| H: Speak, I am bound to hear.G: So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear | Hamlet is ‘bound’ to avenge his father |
| G: If thou didst ever thy dear father loveH: O god!G: Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder | ghost uses hendiadys to spur hamlet’s revenge |
| If thou hast nature in thee bare it not | Ghost uses the word ‘nature’ to raw on a primal sense of correctness |
| And thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain unmixed with baser matter | Hamlet assures the ghost that he will indeed take revenge. |
| The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king | Play within a play famous quote- characteristic of revenge tragedy |
| How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead! | Hamlet suddenly becomes not only avenger but also offender. Semi-Pantomime murder of Polonius |
| The need we have to use you did provoke our hasty sending | The king plots against Hamlet be using R and G |
| Were you not sent for? (…) Come, come, deal with me justly. | Hamlet’s suspicions regarding R and G are justified |
| We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service (dish), two dishes but to one table | Hamlet’s ‘descent into either real or feigned madness’ |
| I am dead, Horatio. | Hamlet is dead. |
| Alas, he is mad. | What Gertrude says when H is speaking to the ghost that she cannot see |
| ‘kin and king’ | killing Claudius would be a blasphemous act bc he is both |
| O my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t | Claudius stirs a degree of empathy amongst the audience, he is not a 1d character |
| -Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I -Am I a coward? -But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall | Hamlet’s inability to act: self pity or self loathing? |
| The determination of Theronimo (The Spanish Tragedy) and Charlemont (The Atheist’s Tragedy) makes them appear more one dimensional than Hamlet, whose protracted indecision allows the audience to think about the implications of thoughtless and violent revenge. | How does Hamlet stray from a conventional revenge hero? |
| ‘Haste me to know that I with wings swift as meditation or the thoughts of love may sweep to my revenge.’ He tells the Ghost. BUT, next time we see him on stage he is reading a book and making jokes about Polonius. | Act 1 Scene 5: first example of Hamlet’s inability to act |
| ‘Now could I drink hot blood and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on’ when he sees C ‘praying’. Dramatic irony that C doesn’t actually manage to pray, and that H performs such ‘bitter business’ in a very nonchalant way upon Polonius. | Prayer scene, dramatic irony. 3.2. (2nd example of H’s inability to act) |
| After witnessing Fortinbras’ resolute heroism H says, ‘O from this time forth My thoughts be bloody or nothing worth’ but next time we see him he is joking with the gravedigger. | Act 5 Scene 1: Third example of H’s cowardice/ inability to act |
| -O thou vile king give me my father- I’ll not be juggled with. To hell allegiance, vows to the blackest devil, conscience and grace to the profoundest pit. I dare damnation (…) Let comes what comes, I’ll be revenged most thoroughly for my father-phallic re-iteration of his sword -popularity amongst ladies, masculinity- more penetrative and sanguine | Laertes is a better avenger than Hamlet? |
| Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more Man’s nature runs to, the more ought Law to weed it out. | Francis Beacon on revenge |
| Revenge, in contrast to comedy, is built upon the deliberate and wilful destruction social bonds. | How does revenge compare to comedy, and what does this reveal about the social understanding of revenge. |
| Old testament vs Book of Numbers and Deutoronomy | Christian teachings of revenge |
| You are as good as a chorus my lord | Ophelia’s meta comment which strengthens reading of H as a wrongly-allocated actor in the play. Satire. |
| Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature possess it merely. | Hamlet is pained by his surroundings and isolated, he is therefore a tragic hero. |
| Hamlet’s decision through hate not to kill Claudius until he is fit for damnation is (…) his tragic flaw. | Hamlet a Christian tragedy, Miriam Johnson. Hamlet’s tragic flaw. |
| The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical pastoral.. | Ponolious upon the entrance of the players, reveals Shakespeare’s disdain for genre as a categorical entity. |
hamlet- genre
August 18, 2019