Themes of Richard II

• Tragic hero
• nobility
• Tension between rebellion and sacred duty
• order and hierarchy
• leadership
• qualities of kingship
• dignity
• religion

Violence in Hamlet

• even during duel at the end death takes place by poison rather than a fair fight
• Fortinbras uses deception in his war campaign by seeming like he's attacking polish
• nothing the same - feudalism and renaissance mixed
• blood behind curtain
• violence accidental
• starts with soldiers and preparations for war
• 'speak daggers but use none' unlike Vindice and Hippolito who actually threaten their mother
• Claudius as monarch condoning Laertes' private revenge
• Bente Videbaek 'Hamlet can not be allowed to survive the fifth act'
• Violence destroying Denmark's system of government
• survey hamlet before he's violent then send him away - waiting for it?
• poison harder to detect - adding to hiddeness and secrecy
• poison as machiavellian method not letting people know it was you who killed
• killing not for glory but for power
• being good warrior not making kings anymore
• warrior triumphing at the end but no glorious victory
• Men and women dying in same way - poison indiscriminate
• Eye for an eye the theory behind revenge
• Hamlet's promises of violence are immeadiately followed by delay - his antic disposition and going to speak to his mum

The importance of language in Hamlet and The Revenger's Tragedy

• Polonius: ‘What do you read my lord?’ Hamlet: ‘Words, words, words.’
• many word duels in Hamlet, Only the clown can match his wit.
• Hamlet mirrors people’s languages – for example he matches the ghost’s language after he meets him, but ghost also mirrors his use of the word 'foul'
• Hamlet’s language becomes more erratic as he tries to make himself the archetypal revenger – “keep his wounds green”
• “I am mad but north-north-west.” Lots of hidden meanings, riddling – playing the part of the fool?
• Ophelia also alter plays the part of the fool when she turns “mad”.
• Soliloquies to illuminate what they are thinking however, Vindice uses them not to ponder, but to plan revenge
• Ophelia loved Hamlet's 'words of such sweet breath composed'
• Duplicity of language important in revealing the conflict between inner and outer
• Titles given to people important such as 'uncle-father and aunt-mother'
• Hendiadys and doubling
• Hamlet constantly addressed as 'my lord'
• Language of excess – emphasise sin
• Letters used to sentence the character to death – never seen in physical form, are they trustworthy?
• Hamlet's letters to Ophelia bought into open, pored over, intrusion into privacy
• Polonius demands to know what Laertes and Ophelia were talking of
• Language used to give subjective account of what has happened offstage - preparations for war, Ophelia's death, Hamlet's adventures with pirates
• The power of the 'tongue' in Revenger's Tragedy
• Vindice was able to trick his mother into prostituting his sister
• In the Revenger’s Tragedy, most characters use asides to undermine the other characters – also give the audience information – the audience is submerged within the play
• Junior Brother unable to resist from insert his own comments whilst reading the letter from his brothers – product of society, excessiveness, no subtlety. He does not even trust the letter – no truth to words

Ingmar Bergman's Production of Hamlet

• Stabs Polonius repeatedly, slashing at his body
• Hamlet's role as the play's moral centre
• The Lyttleton curtain went up, to reveal red plush curtains behind them
• ''To be or not to be'' is delivered to the Player King, almost as if Hamlet were a Method director confiding psychological motivation
• life as theatre, theatre as life
• certain actors to double up in different roles eg Claudius and gravedigger
• Claudius had mounted Gertrude from behind before the entire Danish court, and had performed the confession scene while alternately manhandling and fondling the Player Queen
• polite applause of the court
• highly emotional, modern-dress
• Fortinbras, strides in, accompanied by a black-garbed army of street warriors and has Horatio killed (offstage) and then unceremoniously disposes of Hamlet and the other dead, his stance and attitude fascistic rather than heroic
• nature of theatrical illusion
• Fortinbras' leather-clad soldiers, armed with machine guns, burst in and mowed down everyone in their way to the accompaniment of thunderous Danish rock music
• After Fortinbras television cameras and microphones of the obligatory press conference scene
• Wearing a black leather coat and sulking behind sunglasses, Hamlet sits silently as his uncle and mother display an open sexual voraciousness 
• Hamlet drags a black chair, which he slams down at dead centre before proceeding to turn his back on the debauched, ruby-clothed King and Queen
• Hamlet's disgust registers in the seemingly casual way he ignores them
• Ophelia's closeness to Laertes verges on the incestuous 
• Hamlet alternately embraces Ophelia and shoves her out of his grasp
• Player Prince, finding his milieu among the actors, even to performing a small victory dance when he captures the conscience of the king
• Ophelia carries not flowers but nails, as if to impale her antagonists
• Ophelia went barefoot and wore a blue slip
• Gertrude carefully prepared Ophelia with some lipstick, and a pair of red high-heeled shoes,
• Acting as our surrogate, Ophelia is often amazed at the events
• dream-like atmosphere of the production, in which the borders between the internal and external were erased
• 'Blood is the theme of this interpretation,'
• emphasises violence and Hamlet's powerlessness, both personal and political
• Claudius edged away from Hamlet, the Ghost entered, came up behind him, and pinioned his arms so that Hamlet could run him through more easily

