Hamlet Key Themes

Created by: bettyengland820
Created on: 17-05-24 20:36

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Hamlet
- Revenge
  - Quotes
    - 'Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder'
    - 'Now I could drink hot blood'
    - 'My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth'
    - 'Revenge should have no bounds'
    - 'The serpent that did sting thy fathers life now wears his crown'
  - Context
    - Subversion of typical revenge tragedy
      - Smith - Shakespeare combines conventions with deeper issues concerning morality and privacy
      - Soliloquies invented in Elizabethan drama emergence of modern theatre, exploration of interiority
    - Thomas Kyd (Spanish Tragedy) wrote a text called 'UR Hamlet' before Shakespeare
    - Emergence of individuality within feudalism to a capitalistic society, emergence of entrepreneurial self
      - Greenblad – 'the emergence of an individual voice in Shakespeare'
  - Interpretations
    - Smith - 'all of Hamlet's obstacles to his revenge are internal'
    - Cumberbatch - 'Hamlet's thoughts are synapse-like'
    - Cohen - 'Hamlet becomes disillusioned with the human condition and as a result becomes melancholic and thus unable to act'
- Surveillance
  - Quotes
    - 'Denmark's a prison'
    - 'the plays the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king'
  - Interpretations
    - Gregory Doran (2008) - David Tennant's Hamlet becomes aware he is being spied on using security cameras
    - Kenneth Branagh (1996) -
      - Arras symbolised by double sided glass in some modern productions
        'where is your father?'
    - Bristol Old Vic (2022) -Hamlet records his soliloquies on a tape recorder
  - Context
    - Surveillance as a corruptive force that represents the deterioration of the power of the monarchy
    - Shakespeare's criticism of he absolute power given when a country is ruled within a constitutional monarchy.
- Death
  - Quotes
    - 'to be or not to be'
    - 'o that this too too solid flesh would melt'
    - 'the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish the marriage table
  - Context
    - Hamlet written after the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet, a lot of the feelings of grief are most likely Shakespeares own
    - Religious concerns surrounding ways of death reflected in Hamlet/Claudius soliloquies
      - 'O, my offence is rank: it smells to heaven
  - Interpretations
    - Kenneth Branagh (1996) - Statue of Old King Hamlet as a memento mori - first and last shot
    - Pre-Raphelite Art
      - Millais (1851) - beautiful representation of death, romanticisation of her suicide
        floriography presenting a romanticised version of her suicide
      - Burthe (1851) - sexualised representation of Ophelia's suicide, exposed breast, white dress symbolising viginity
- Gender
  - Quotes
    - 'get thee to a nunnery'
    - 'tis unmanly grief'
    - 'frailty thy name is woman'
      - Showalter - 'Hamlet’s disgust at the feminine passivity in himself is translated into violent revulsion against women and into his brutal behaviour towards Ophelia'
    - 'I'll loose my daughter to him'
      - Jacques (Freudian Critic) - 'that piece of bait [Ophelia]'
    - 'the lady doth protest too much methinks'
  - Interpretations
    - Brown - 'because she has no agency over her own life and body, she is driven further into madness'
    - Showalter - 'Ophelia is deprived of thought, sexuality and language'
    - Kozintsev (1964) - Ophelia as a marionette being physically controlled by the men around her
    - Shakespeare in The Park (2023) - Ophelia as a singer who loses her voice as she descends into madness
    - Swan - 'by not having a controlling presence in her life, she loses control’
- Madness
  - Quotes
    - 'Who does it then? His madness.'
    - 'Though it be madness, yet there is method in’t'
    - 'To put an antic disposition on'
  - Context
    - By the end of the play, Hamlet seems to doubt his own sanity, he has become estranged from his former, sane self.
      - 'And when he’s not himself does harm Laertes'
    - Madness as a response to the political corruption within the court and the outer world
  - Interpretations
    - Peragine - 'Ophelia feigns madness in order to speak her mind more freely'
    - Croxton - '[Hamlet's madness] is not a symptom of some mysterious malaise that has taken over him but the only sane response to an insane predicament in a society that no longer makes sense
    - Showalter - 'Is [Ophelia] the textual archetype of woman as madness or madness as woman?'

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Hamlet Key Themes

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