Summary Hamlet notes OCR A Level English Literature FULL MARKS notes (H472)
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Drama and poetry pre-1900 (H472)
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Hamlet
OCR English Literature Drama and Poetry pre 1900 notes Hamlet
ALL notes (18 pages) used to achieve A* FULL MARKS in exam
Includes :
- summary of Hamlet
- summaries of key soliloquies
- AO2 language analysis terminology for part A
- summaries of characters
- summaries of key themes
- notes...
HAMLET
Hamlet and revenge | The British Library (bl.uk)
THIS IS I, HAMLET, THE DANE
DEGRAZIA 2000S Hamlet has been denied his patrilineal inheritance. The ghost initially arriving in armour is a failure of inheritance,
the rules of inheritance decreed that the bed of the father became the bed of the eldest son. His mother is still sleeping in his
father’s bed which he should have inherited
LESSER ‘early modern crisis … son has not properly assumed the father’s identity’ "that f air and warlike f orm”
Hamlet attempts to achieve subjectivity and reject wisdoms of time and what is expected of him - outdated models of
behavior, cannot fulfil expectations - perhaps doesn’t wish to as self-inferior so delays revenge cannot fill father’s shoes
although internal struggle Oedipus Complex / marvels at Fortinbras’ decisive action yet aware he cannot compare
Logic
• ‘That is the question’ = academic disputation, announces motion then why suicide is appealing, then counter
argument, final logical judgement ‘thus’ logical or overthinking
• Uses Aristotelian rhetorical techniques, locates arguments and objects of anger as TOPOI ‘am I a coward’ ‘frailty,
thy name is woman’
• Humanist learning for personal salvation and logical reasoning (over dogmatic theology) seen in skepticism over
ghost and need for ‘grounds more relative than this’ as Horatio warns he may lose ‘sovereignty of reason’
• Synthesis of emotion and reflection frees Hamlet who wishes ‘blood and judgement’ were better co -meddled.
Rationality becomes a means of expressing and distilling emotion; an almost cathartic experience as is
demonstrated through the use of unburdening imagery 'I must unpack my heart with words'.
• DISTRUST It develops from the distrust of all his relationships, with the exception of Horatio, to a self -distrust of
his identity; unable to fulfil his destined role he questions who he is and asserts he is ‘a dull and muddy -mettled
rascal’. Furthermore, Hamlet experiences metaphysical uncertainties about death and the afterlife.
• tries to separate himself from culture and society he is a part of - no better than those around him / distract
attention from inner life through soliloquies / fate is bound by those around him / his personal failures cause
failure of family’s Danish state politically
Hamlet’s sexuality
• Oedipus complex
• Puritanical? Appalled by lust of Gertrude and Claudius and uses innuendos in verbal abuse of Ophelia
• More hurt by Gertrude’s sexual betrayal than father’s murder?
• Immature - unable to understand Gertrude and Ophelia and uses sexual jokes with R+G
• Lover - truly loves Ophelia and cruel to be kind - wants her to escape prison of Elsinore to go to nunnery
• Public vs. Private - must put princely responsibility over personal feelings
• Split personality - unable to reconcile hatred and lust for women as he has no control over rational and
emotional selves
• Trapped in childhood - Laertes allowed back to university
Hamlet’s hamartia
, • 1904 Bradley - inaction ‘melancholic disgust and apathy’ yet has ‘desire of revenge, desire to do duty’
• Transient self-awareness as construct - desires to fulfil destiny of revenge tragedy yet cannot
• the passion of the modern man torn between 'those two great Renaissance oppositions, idealism and
Machiavellianism' (Holderness), or the sexual passion of a son for his mother (Freud) - which renders him
impotent for the majority of the play
• DELAY The first is that without this delay there would be no play. But, in the second place, it is the duty of the
dramatist to provide a plausible reason within the play for this postponement of revenge. This Shakespeare does
by making Hamlet temperamentally inclined to meditate, to procrastinate, to think too precisely "on the event."