Michael Bogdanov Peter Sellars and Mark Lamos

The Woman In Hamlet

by David Leverenz

• The different figures of male authority see Hamlet's identity very differently - dutiful son, lovesick heir, mad lovesick
• Mixed and contradictory expectations from different father figures
• 'part puritan' in his disgust at contamination
• destruction of good mothering
• 'diseased doubleness in everyone who has accomodated to his or her social role'
• At least players are obviously acting
• There are many voices in Ophelia's madness speaking through her (could mirror way Hamlet projects different personas for different people'
• 'Ophelia becomes the mirror for a madness-inducing world. Hamlet resists these pressures at the cost of terrifying isolation'
• cites his "whorish" doubts as the cause of his inability to take manly filial action
• Hamlet's idealizations of his father and Horatio's friendship show a hunger for male closeness
• 'Poisoning in the ear may unconsciously evoke anal discourse'
• tensions between head and heart, noble reason and diseased emotion
• 'Not a mouse stirring' later play is 'The Mousetrap'
• Horatio's first word is 'friends'
• loyalty as an identity
• 'one brow of woe' presenting his kingdom as single person
• war terms like Polonius' 'parley' and Laertes's 'shot' used in describing courtship
• first soliloquy filled with different parts of the body
• Ghost's speech designed to show his strength and Hamlet's weakness
• Ghost's speeches contradictory and mixed signals
• Ghost not interested in feeling 
• Old hamlet used to sleep on the job
• Ghost and Claudius alike in their arrogance
• Old Priam and Yorick even more father figures
• 'Olphelia mirrors in her madness the tensions that Hamlet perceives
• Ophelia driven mad by having inner feelings misrepresented, repressed etc
• continually commanded - implies distrust
• her advice to Laertes shows her awareness of his possible double self
• punning on 'recks' and 'reckless' she displays an independent wit
• 'Polonius is delibrately unconcerned what his daughter feels
• 'Polonius is preoccupied only with how he looks'
• Hamlet's 'oscillating acts of needs and repression'
• Ophelia's refusal of his letters etc echo Gertrude's inconsistency
• does what Hamlet does by going mad and her suicide reflects Hamlet's soliloquys
• She follows Polonius's saying that love leads to madness
• she is a 'player trying to respond to several imperious directors at once. Everyone has used her'
• Robin was Elizabethan colloquial term for penis and Ophelia sings 'For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy'
• Ophelia's song 'mirror every level of the play, even Polonius' flowery speech yet they do not express what Ophelia feels'
• 'the graveyard scene shows the last perversion of reason'
• 'Like ophelia, Hamlet can mirror how others talk, though with a savage irony'
• 'Even Ophelia only loved him for his words'

Laing 'in [Ophelia's] madness there is no one there... incomprehensible statements are said by nothing. She has already dies. There is now only a vcuum where there was once a person.'

her madness as a natural response to the unacknowledged interpersonal falsities of the group

Eliot Gertrudes' 'negative and insignificant'character 'arouses in Hamlet the feeling which she is incapable of representing'

Philosophy applicable to Hamlet

Is Hamlet truly wise because he does not seem to know self?
Laozi 'Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom'


Daois achieved through wu wei (non action)


'Reason is immortal, all else mortal' Pythagoras


Buddhist belief that suffering can be ended by detaching onself from craving and attachment - Nirodha, self centredness causing suffering
'Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.'

Romantic Readings of Hamlet

William Hazlitt 'He is full of weakness and melancholy, but there is no harshness in his nature. He is the most amiable of misanthropes'

Romanticized image of Hamlet as idealised poet

Hamlet's soul too sensitive for the world

William Richardson

• 'he is moved by finer principles, by an exquisite sense of virtue, of moral beauty and turpitude... Gertude's behaviour...cast him into utter agony'
• Hamlet discovering moral depravity in his parentis painful and bitter
• Struggles for utterance
• desires deliverance for painful existence
• Respect for father and inability to revenge comes from Hamlet's virtue
• conflict between Hamlet's parents as the source of Hamlet's moral confusion
• mind falling apart
• Hamlet restores to Gertrude a sense of her own depravity
• abhorrence of the appearance of inhuman actions makes him distrustful of everyone including himself
• his inner virtue cannot succeed in a fallen world

solipsistic prince, inward looking play


contradictions not inconsistencies of narrative but complexity of character

 Henry Mackenzie

• hamelt is 'gay and jocular' whilst in the 'gloom of deepest melancholy'
• 'described as a passionate lover but seems indifferent to the object of his affections'
• basis of his character in his 'extreme sensibility of mind'
• play about the development of Hamlet's mind rather than plot

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship - Goethe

1. 'the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it'
2. strength of nerve makes a hero
3. 'the present is too hard'
4. Hamlets is 'lovely, pure, noble and most moral nature'
5. 'impossibilities required of him' not impossible, but impossible for him to do them
6. loses all purpose from his thoughts without recovering his peace of mind

