‘Nostalgia in Hamlet’, Professor Emma Smith
Hamlet is “most at home in the modern world”
“For us, Hamlet's soliloquies have come to represent a completely
overdetermined articulation of fraught or reflective consciousness.”
“We're completely attuned to seeing Hamlet as a play that anticipates modernity
that looks forward.”
Shakespeare “doubles the name Hamlet, both for the dead father and for the
living son. […] the first time we hear the word Hamlet in this play, it refers not to
the living Prince, but to the dead former King”
“It’s tempting perhaps to speculate that [the Ghost] might be the Hamlet. The
play is named after the overshadowing Hyperion, who is so idolised by his son,
that it is impossible for the son properly to succeed”
“From the outset, Hamlet the play is preoccupied with the past.”
“the play is doubly reiterative - a ghost is always a recollection of the past, and
the ghost that has appeared before is doubly recollective.”
“Father and son share a name […] young Hamlet cannot form an independent
identity for himself.”
“Hamlet is similar to “the Prince Henry in Henry the Fourth Part One, another
Prince trying to escape the burden of a father with whom he shares the same
name”
“Laurence Olivier’s uncredited voiceover of the ghosts role in his 1948 film, in
which he also plays the main character is a literalisation of the overlap between
father and son.”
“The appearance of the ghost pulls Hamlet into a past and away from the
future.”
The ghosts encouragement, “remember me”, is a command for the son to join
him in the past.
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