. If
all about salvation and death then To be or not to be the
undiscovered country ( 3,I, 80 p57) doubts this. The old forces
of reassurance are present and doubted (PLAY TO BE OR NOT
TO BE ?). Undiscovered country from whose bourne no
traveler returns think on this. Despite ghost of father who did
return and whole Christian salvation from death meaning only
trust if a human came back. To human here but elsewhere not
enough. Here is point every time puts up some reference point
in the complex world view will elsewhere doubt it against
another reference point. Just inconsistent or really showing us
something about this worldview and self within it.
b) Interior self/human left alone. Renaissance helped question
Christian certainties (as did challenges from within from
Protestantism) but both Ren. and Christ. doubted. + With
gathering scientific revolution old cosmos of meaning becoming
undone. Nothing left but this interior self without the religious
setting to look within but without the truth at the end; and the
human as the measure but without surety of the classical
reference point. And the proof: the soliloquies.
c) Agency. Such doubts lead to the famous inaction of H. not
kill Claudius, not kill himself (cf Oedipus all is lost but he still
acts in the self blinding+ Just to note the Freudian reading see
Jones article in the Norton edition)
Let us now develop these ideas more fully see where they
might lead us
5) Hamlet alone one interpretation - no firm footing, absolutes,
guarantees. A summary of a set of reference points that go into to
make up Hamlets worldview how played off each other.
a) Ghost- enchanted forces doubtful. Disenchantment as in fact
process in play ghost absent at end. And remember put on play
because cannot trust ghost might be devil enchanted forces
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there but not a guaranteed authority and fades. And for Hamlet,
in and out of use even early in To be or not to be as just seen.
b) God as in religion, again part of general notion of enchanted
meaningful cosmos - as just said -there but only on occasions
c) Own reason (great tradition from Greeks for Plato/ Socrates
led to truth) not to be trusted into madness? And when reasons
never gets a clear conclusion only doubt not truth at end so
cannot act on this in fact in To be or not to be reason seen as
cause of inaction too much thought
And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with
the pale cast of thought,
d) Renaissance humanism as just stated- strength dissipated,
human at centre but not the power, undoubted agency. Perhaps
his father represented Renaissance human strength (seen as
Hyperion, Hercules in first soliloquy 1,11 29-59) but he
equivocates. Renaissance humanist background always cited but
in fact here, by then, early 17th century, is undoubted presence
but also showing the inherent problems of man being the
measure.
e) Even art- the play does not give the clear answer desired.
f) Romantic love denied with Ophelia
g) Family comfort gone- mother a slut
h) Tradition of lineage lost why is he not king? Is he not the sonand Claudius has mocked the proper forms of ascension.
i) Death. Even no comfort in Death mocked in graveyard, To be
or not to be the undiscovered countryj) Friends betray and are betrayed.
k) Ends up alone. Just the human reduced, and searching the
interior self without the possibility of a final truth. Quote IV,7,
51 - p 101- returns to Denmark letter to king comes naked and
alone.
'Tis Hamlets character. 'Naked!And in a postscript here, he says
'alone.' Can you advise me?
The human, interior self, without absolute truth
Can compare to all other characters we have met (eg Oedipus
tragic but to fulfil fate is to affirm divine order, and with
Socrates/Plato is assumption of right action in world for humans
to find and follow). All have some truth, certainty, place in worldnot Hamlet. And Greeks never alone [only perhaps Antigone, in
the play of the same name by Sophocles, at times and then she is
part of divine order and linked to family in death.]
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Hamlet and Ophelia end up alone. No place in the world

6) Conclusion - why so many interpretations+ why is it so
modern
Odd at this time these great historical forces help cancel each
other out as the final arbiters. This play reveals so much, but plays
off one part of this worldview against another with no resting
place- but so many places are set up and then undermined
But also of our time. As we go on will see how new certainties
arise the Enlightenment (with Rousseau and Franklin) in fact
with this interior self at the centre - but they too will come to be
doubted. So our own time like 1600, will be more one of doubt
than certainty of action, but the self will be very similar to that of
Hamlet. We have come after an age of guarantees and a worldview
that gave a place for the individual; and we cannot seem to do
anything else than cling to what that age still offers. To be at a
similar juncture in the history of the west and its ideas, starts to
explain why Hamlet, beyond the Elizabethan language, seems so
modern. We have to try to found ourselves on some values and
truths, but the sureties that made them, seem difficult to recapture.
Notes from Underground will show this again.
Nest time into the 18th century - Enlightenment and Romanticism
an age that gives us a lot of our modern foundations for meaninginto modernity. We will try to see how this modern worldview
works and also how it comes to be radically undone.