Riassunti letteratura inglese: Shakespeare - Hamlet

Hamlet: Shakespeare's main work

Someone thinks it's Shakespeare's main work! The longest and the most enigmatic play: Hamlet is not only a person but the play itself!

Historical context

1596: Death of his son, whose name was similar to Hamlet.

1601: Death of his father at the time he was writing.

1602: Time of registration but it would have been already performed by Lord Chamberlain's company (that’ll become Shakespeare’s company!).

Shakespeare played the ghost in some representations!

The ghost in Hamlet

A ghost, but it doesn’t mean it is really a ghost because it’s only described as a ghost! Other versions circulating are reported, but there are no effective proofs: everything was turned upside down to rely on public expectations.

Sources and versions

• Thomas Kid: he may have written one source of the story from a Danish historian.
• First quarto - the one in the (bad quarto) of 1603: pirated play, copied and printed and sold, but very good acting play.
• Second quarto - the one in the (good quarto) of 1604-05: twice as long as the first one, it lasts even 4 hours.
• Folio - the version in the 1623: the most famous one, Shakespeare’s own that assembles all his works.

Put together the 3 versions: different editors trying to find the best version of his works, but we can’t reconstruct Shakespeare's own intention because it changed frequently. (Focus on the intention of the text and not on the intention of the author.)

Challenges with length

Versions: unactable as plays because they were too long. Why didn’t he stop writing 2-hour plays? So completely absorbed and involved that he couldn’t stop, and he went on and on… trying to make the play shorter in order to bring it on the stage (folio version).

Character and symbolism

Questions about the play. What Hamlet are we discussing? The Turn of the Screw: Reference to story in the story and need of an excuse. Ghost described as a ghost in the scene, but ambiguous because it’s not a real ghost. They see the ghost but they do not hear it because it doesn’t talk to them. Horatio has his own theory about the ghost.

Buried Denmark: it means King Hamlet is dead! Oxymoron: images of speech that reflect the play itself… here it’s endiade, called in Shakespeare’s time the figure of twins, and it uses words that are (sensible and true avouch) very similar in meaning.

Idea of doubleness: figure of twins, image in which Shakespeare is really interested – twins and what they symbolically represent (they represent two similar worlds, but in this linguistic case, two similar meanings).

The ghost and military context

We learn something about the military background thanks to Horatio's strange eruptions and also in Cassius’ speech (Julius Caesar). Julius Caesar and Hamlet: two twin plays. Brutus is an anticipation of Hamlet.

Horatio has his own theory about the ghost: everybody is going to his version (Cicero’s words). Marcellus wants to know why Denmark is involved in military preparation and Hamlet can explain it!: Some years before there was a challenge between two kings, Fortinbras and Hamlet: who will have won would have taken the other one’s territory.

• A young one and very dynamic, Fortinbras that revenges his father’s death by re-conquering the land he lost with the old king Hamlet, who acts.
• An old one, Hamlet, who is no more young and who is incapable of revenge and who doesn’t act.

The reason for Denmark preparing for war is the threat from young Fortinbras that wants back the land he had lost. At the same time the ghost appears, and they connect two things to its apparition.

Everyone has his interpretation. It’s as if Horatio is quoting Cicero’s words. Interpretation of the ghost in different ways and it’s like the interpretations of the strange signs in Julius Caesar. Ghost: an explanation that seems to work.

Horatio's theories

Horatio’s quoting Caesar (Plutarch/Shakespeare, from whom he has taken his words). Horatio gives 3 possibilities to the ghost:

• The ghost is a spirit of Purgatory and the living can do things to alleviate the suffering of that soul: speak.
• Know something about that country: speak.
• In life the ghost had collected treasure and now he’s there to reveal where it’s: speak.

3 different theories and 3 different stories. The ghost doesn’t say anything and remains ambiguous.

Characters and societal norms

Hamlet mentioned right in the end. Hamlet is dressed in black: it’s part of Hamlet’s icon. We learn about the character indirectly. King Claudius of Denmark: the brother of the dead king Hamlet. According to some traditions, a man can’t marry his brother’s widow (because she’s as his sister and so to marry her, it’s committing incest) but he may be obliged to marry her because the dynasty must continue. The principles of the Anglican Church permit this wedding. Everybody, in seeing the play, would have recognised a reference to Queen Elizabeth, who was the daughter of Henry VIII.