Schlegel

• Hamlet as inherently flawed, weak character
• calculating consideration shown to cripple action
• 'He has a natural affinity towards... artifice and dissimulation'
• 'he is a hypocrite towards himself'
• 'too much overwhelmed in his won sorrow to have any compassion for others'
• 'has no firm belief in either himself or anything else'
• 'criminals are at last punished... by accidental blow'
• Hamlet is 'out of joint' and therefore a man of his time'
• Hamlet's lack of convictions it what causes his failure to act

Coleridge

• exteriors only interesting when reflected in Hamlet's mind
• placed in the most stimulating of circumstances
• perpetual solicitation of the mind to act
• 'aversion to action which prevails amongst those who have a world within themselves'
• hamlet like poet's understanding of external phenomena is the result of self-reflection
• 'deeply acquainted with own feelings'
• popularity of the play because Hamlet is an everyman

Ophelia

Characteristics: (depending on way she is played)

• Likes/loves Hamlet
• Obedient to father/King
• friendly with her brother Laertes
• ready to spurn Hamlet for her father
• becomes mad
• sweet innocent being torn apart by the rottenness of Denmark
• does not stand by her man
• awakening sexuality
• Ophelia is the receiver of seemingly unending verbiage, sometimes advice, sometimes instruction, sometimes abuse (C. R. Resetarits)
• She is Hamlet's emotional antithesis, not overthinking but overfeeling

• often, she merely stands onstage, and like the audience, watches the actors play to her
• observer role in the play creates a link between Ophelia and the audience that Shakespeare then exploits during her mad scenes to heighten the audience's own empathic involvement
• she not only feels the madness which threatens Hamlet, she empathically takes it on
• Her relationships treated as family matter
• Dane argues, "Madness releases Ophelia from the enforced repressions of obedience, chastity, patience, liberates her from the prescribed roles of daughter, sister, lover, subject"
• Even in her death, the characters of Hamlet-all but Ophelia-mold Ophelia's identity
• Ophelia, with her willow tree and her flowers serves as a representative of the natural world within the artificial construct of the court at Elsinore

Important Quotes:
'I do not know, my lord, what I should think'
'I shall obey, my lord'
'while up the primrose path of dalliance tred'
'I was the more deceived'
'Gifts wax poor if givers prove unkind'
'Indeed my lord you made me believe so'
'I think nothing my lord'
'they withered all when my father died'

Themes of The Tempest

• Prospero inviting admiration and contempt
• Conflict between higher and baser instincts
• inheritance/succession
• control/power
• land
• betrayal
• magic
• humanity
• social hierarchy
• civilisation
• justice 
• revenge and forgiveness
• colonisation
• learned behaviours
• chaos
• freedom vs confinement
• illusions vs reality
• deception
• love
• family
• learning/discovery
• free will

Hamlet Act One Summary

1. Barnardo and Francisco are patrolling separately around the castle and don't recognize each other straight away. Horatio and Marcellus enter, Franisco leaves and they talk about the ghost they have seen. The ghost enters.

Barnardo: Looks a not like the King?

Horatio: What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,/Together with that fair adn warlike form/In which the majesty of buried Denmark/Did sometimes march?

The Ghost leaves without answering, and they talk about Old Hamlet's militaryness and how his ghost has come before, and how the Kingdom was preparing for war with Old Fortinbras and how they had fought in single combat.

Horatio: This bodes some strange eruption to our state

Barnardo: Well may it sort that this portentous figure/Comes armed through our watch so like the king/That was and is the question of these wars

Ghost enters again

Horatio: Stay illusion

Ghost leaves again after Horatio asks it if if has a message or unfinished business

2. All the court is on stage and Claudius addresses everyone, telling them to move on and embrace his reign and his marriage to the old king, his brother's, wife, and comes up with plan to end war with young Fortinbras.

Claudius: by thinking of our late dear brother's death/our state to be disjoint and out of frame

Talks to Laertes who wants to return to Paris, then turns to speak to Hamlet, with Getrude joining him in urging Hamlet to 'cast [his] nighted colour off']

Hamlet: Seems madam? nay it is, I know not seems./ 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother...these indeed seem for they are actions that a man might play

Claudius: 'tis unmanly grief

Claudius tells Hamlet he is his father now and not to go back to Wittenberg, with Getrude's beseeching persuading

Claudius: Be as ourself in Denmark

Every leaves and Hamlet begins his first soliloquy

• o that this too too solid flesh would melt
• that the everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter
• How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable/seem to me all the uses of this world
• things rank and gross in nature posess it merely
• this hyperion to a satyr
• frailty, thy name is woman
• a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer
• no more like my father than I to hercules
• post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets
• it cannot come to good/but break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue

Horatio Marcellus and Barnardo enter and tell Hamlet about the ghost who is very interested and says he will join them tonight in the hopes of seeing it again.

