1. Explore heroism in Hamlet.
Shakespeare presents the theme of heroism as central to ‘Hamlet’. From Old
Hamlet, Frotinbas and Laertes being the embodiment of traditional mediaeval
heroism through their masculinity and quick reckless actions to the feminine
passivity of Hamlet which makes him unable to carry out his revenge and emulate
his father, Shakespeare presents a conflict between mediaeval ideals of heroism
and Renaissance ideas of heroism through the character of Hamlet. Overall, the
ability to demonstrate heroism is hindered by philosophical thought, the ability to
overthrow this mind set allows for revenge to come more naturally.
● Shakespeare presents Hamlet as a Renaissance prince by challenging typical ideas of
heroism
- Graham Holderness- Hamlet finds himself ‘unable to emulate the heroic values
of his father’
- Upon seeing the ghost, Hamlet says that he will ‘sweep to my revenge’ ‘with
wings as swift / As meditation or the thoughts of love’
- Shakespeare uses repeated soliloquies to convey Hamlet’s introspective and
meditative nature: ‘To be or not to be’ sees Hamlet pondering the nature and
value of life itself
- Shakespeare bases the play on Saxo Grammaticus- decision to change names-
shows that Hamlet wants emulate the heroism of his father who appears in
‘armour’ and carries a ‘truncheon’- but ultimately he is unable to do so
● Shakespreare presentsLaertes as a foil to Hamlet as he displays the bloodlust
necessary for a mediaeval revenge hero
- Laertes defers to Claudius, calling him ‘my dread lord’, and Claudius readily
accepts his request to go back to France (consider contrast with Hamlet)
- Laertes tells Claudius that he will ‘cut his [Hamlet’s] throat i’ the church’
- A messenger describes Laertes using natural imagery: ‘The ocean, overpeering
of his list, Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste than young Laertes’- the
use of naturalistic language suggests that it is within Laertes natural nature to
be inclined towards revenge unlike Hamlet who has to make himself into the
image of a revenge hero
- At the time there was a revival of chivalric values- conventions of loyalty,
courage, violence for ones family, and prowess in battle– expected to show
difference to those of higher authority there was no sense of the self but rather
the role within the family
,● Similarly, Shakespeare presentsFortinbras as a foil to Hamlet as they both embody
the struggle for divine and royal revengeance
- David Levernez- Hamlet is ashamed at the ‘feminine passivity’ within himself
and so is unable to carry out his revenge- which appears as a moral failure in his
duty to avenge his father
- Horatio describes him in Act 1 as being ‘of unimproved mettle hot and full’
[Contrast with Hamlet who is ‘unpregnant of cause’]
- In Hamlet’s soliloquy in Act 4, upon seeing Fortinbras and his army, Hamlet
describes Fortinbras’s ‘spirit with divine ambition puff’d’, prepared to risk it all
‘even for an egg shell’ [fragile imagery - Fortinbras would act even for
insignificant reasons]
- Fortinbras’s presentation as a ‘delicate and tender prince’
●However, by the end of the play Hamlet is able to display typical views of heroism in
Elizabethan England
- Shakespeare follows Senecan conventions by ending the play in a blood bath-
the entire royal family is killed leaving behind only the court and Fortinbras
- At the time belief in the natural order was prevalent believed that an illegitimate
ruler would destroy the connection between man and god- DROK- Hamlet’s
actions are an attempt to do so
- Kills Claudius. ‘Fortinbas has my dying breath’- has given political control to
Fortinbas- makes the decision of a Machievllian leader
- ‘Here cracks a noble heart’- Hamlet’s nobility is restored at the end of the play-
for his death and ability to ‘unweed’ the corrupted garden that is Denmark
- ‘Bear him like a soldier to the stage’- Hamlet is given military respect- treated
with dignity rather than just being buried
2. Explore the use of acting and the theatre in Hamlet.
● Shakespreare presents Hamlet’s madness as an act to deceive the caught and enact
his revenge
-
- At the end of Act 1, Hamlet decides that he will put on ‘an antic disposition’, later
reinforced in the chamber scene when he tells his mother that he is ‘mad in craft’
- The hyperbolic and performative nature of Hamlet’s madness: ‘his stockings
foul'd, ungarter'd’ ‘his knees knocking each other’
, - Hamlet’s madness as controlled and intentional: he appears mad and
nonsensical when calling Polonius a ‘fishmonger’ which contrasts with the honest
and sincere tone of ‘I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth’
which follows his interaction with Polonius. The ability to shift suggests that he is
in control.
- Masculine madness manifested as melancholy and philosophical speculation-
Shakespeare supports Elizabethan gender expectations
●Shakespeare uses the play of Gonzago to give a second dimension to the play
- In the player’s version of Murder of Gonzago, the focus is the disloyalty of the
queen rather than the murder of the King: ‘pursue me lasting strife, If, once a
widow, ever I be wife!’
- Acts as an inversion of Hamlets own action, and is a source of melancholy and
confrontation for him
- In his second soliloquy, after having watched the player’s powerful performance
of the Death of Priam, Hamlet laments his own inability to be overcome by
emotion and wrath: ‘Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause’
- ‘But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, /Could force his soul so to his own
conceit’
- ‘Rugged Pyrrhus’ ‘Hellish Pyrrhus’
- Classical allusions draws in the reader's attention to the themes of deception and
acting within the play- meta theatre makes the audience more receptive
- Mediaeval honour and chivalric codes
●However, the longer the act continues the audience are forced to question if Hamlet’s
madness is still an act
- Gillian Woods: the play ‘unsettles the distinctions between performance and
reality’. It is sometimes unclear to the audience whether Hamlet’s madness is
performative or genuine
- Hamlet is deeply melancholic, which could be viewed as a form of insanity: ‘O,
that this too too solid flesh would melt /Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!’
[imagery of water - passive - water offers no resistance - pun of ‘a dew’ adieu -
longing for death]
- Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia seems deranged and disproportionate,
repeatedly declaring ‘get thee to a nunnery!’
- Hamlet’s behaviour in the chamber scene: ‘How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat,
dead!’, also frightening his mother with his unhinged behaviour: ‘What wilt thou
do? thou wilt not murder me? Help, help, ho!
- Madness sign of moral corruption
