Class Notes: 11/29 - 12/10

Hamlet 

Act 1, Scene 1.

Why does this play open with a question?

• it's the question of identity - who belongs and doesn't belong. The loyalty to the king?

Confusion with characters in scene one.

• and as for the weather, many assumed it was foggy

The Ghost and Night

Lines 148-165 illustrates the separation between night and day:

• day is holier than night
• ghosts are a part of the night because they're not holy

Is the ghost there for Denmark's well-being, or its own?

Does something dead have a rightful place on Earth, or is it just an usurper?

Ophelia:

the reference to Jepthah

• Hamlet showing the audience that he knows that Polonius is using his daughter as a means to an end

Her relationship with Hamlet- just sex?
She was pregnant- hence the drowning.
Perhaps she is not so innocent..

•       her role in her father's plan

Hamlet's Voice

• uses words as a shield for his emotions and a sword for vicious attacks on others
• of the characters that we actually get to know, Hamlet's the one that  the most at stake
• He's the most feeling and honest person.
• "the bully's the most scared person in the room"
• he is caught in conflicts and dilemas
• Christian and non-Christian
• sane and insane
• loves Ophelia and doesn't love Ophelia
• acting on his own and acting for his father

Gertrude and the Garden of Eden Motif

• vengeance is not man's business, but God's
• "there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow" (bible connection)
• motif of the usurper:
• only God could put people in power
• relevant in Elizabethan society because the "natural order"
• Gertrude as an Eve figure
• she did not conspire to kill the king but..
• was she having an affair?
• Claudius as the serpent.

Hamlet in Film

      

The Different Hamlets an actor can portray..

1. raging Hamlet
2. weepy Hamlet
3. clinically cold, detached Hamlet
• actors are usually forced to choose between these, though sometimes they can achieve all three