3. Laertes talks to Ophelia about leaving and warns her not to get to attached to Hamlet

Laertes: he himself is subject to his birth./He may not, as unvalued persons do,/ Carve for himself, for on his choice depends/The sanctity and health of this whole state

Laertes: your chaste treasure open to his unmastered importunity... the chariest maid is prodigal enough/if she unmask her beauty to the moon

Ophelia listens to his lesson but thinks that he is being a little hypocritical. Polonius enters and starts advising Laertes.

Polonius: Give thy thoughts no tongue/Nor any unproportioned thought his act... Give every man they ear, but few thy voice... This above all, to thine own self be true

Laertes leaves and Polonius quizzes Ophelia on what they were talking about before his arival. She tells him about Halet and he tells her off

Ophelia: He hath my lord of late made many tenders of his affection to me

Polonius: Think yourself a baby/that you have tane these tenders for true pay/which are not sterling

Ophelia: My lord he hath importuned me with love in honourable fashion

Polonius: When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul/lends the tongue vows

He tells her to keep away from Hamlet and she says she shall obey.

4. Hamlet Horatio and Marcellus are watching out for the ghost, they hear a flourish as apparently Claudius like to partay. The ghost enters and Hamlet is amazed/confounded.

Hamlet: Thou com'st in such a questionable shape/that I will speak to thee. I call thee Hamlet/King, father, royal Dane

Ghost beckons Hamlet and Horatio and Marcellus warn him not to go but he does.

Marcellus: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

5. Now Hamlet and the Ghost are alone together the Ghost speaks, describing his living situation in the afterlife

Ghost: I am thy Father's spirit/doomed for a certain term to walk the night/And for the day confined to fast in fires,/Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature/are burnt and purged away

Ghost: If thou didst ever thy dear father love-
Hamlet: Oh God!
Ghost: Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder

Hamlet: Haste me to know't, that I with wings as swift/ as meditation or the thoughts of love/may sweep to my revenge
Ghost: I find thee apt... so the whole ear of Denmark is by a forged process of my death rankly abused, they serpent that did sting thy father's life now wears his crown
Hamlet: O my prophetic soul/ My Uncle?
Ghost: Ay, that incestious, that adulterate beast... won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming virtuous queen

Ghost: taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive/Against thy mother aught

Ghost describes his murder and demands revenge, exiting and leaving Hamlet to solioquoise his anguish, swearing only to remeber revenge

• and thy commandment all alone shall live/Within the book and volume of my brain/unmixed with baser matter
• O most pernicious woman
• one may smile, and smile, and be a villian; At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark [writing]

Horatio and Marcellus come back and he makes them swear four times not to tell anyone whats happened and that he will pretend to be mad

Hamlet: There's ne'er a villian dwelling in all Denmark/But he's an arrant knave

Horatio: There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave,/to tell us this

Hamlet: There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio/than are dreamt of in your philosophy

Hamlet: As I perchance hereafter shall think meet/to put an antic disposition on

Exam Questions about Hamlet

“In Hamlet, it is hard to decide whether Shakespeare’s interests lie primarily with the personal
or political dimensions of his subject.”

Discuss Shakespeare’s presentation of pretence and hypocrisy in Hamlet.

“The play is, above all, a sustained exploration of the differences between how things seem and
how they really are.” Discuss this view of Hamlet with comparative reference to The Revenger’s
Tragedy.

Through a detailed study of Hamlet and comparative reference to The Revenger’s Tragedy,
discuss the ways tragedies do or do not reassure audiences that good can triumph over evil.

Explore Shakespeare’s presentation of the theme of justice in Hamlet and show how far your understanding and appreciation of this issue have been informed by your reading of The Revenger’s Tragedy.

“From first to last, there is an overwhelming air of decay.” Examine Shakespeare’s presentation of the theme of decay in Hamlet and show how your ideas have been influenced by Middleton’s treatment of the same theme in The Revenger’s Tragedy.

“One failed conspiracy on top of another and then a conclusion achieved by accident!” Examine Shakespeare’s dramatic techniques in Hamlet in the light of this remark, making comparative reference to Middleton’s dramatic techniques inThe Revenger’s Tragedy.

“In his presentation of royalty in Hamlet, Shakespeare could be accused of undermining the political and social values of his time.” Explore this view of Hamlet with comparative reference to Middleton’s presentation of the ruling classes inThe Revenger’s Tragedy.