• EMOTION VS. REASON Do Hamlet’s emotions facilitate his action or impede them - although he could ‘drink hot
blood’ does his reasoning prevent this, or does he reason to commit revenge, but emotions of self -hatred and
disgust prevent this - Claudius as mirror self
• Hamlet attempts to clarify his emotional turmoil through philosophical debate and soliloquies, asides,
introspection / Praises Horatio ‘whose blood and judgement’ is so ‘well co-meddled’ - rationality is a distillation
and controlled expression of emotion - ‘I must unpack my heart with words’
• Hamlet likens his own reflection with inaction - ‘conscience does make cowards of us all’ / Even after proof of
Claudius’ reaction to Mousetrap Hamlet remains hesitant
1870s Nietzsche places such disgust at the heart of a brief, but fascinating and overlooked, interpretation
of Hamlet in The Birth of Tragedy. Hamlet is an anti-Oedipus. Where Oedipus acts, but does not know,
Hamlet knows everything from the get-go from the mouth of the Ghost, but cannot act. Further, such
inaction does not arise from any indecision or impotence on Hamlet's part, but rather from the fact that
he is disgusted by the prospect of action. Given the horror that he knows, then why do anything?
(the time is out of joint - for revenge or anything else)
The world is screwed anyhow. Hamlet is not nauseated simply at the philosophical thought of the
eternal return of the same: that thought of the eternal return of revenge. Rather, he is nauseated
because this tragic knowledge of revenge’s eternal return in human affairs is a mimetically
paralyzing sort of knowledge. It is at odds with the insistent, unreflective mimetic impetus for
revenge that characterizes the man of instant action. If one pauses long enough in reflection,
then one recoils in horror before one’s destiny to be another tragic cliché. We might say, Hamlet
is conflicted about conflict: he wants it; but he hates himself for it. This is his entirely rational
nausea.
“Understanding kills action”
Unlike most Elizabethan revenge tragedies that focused on the carrying out of revenge, Shakespeare presents ‘Hamlet’
as an extended philosophical debate on the justification and morality of revenge in a time when contemporaries such as
Bacon judged it as a ‘wild kind of justice’. Much of Hamlet’s uncertainty stems from his initial confusion over whether
the ghost is ‘a spirit of health or goblin damned’ and thus whether its pleas to revenge its ‘most foul and unnatural
murder’ deserves to be heeded. However, through the course of the play we witness Hamlet’s resolution to avenge his
father’s murder, culminating in the promise of his final line of his final soliloquy that his thoughts will ‘be bloody, or
nothing worth’.
Whatever personal satisfaction killing Claudius might afford him would be purchased at the price of
complicity with a ruthless society that’s bound to foster crimes like Claudius’s. It would mean
, becoming a clone of Claudius, the mirror-image of his father’s murderer, and believing like Laertes
that taking revenge is enough to right the wrong and settle the matter.
Suicidal
• Hamlet’s desire to die by ‘melt[ing]’ into a ‘dew’ perhaps suggests a sympathetic yearning for innocence, which
he imagines he can find through leaving his body behind in natural, cleansing death. Rejecting his ‘flesh’ as
sinful, Hamlet wants to transcend his body in a state of purity idealised in the calming water imagery – the
connotations of ‘melt’ and ‘dew’ suggest natural cleanliness and innocence.
Hamlet as a tragic hero
• Tragic flaw brings downfall
• No control over destiny - tragedy of fate ‘there’s a divinity that shapes our ends’
• Tragedy of chance - accidentally kills Polonius, chance meeting of pirate ship
• Irreconcilable opposites
• Paragon - nobility and purity lead to downfall (Romantic view)
• Focuses on the point of view of a single character: Hamlet himself, which makes him sympathetic even as he
commits unsympathetic acts and takes up a third of lines
• Hamlet’s mood is dark and depressed but moves to his desire to find out the truth gives him a sense of urgency
and purpose, without satisfactory solution he becomes increasingly frustrated, lashing out more impulsively,
ruthlessly, and recklessly, until the final catastrophe.
Madness
• NO - only ‘mad in craft’ to appear unthreatening to Claudius so he can remain at court to collect evidence and
plan revenge, he only acts insane in front of those who will report back to Claudius
• Hamler’s madness doesn’t have dramatic value as Shakespeare usually uses it for e.g. Ophelia, he retains wit and
dark humour proving sanity ‘funeral baked meats’
• YES - Reasoned thought undermined by impulsiveness, acts distanced, tortured, no conclusions
Inaction
• Act decisively to plan mousetrap scene, kills Polonius, R+G, Claudius - neither guilty of cowardice
• Delays revenge as unable or unwilling to step into father’s shoes
MOST INTERPRETATIONS LOOK FOR HAMLET’S MAIN FLAW THAT CAUSES HIS INACTION What if Hamlet’s tormented
resistance to performing the role of revenger expresses a justified rejection of a whole way of life, whose corruption,
injustice and inhumanity he now sees clearly and rightly finds intolerable? It is the time that is ‘out of joint’ not the
prince himself
HAMLET’S LANGUAGE
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