Intro to Hamlet

The Lion King

The Great Chain of

Being

Godhead (The Holy Trinity)Angels

Pope (Catholics)Kings/Queens

Princes/PrincessesArchbishops (Princes of the church)

Dukes/Duchesses (lesser royals related by blood to Kings/Queens)

Bishops Other large landowners with royal connections

(Earls, Viscounts, etc.) Abbots/Deacons (local church leaders)

Knights/Local OfficialsLadies-in-Waiting (Courtiers)

Priest/monks Messengers

Merchants/ShopkeepersTradesmen (cartwrights, coopers, etc)

Yeomen Farmers (owners of small farms)Soldiers/Town WatchHousehold Servants

Tenant Farmers Herdsmen

BeggarsActors

Thieves/PiratesGypsiesAnimals

BirdsWormsPlantsRocks

Main idea of Great Chain of Being If something is bad at the top,

everyone suffers “Something is rotten in the state of

Denmark” You should not try to move yourself

up the chain – dire consequences can occur

The problem with ghosts

  Ghosts, souls of the dead who make return trips to

earth for specific reasons, limited their visiting hours to darkness and always disappeared before or at dawn.

A ghost always had a mission to perform. The visit was an unpleasant experience that cast the

visited person into a state of spiritual confusion. The church insisted that ghosts were just devils in

disguise. Yet, ignoring the wishes of a real ghost could have

equally dire consequences.

Horatio: “What if it tempt you toward the flood, my Lord? Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff and. . .deprive(s) your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness?”Hamlet: “. . .unhand me, gentlemen. By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me! (holds me back) I say away!—Go on. I’ll follow thee.”

The model revenge play – sound familiar? A secret murder, usually of a benign ruler by a bad one A ghostly visitation of the murder victim to a younger

kinsman, generally a son A period of disguise, intrigue, or plotting, in which the

murderer and the avenger scheme against each other, with a slowly rising body count

A descent into either real or feigned madness by the avenger or one of the auxiliary characters

An eruption of general violence at the end, which (in the Renaissance) is often accomplished by means of a feigned masque or festivity

A catastrophe that generally decimates the dramatis personae, including the avenger

Hamlet as a Renaissance man Hamlet is gifted. Hamlet is enigmatic. Hamlet is philosophical and

contemplative, drawn to difficult questions.

Hamlet is an empiricist. Hamlet is a man of action. Hamlet is an idealist, refusing to be

complacent with the way things are.

Relationship of thought to action Montaigne

To philosophize is to learn to die His project – know and understand

himself Bacon

Limits of human understanding Descartes

I think, therefore I am existing

Philosophy in Hamlet

"Seems," madam? Nay, I know not "seems."

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

Back to Machiavelli…

The Prince – 1513 – describes Renaissance politics perfectly…

King Claudius, Polonius Other Shakespearean plays exploring

this – Macbeth, Richard III Hamlet stands in contrast- The time

is out of joint! O cursed spite/ That ever I was born to set it right

Shakespeare’s language

Some facts about Shakespeare and words: The Oxford English Dictionary credits

Shakespeare with introducing nearly 3,000 words into the English language.

Scholars estimate Shakespeare’s vocabulary at between 25,000 and 29,000 words, nearly twice that of the average college student. The normal working vocabulary of a speaker of English is around 5,000 words.

In the words of Louis Marder, "Shakespeare was so facile in employing words that he was able to use over 7,000 of them—more than occur in the whole King James version of the Bible—only once and never again."

1. Read the scene summaries at the beginning of each scene (left side of the paper). If you do this, you will NOT need to use Sparknotes or No Fear Shakespeare.

How to understand Shakespeare

How to understand Shakespeare2. Look at the left page in your book for

definitions of your words and replace them in the sentence

“Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself” Unfold yourself: disclose your identity“Nay, answer me. Stand and disclose your identity!”

“If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus/The rivals of my watch. . . ” Rivals of my watch: my fellow sentries

3. Look up words you don’t know.sentry = a member of a guard or watch. liegemen = faithful follower

4. Find contractions/omissions and change them. 'tis ~ it is oft ~ oftenope ~ open i' ~ ino'er ~ over e'en ~ evengi' ~ give ‘twas ~ it wasne'er ~ never e'er ~ ever‘twere ~ it were

How to understand Shakespeare

5. Put brackets around each sentence, looking for periods and semicolons. The ends of lines are not where you should stop.

6. Put words in the correct order – (sandwich example)

I ate the sandwich. I the sandwich ate. Ate the sandwich I. Ate I the sandwich. The sandwich I ate. The sandwich ate I.

In modern English, the most common sentence pattern is subject (S), verb (V), object (O), or I (S) ate (V) the sandwich (O).

But as this example shows, most common does not mean only possible, and while some of these constructions (“Ate the sandwich I”) are pretty unusual, they are nonetheless grammatically correct.

Unusual word order in a sentence is called inversion. Shakespeare used inversion to create specific dramatic and poetic effects:▪ to create specific poetic rhythms, ▪ emphasize key words▪ to give a character a specific speech pattern

(think Polonius, for example)▪ or for a variety of other purposes.

Experienced readers “re-order” the words to understand the sentence. They locate the subject and the verb and “re-write” the sentence for clarity (“Ate the sandwich I” is quickly changed to “I ate the sandwich”).