The Malcontent or 'Machiavel'

• in The Prince Machiavelli recommends ruthlessness, muder, betrayal, manipulation, deceit, lying, and the use of false propaganda to obtain and keep power
• Machiavelli was disillusioned democrat who apparently wrote this in a spirit of bitter irony
• associated with the cold logic of a new way of thinking

Machiavel:

1. Character who showed these characteristics
2. Puts forwards cynical and heartless arguments
3. dissatisfied mam
4. often engaged in revenge or getting own back on society

• man who only pursues own interest would be dissatisfied
• developed from melancholy and shock of The Prince

Examples:

Bosola from The Duchess of Malfi

Iago from Othello

Barabas from The Jew of Malta

Deflores from The Changeling

Edmund from King Lear

Maybe Hamlet/Claudius and Macbeth

Richard II and Elizabeth I

Links between Shakespeare's plays and the contemporary monarch:

• Popular revolt
• Misled by favourite advisors
• Succession - her childlessness
• Richard utterly obsessed with performance of own life, eloquent but incapable ruler compared to efficient but chilly successor
• Elizabeth I said "I am Richard II, know ye not that?" it had been "played forty times in open streets and houses"
• leaders of the Essex rebellion commissioned the Chamberlain's Men to perform it before their plot
• scene depicting king's abdication was cut by censors
• Richard's political mismanagement and unpopularity
• 'grievous taxes'
• England in danger
• King the 'landlord' not the ruler
• funding irish wars with Gaunt money - Elizabeth's wars in Ireland

Hamlet Without Hamlet

by Margareta de Grazia

• Real crux of the play is that Hamlet is disposed - this is viewed as legitimate in the eyes of the courts
• in a hereditary monarchy like England this would be unthinkable
• (maybe Hamlet's behaviour is so unfitting to a royal prince because he feels dispossesed)
• 'For I must hold my tongue'
• If he protested would be guilty of treason
• Claudius 'popp'd in between th'election and my hopes' 5.2.65
• Under antic disposition Hamlet no longer needs to hold his tongue
• refers to self as 'naked' and 'alone'
• he refers to himself in terms of lack - thankless beggar,trapped prisoner, hollow reed
• importance of land
• gionzago and lucianus fight over the 'bank of flowers' or the 'estate'
• Laertes and Hamlet fight over flower strewn pit of Ophelia's grave
• Flesh and earth linked like Adam when Hamlet says 'piece of work' (2.2.303) and 'quintessence of dust' (2.2.308)
• 'scholarship has been content to treat the plot as an inert backdrop to the main character'
• (Perhaps Hamlet delays because he can do nothing, stripped of all his power etc)
• Heraldry - Pyrrhus, Laertes calls for heraldic panel after father's death, allusions to classical and biblical women (Niobe, Hecuba, Jepthath's daughter) relating to cutting off of progeny or lineage
• Hamme early german word for home
• hamlet is a cluster of homes: a kingdom in miniature

Kronborg Castle, Denmark

• 'identified with the beginning of the modern age'
• depends on Senecan formula of murder, madness and revenge
• 'in the first decades of the play Hamlet's signature action may have been not paralysing thought but frenzied motion'
• plays pipes and dances jig after success of play, leaping into Ophelia's grave
• hyperactivity linked with 'roustabout clown of medieval folk tradition'
• Pope compared Shakespeare's word to 'an ancient, majestic piece of Gothick architecture'
• Thomas Robertson 'Hamelt in his sole person, predominating over and almost eclipsing the entire action of the drama'
• Coleridge sees 'Shakespeare as heaping one provocation after another in order to dramatize his protagonist's utter indifference to them'
• what need for plot/action 'among such as have a world within themselves'
• Hamlet's inwardness a dramatical counterpart of Martin Luther's 'introversion' of the soul upon itself/turning faith inwards
• Hamlet's anachronistic futurity

• Before Freud Hamlet had been compared to Orestes rather than Oedipus
• For Freud Hamlet's conflict is unconscious rather than conscious
• Jacques Lacan 'From one end of the play to the other, all anyone talks about is mourning'
• Hamlet's problems one of modern society - the truncated and furtive rites of mourning in the play - King Hamlet's death without final unction, Polonius's 'hugger mugger' bburial, Ophelia's abbreviated service
• Present abandonment of rites and ceremonies which compensated loss
• Death when not repaired by rituals triggers the male 'scar of castration' which mourner tries to fix with imaginary projections or mirages
• Nicolas Abraham - Hamlet's guilt in father's crimes but because of appending of sixth act where revealed tha Old Hamlet killed Old Fortinbras wih poisoned sword - 'phantom effect'

• Horatio to grounded in 'scholar' knowledge' to speak to ghost properly
• Harold Bloom thinks play reveals the 'internalization of the self'

• death as great leveller - discussion of class in graveyard
• more desirable to buried in a church
• plague meant problems with consecrated ground
• labourers descendants of adam
• shovels might have recalled protests against land enclosures
• gravediggers lack of respect for those who were higher than him in life
• hamlet realising own position as well as criticising court
• hamlet  on 'receiving end of antic disposition'

To what extent are the women in Hamlet at the Mercy of men?

The women in both plays seem to be to quite an extent at the mercy of men, simultaneously defined by their relationships with men both familial and romantic, and only really able to exert power through men through who they do or do not sleep with, which would have been normal to Shakespeare’s contemporary audience.

