Motifs and symbols
Ears - needed to discover the truth in a corrupt and dangerous world, but also vehicles for
murder and distortion of the truth
- ‘Sit down awhile; And let us once again assail your ears’ (Act 1 Scene 1)
- ‘I would not hear your enemy say so, Nor shall you do my ear that violence To make
it truster of your own report Against yourself.’ (Act 1 Scene 2)
- ‘Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice’ (Act 1 Scene 3)
- ‘Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain, If with too credent ear you list his
songs’ (Act 3 Scene 1)
- ‘the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forged process of my death Rankly abused’ (Act 1
Scene 5)
- ‘But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood.’ (Act 1 Scene 5)
- ‘With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, And in the porches of my ears did pour The
leperous distilment’ (Act 1 Scene 5)
- ‘Hark you, Guildenstern; and you too: at each ear a hearer’ (Act 2 Scene 2)
- ‘Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear’ (Act 2
Scene 2)
- ‘He would drown the stage with tears And cleave the general ear with horrid speech’
(Act 2 Scene 2)
- ‘Make mad the guilty and appal the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.’ (Act 2 Scene 2)
- ‘to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to
split the ears of the groundlings’ (Act 3 scene 2)
- ‘Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's
ears, and exit.’ (Act 3 Scene 2)
- ‘Pours the poison into the sleeper's ears’ (Act 3 Scene 2)
- ‘Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear, Blasting his wholesome brother’ (Act 3
Scene 4)
- ‘O, speak to me no more; These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears’ (Act 3
Scene 4)
- ‘a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear’ (Act 4 Scene 5)
- ‘Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd, Will nothing stick our person to arraign In ear
and ear.’ (Act 4 Scene 5)
- ‘wants not buzzers to infect his ear With pestilent speeches of his father's death’ (Act
4 Scene 5)
- ‘I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb’ (Act 4 Scene 6)
- ‘The ears are senseless that should give us hearing’ (Act 5 Scene 2)
- Aural poison and verbal violence
- Foreshadowing and irony
- Hearing, although characters have a tendency to take what they hear for truth, can in
reality often be a source of deception and lies.
- Hamlet is the only character who can hear the ghost. This is another example of the
issue of whether hearing is always a source of truth, or whether what the characters
believe that they hear is even real.
, - Ears as supremely vulnerable organs, situated at the threshold between the body
and its environment
- The careful staging and juxtaposition of the Dumb-Show and Mouse-Trap sequence
provides a dramatisation of the functions of the eye and ear and of the relative
effectiveness of the two forms of drama
- The images of malignancy associated with the ear
- The ghost uses the phrase ‘ear’ before he even talks about his own ear being
poisoned. Moreover in order to emphasise the function of hearing even more
cogently, the ghost engages Hamlet's ear, by saying "Now, Hamlet, hear.”. Hamlet
must decide if this communication is also poisonous.
- In the Mouse-Trap, because drama enters the ear, therefore, "Claudius must see and
understand", and what Hamlet does, in effect, is to “pour poison into Claudius’ ears”.
- It is after seeing and hearing or 'ingesting' the play that the King appears to repent.
- “[Hamlet] Behind the arras hearing something stir Whips out his rapier” - H kills P
because he can hear but not see. Thus Hamlęt becomes a victim of his own poor
judgement based on that which "seems", which is an erroneous assessment of the
sense data available to him.
- Ears are most often at risk of some form of violence or danger: not only are they
literally poisoned, but they are also “abus’d”, “[t]ake[n] prisoner”, “cleave[d]”,
“mildew’d”, and metaphorically stabbed.
- Verbs like "split" and "cleave" suggest that sound opens up a wound in the hearer's
body, allowing words to pour in unmeditated, regardless of their sense
- A dangerous channel for corruption, a description that would seem, at first glance,
opposed to the Protestant emphasis on the ear as the avenue to grace.
- Ears are the fragile body’s portals, as well as gateways to the mind, vulnerable to
attack and open to abuse through lies - exposing individuals to slander as well as
necessary truth
Eyes
- Information gained through the eye alone can be incomplete or ineffectual
- It is significant that the play begins on a speculation about hearing and seeing
- “[Hamlet] Behind the arras hearing something stir Whips out his rapier” - H kills P
because he can hear but not see
Disease and decay - the manifestation and consequence of moral corruption
- ‘'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.’ (Act 1 Scene 2)
- ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.’ (Act 1 Scene 4)
- ‘This heavy-headed revel east and west Makes us traduced and tax'd of other
nations: They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase Soil our addition’ (Act 1
Scene 4)
- ‘The whole ear of Denmark Is by a forged process of my death Rankly abused’ (Act
1 Scene 5)
- ‘And curd, like eager droppings into milk…Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome
crust, All my smooth body.’ (Act 1 Scene 5)
- ‘marry, none so rank As may dishonour him’ (Act 2 Scene 1)
- ‘For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion’ (Act 2
Scene 2)