Both Ophelia and Gertrude are restricted and scrutinized by their relationships with men, and often used as pawns in the game of power. Gertrude doesn’t have any asides of soliloquys, always appearing in scenes with the two most prominent men in her life; her husband and son, so therefore is only even represented through her interactions with them and in their presence. In addition to this, Hamlet does his best to blacken her name in front of the audience, calling her ‘wretched’ and ‘incestuous’ even when she is not on stage, poisoning her name just as her relationship has poisoned not only Denmark but her relationship with her son. This is in contrast to Ophelia who Hamlet only ever compliments behind her back on stage, calling her ‘fair’ and ‘nymph’, ending his ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy by spying Ophelia, with the commanding tone of ‘soft you now’ contrasting with the gentle sound of the word ‘soft’, almost as if Hamlet awakens himself out of his reverie to talk to her or that he is commanding himself to regain control in order that he may manipulate her. He precedes to do this, laying traps for Ophelia and swinging between gallantry and abuse seemingly having her feelings at his mercy as Ophelia answers grow shorter as she seemingly shrinks beneath his scorn. The fact that he ‘made her believe’ he loved her could perhaps signify she feels that Hamlet was just using her for sport or laughter, which is echoed in Lussiorio’s desire for Castiza’s body without her personality or indeed a commitment to her through marriage. That Vindice uses this as an opportunity to question Castiza’s chastity reveals how a woman’s sexual relations with men defined her and how they were at the mercy of public opinion in a patriarchal society, with Hamlet also asking Ophelia is she’s ‘Honest’. This is also an example of how the women in both play’s loyalty to different men is tested, with both Gratiana and Gertrude failing to make the grade in the eyes of their play’s tragic heroes. Hamlet’s plan for revenge may even have a multitude of layers, punishing Gertrude and Ophelia to their loyalty to the men of the new regime, Claudius and Polonius, by his madness. It seems to occupy much of Ophelia and Getrude’s mind, with again their emotions being at the mercy of a man’s behaviour towards them, with Hamlet’s madness being the subject of Ophelia’s sole soliloquy and many of Gertrude’s lines. Therefore the female character’s relationships in the play encourage them to be at the mercy of men, especially as their relationships to men would have defined them in an staunchly patriarchal Elizabethan society.

The female character’s in ‘Hamlet’ words are also at the mercy of men, who manipulate and interpret them in different ways. Hamlet never listens to Gertrude’s protestations of her innocence, choosing to interpret everything she does from his preconceived ideas of her behaviour, as when he still believes her to be ‘false’ even when she doesn’t fall for his play trick. The word ‘false’ connotes that he believes her untrustworthy and deceitful, perhaps explaining why he discounts all she says, even though the fact Gertrude doesn’t recognise Hamlet’s vision of herself, calling it a ‘lady’ in a rather objective and confused tone, suggests that she doesn’t conform to his vision of her. That Gertrude notices that the lady is ‘protest[ing]’ perhaps indicates that Hamlet thinks that she uses words to manipulate others and to have them at her mercy, when in fact his whole ‘antic disposition’ seems calculated to cause her pain, and the majority of Gertrude’s lines are taken up with the subject. Hamlet also manipulates Ophelia through words whilst also manipulating her words, making her lines into lude jokes. Hamlet’s reinterpretation of when Ophelia says ‘nothing’ into a sexual joke shows him using her language for his, and the audience’s entertainment, laughing at her and contrasting her innocence with his greater knowledge.  The fact Ophelia has ‘no thing’ could also be a inside joke that she was played by a man, again indicating the lack of female voices on the Elizabethan stage and in society, as women did not act or write plays. Ophelia’s despondent and short answers show that she is at his mercy, being publicly humiliated, though Shakespeare does evoke the audience’s pity for her, creating an aura of quietness and sweetness about her through her conversations with all the male characters who attempt to use her. Hamlet’s rudeness to her is echoed in Polonious’s calling her a ‘green girl’, and Shakespeare could perhaps be criticising the dampening down or dismissal of women’s voices along with their opinions and feelings. Indeed, Ophelia is the only character in the play not allowed a voice about their death, dying offstage and in ambiguous circumstances, with Shakespeare perhaps using the injustices done to her, a pure and innocent girl who didn’t deserve to die, to illustrate the problems of repressing women’s voices.

Also, all the time that Ophelia is alone with Hamlet she is aware of Polonious’s presence just as Gertrude is ordered to ‘be round with’ Hamlet. Hence their behaviour would change and be checked, with their words controlled by an authoritative male figure who ‘looses’ them in order that they might act the part to get information about a man they care about. In some ways this is similar to Vindice’s use of Gratiana in his testing of Castiza in ‘The Revenger’s Tragedy’, but whereas Gratiana acts for money Gertrude and Ophelia’s ability to love is manipulated by men, with Ophelia affection for her father and Gertrude’s for her son driving them to act in the way that a man has told them to, with horrible consequences for both. Hence, Shakespeare seems to criticize the control of women’s voices in a patriarchal society, as Ophelia and Gertrude seem to be undeserving of the consequences they face for putting their voices at the mercy of men, and even when they are speaking without being told what to say their words are scrutinised and deliberately misinterpreted, with whatever they say seeming to be at the mercy of a man to use.

The differences between the married and single women in both plays indicate the way in which women’s status and respect were at the mercy of men. Gertrude’s syntax is much more assured and confident than Ophelia’s for example her occasional use of imperatives such as ‘Let not’, as well as the fact that Gertrude’s lines are far longer than Ophelia’s which rarely exceed 1 or 2-line at a time. This may be because Gertrude is represented as less sexually pure than the ‘honest’ Ophelia, as she lies with an ‘incestious beast’ ‘in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed’ which connotes unhealthy and unnatural lust, the the words ‘rank sweat’ also connoting the illness which has inflicted the state of Denmark which may have been caused by the ‘incest’. In this case Gertrude’s sexual immorality means that the Kingdom is at her mercy, and yet without remarrying the new King Gertrude would have lost her position of power as Queen, showing that her fortune is at the mercy of the men with whom she has relationships with, and perhaps it is her ‘fear’ for her son that drives her to do so. Gertrude’s status as married, and particularly married to the King gives her security which Ophelia does not have as an unmarried woman, which could also be why Gertrude is more confident and speaks more freely. Both Castiza and Ophelia are judged on their chastity, and they both seem to pass the test but both the older women in the play seem to have more reproachable sexual morals and are more sinful. This is perhaps because both of the older women’s husbands are dead and without their husbands they have no guide or not enough sex to satisfy them as Elizabethans and Tudors thought that women were more promiscuous and more susceptible to temptation than men. It could also be because in a patriarchal society women’s worth is amountable to their child-rearing activities, so both older women are worth less as they are less fertile, although the younger women do not get married either even though men have made romantic passes at them. Castiza however, is the only one of her siblings to survive whereas Ophelia’s chastity does not save her from an unjust death, or indeed from being embroiled in romantic entanglements. Laertes and Hamlet’s struggle in her ‘grave’ perhaps reflects how the ownership of women passed from her immediate family to her new husband, with Ophelia on the cusp of this, with both fighting to claim ownership of her and her love. Ophelia’s unmarried body is therefore left to the mercy of men to build an illusion or image of, with men controlling her ‘fair unpolluted flesh’ even after her death. In fact it may be because her flesh is ‘unpolluted’ that they want to control her, with Hamlet similarly obsessed over his mother’s sex life, perhaps indicating that women’s importance lies in their sexuality and bodies rather than because of their personalities, with women becoming objects to control rather than people to the male characters in the play. Hence, Shakespeare seems critical of patriarchal attitudes towards women as this desire for control becomes his obsession as he mentally tortures both Ophelia and his mother leading to her madness and breaking apart the relationships between the female characters and the ones they love.

In conclusion, Shakespeare seems to criticize to some extent the way that women were secondary citizens in Elizabethan society, with his contemporary audience recognising the injustices done to the female characters in the play, particularly Ophelia. He presents women at the mercy of men through their speech and relationships, particularly romantic ones, and by showing the abuses against them and creating pity for the women in ‘Hamlet’ Shakespeare appears critical of an overtly patriarchal society despite Elizabeth being queen.

Morality in Hamlet

Hamlet’s conflicting concern over religion,

Eg. Suicidal hints in his soliloquy
- speaking to R/G “what a piece of work is man”
- “the quintessence of dust”
- “to die to sleep, to sleep per chance to dream.”

Or he is concerned with the morality of killing Claudius whilst he repents.

Hamlet is a product of his time: conflict over medieval and renaissance values

Hamlet’s inner conflict over revenge: mind or body

1  “the play’s the thing/ Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king”

    Resort to violence and rashness: killing of Polonius and “Now will I drink hot blood”

    Lack of morality of other characters inspires Hamlet’s own reduction of morality and similarly in RT Vindice is reduced to murder

      Conversely in the Revenger's Tragedy, religion is less concerning,
e.g. Vindice mocks the thunder comparing it to simple stage effects: “when thunder claps heaven likes the tragedy

   No moral conflict over revenge:

In the Italian society some forms of revenge were countenanced by the laws

“now let me burst;  I’ve eaten noble poison”

“shine through blood/ When the bad bleeds then the tragedy is good”

Violence in Shakespearian England

Wars, uprisings and plots:

• Irish Revolt
• Guy Fawkes Plot
• Spanish Armada and Anglo-Spanish civil war
• Ridolfi Plot
• Essex rebellion

As a result, anyone suspected of treason would be investigated, given a show trial, tortured and executed, with Elizabeth I's spymaster Walsingham proving very effective at rooting out traitors such as Mary Queen of Scots.


Torture instruments:

• The Rack
• The Scavenger's Daughter
• The Collar
• The Iron Maiden
• Branding Irons
• The Wheel
• Thumbscrews
• The Gossip's Bridle or the Brank
• The Drunkards Cloak
• Ducking stools
• The Pillory and the Stocks
• Assorted instruments designed to inflict intense pain
• Whipping
• Cutting
• Branding and Burning
• Pressing
• Boiling in oil water or lead (usually reserved for poisoners )
• Starvation in a public place
• Cutting off various items of the anatomy - hands, ears etc

Disease in Shakespearian England

 DISEASE: the plague swept through London in 1563, 1578-9, 1582, 1592-3, and 1603, with the ones in 1563 and 1603 each wiping out over one quarter of London's population. During the outbreak of 1592-93, the Crown ordered the complete closure of all theatres in London.

Plague Symptons: Swellings (some ‘as large as an apple’) in the groin/armpits, Swellings spread around the body, black and red spots on the skin, rash, pain all over, lethargy, increased body temperature, speech less intelligible, deliria, lymphatic glands became swollen and inflamed, buboes, bleeding underneath the skin

The average time of death from the first symptom was between four to seven days. It is thought that between 50% and 75% of those who caught the disease died. 

The smallpox virus caused causes high fever, vomiting, excessive bleeding, and pus-filled scabs that leave deep pitted scars. The Queen recovered from smallpox but she was rendered completely bald and forced to wear an extra thick layer of make-up made from white lead and egg whites.

Syphilis caused raging fever (referred to as "burnt blood"), tortuous body aches, blindness, full body pustules, meningitis, insanity, and leaking heart valves

Epidemics of louse-borne typhus ravaged London several times during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Crowded, filthy conditions and a near total lack of bathing made room for body lice, which would defecate on a person's skin, which would enter through cuts/wounds, causing high fever, delirium, and gangrenous sores. There was a serious outbreak of the disease in the year Shakespeare died.

Malaria, caused by the marshy conditions made its victims suffer from fever, unbearable chills, vomiting, enlarged liver, low blood pressure, seizures, and comas.

Shakespeare's Pericles

Characters: 

• Antiochus, King of Antioch
• Pericles, Prince of Tyre
• Helicanus, a lord of Tyre
• Escanes, a lord of Tyre
• Simonides, King of Pentapolis
• Cleon, Governor of Tarsus
• Lysismachus, Governor of Mytilene
• Cerimon, a lord of Ephesus
• Thaliard, a lord of Antioch
• Philemon, Cerimon's servant
• Leonine, Dionyza's servant
• A Pander
• Boult, the Pander's servant
• Marshal
• Daughter of Antiochus
• Dionyza, wife of Cleon
• Thaisa, daughter of Simonides
• Marina, daughter of Pericles
• Lychorida, Marina's nurse
• A Bawd
• Lords, Ladies, Knights, and Gentlemen
• Sailors, Pirates, Fishermen
• Messengers
• Diana
• Gower, as Chorus

Synopsis:

King Antiochus of, not surprisingly, Antioch, creates a rule that in order to marry his daughter a suitour must answer his riddle or die. Pericles works out the answer to the riddle which reveals that Antiochus and his daughter are having an incestious affair, so Pericles heads back to Tyre, as he figures that if Antiochus finds out that he knows he will kill him, having already giving him 40 days before his death sentence.

Antiochus sends an assassin after him, and Pericles decides to take Helicanus' advice and go travelling until it all blows over. He goes to Tarsus which is ruled over by Cleon ad Dionyza, where he saves them from the terrible famine that has been ravging their country by bringing them corn.

On his way back to Tyre he gets shipwrecked at Pentapolis where he hears that the winner of a jousting tournament will get Simonedes' daughter's hand so enters and wins, despite having the rustiest armour.  He marries Simonedes' daughter Thaisa, but hears that Antiochus and his daughter where smited by fire from heaven, so decides to return to Tyre with Thaisa and Lychorida, a nurse. Meanwhile in Tyre, the people want to crown Helicanus as King but he insists they wait for Pericles to return.

On board the ship they encounter a terrible storm and Thaisa dies in childbirth. To placate the storm the crew throw Thaisa overboard in a chest, but when she washes up in Ephesus a kindly doctor, Cerimon, discovers that she is, in fact, alive.

Pericles lands in Tarsus again, giving his daughter Marina over to Cleon and Dionyza's care because he thinks she will not survive the journey.

Time passes: Pericles becomes King of Tyre, Thaisa becomes a priestess of Diana, but because Marina takes all the attention away from Dionyza's daughter she tires to kill her but Marina is snatched by pirates and sold as a prostitute.

She is sold top Pander and Bawd's brothel, but manages to convince the many men who come to buy her virginity that her honour is sacred, and they leave wanting to change their ways. She eventually gets a job in a respectable house teaching girls.

Meanwhile Pericles goes to search for his daughter, but Cleon and Dionyza tell him that she is dead and show him the monument they built in her honour to hide their guiltiness. Pericles, distraught, sails to Myteline.

There Lysimachus brings Marina to him, as he thinks she can make Pericles talk after his three months of silence. Marina tells him that her own sufferings must match his, relating her story as Pericles listens in amazement, seeing the similarities in his daughter and Marina's tale. They are reunited at last, and when Pericles falls asleep exhausted he is told to visit the temple of Diana is Ephesus. When he wakes he promises Marina to Lysimachus and they all set off for Ephesus.

Pericles tells his story in the temple, Thaisa faints and the family is reunited.