Hamlet Critical Perspectives - Essay Example

Jane Jones Jim Smith English IV 19 May Hamlet Critical Perspectives Perhaps owing to the over four hundred years since William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in circa 1603, few works have had more critical perspectives written on them. Of course it has also been said that Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the English language and is the basis for the works of many other famous authors, including Keats, Poe, and Longfellow and even such more modern people like Steinbeck and Bradbury. For instance, speaking on a purely historical viewpoint, Shakespeare borrowed heavily from the times in which he lived. As Doctor Hannah Lavery in her lecture “Hamlet and Elizabethan England”, Elisabeth I had started out as the virgin queen, young, full of promise, and maiden-like. This was almost a requirement, because England was under fire from many nations, including Rome and the Catholic church, due to Henry VIII (her father) breaking with the Vatican during his reign. Yet by the start of the seventeenth century, the queen was in her late sixties and to quote the French ambassador De Maisse “She kept the front of her dress open, and one could see the whole of her bosom…and… Her bosom is somewhat wrinkled”. As such Doctor Lavery draws the comparison of her and the elderly Gertrude, with whom Hamlet cannot hide his disgust when she marries Claudius (Lavery). Another contemporary viewpoint that Lavery believes Shakespeare used as a main theme for the play was revenge, especially when it pertained to corruption in government. True Hamlet sought true blood revenge for his father the king was murdered by his own brother in order to seize the throne. But he also grappled with an even bigger problem in that the government should be toppled, with violence if necessary, if it is deemed to be unworkable. Perhaps the founding fathers of the United States learned well from Hamlet and used his ideas when they decided to secede from England well over a century later. Then again it has been said by others that the inspiration for Hamlet was a Latin work from the thirteenth century called Vita Amlethi, well before Elisabeth’s Tudor monarchy had been established. Hamlet uses many mythological references in the work, along with historical figures interspersed to mythological status. For instance, the Roman emperor Julius Caesar (who was a central figure in many of Shakespeare’s works) was mentioned in three times in the play, mostly as part of Hamlet’s play within a play. Speaking of his uncle Claudius, Hamlet refers to him as a satyr, the drunken buffoon in Roman mythology from which we get the word satire. Of course figures from the Judaic Christian belief system is heavily referenced from the obvious references to Cain and Abel (Claudius slew his brother), the beggar Lazarus, Saints Peter, Patrick and James, to Jesus Christ himself. Even the madness of Hercules from Greek mythology is borrowed from, to reference the entire theme of insanity in the play. In his work Teaching Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Douglas Grudzina argues that the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud and his protégé Carl Jung looked heavily at the mythological aspects of Hamlet when Jung said “some myths are repeated throughout history in cultures and eras that could not possibly have had any contact with one another” as in the Greeks and Chinese having basically the same stories. Jung believed that this concept was especially true in relation to religious beliefs. Every culture basically believes in creation and some sort of life after death. Based upon Shakespeare’s own beliefs, that would therefore explain the ghostly appearance of Hamlet’s father, asking that his son avenge him (Grudzina). The feminism of Hamlet, or lack of it, has been well documented, especially in the late twentieth century and one of the most famous of those was the tragic Ophelia, whose eventual madness was caused by her maltreatment from most if not all of the males she encountered. For a character so well written about by so many scholars, she appears in only one-quarter of Hamlet’s twenty scenes and very little is known about her early life. How did their (Hamlet and Ophelia) relationship blossom? Most of that has to be conjectured. In her professional paper, Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism, Elaine Showalter ideally represents the fact the women of Ophelia’s time were thought of as weak and superficial and being a woman “represents everything denied by reasonable men”. To even show emotion (like crying) was considered unsightly and therefore woman-like. For example at her funeral, even as her brother grieved he tried to stifle his tears, stating “When these are gone, The woman will be out”. Even a woman’s sexuality, which was also denied to Ophelia, was repressed and called “nothing” even by Hamlet as he too cruelly made fun of her during the Mousetrap scene. The poor woman’s inevitable madness was even left out or repressed during future reenactments of the play for many generations during the Victorian era for instead of singing bawdy songs of maidens losing their virginity, they portrayed the madness as an inevitable fact of life, because “female insanity a pretty stimulant to male sensibility” (Showalter). In contrast, Gertrude is portrayed as somewhat stronger and is able to handle the controversy between her new husband and her son. Shakespeare certainly portrayed Hamlet as a somewhat controlling individual, even demanding that Gertrude no longer sleep with Claudius, as if their romantic relationship was his concern. She is taciturn with her reply. It is also not clear as to whether Gertrude was an accomplice in the murder of her husband. It could very well be she married her brother-in-law simply out of self preservation, for she does show some manner of guilt to her son, although perhaps not the murderous guilt associated with Macbeth. Of course Ophelia was the not the only character driven mad in Hamlet. The protagonist himself suffered from deep rooted psychological problems, perhaps brought on by father’s untimely demise. Indeed his mother truly believes her son was driven insane by that fact and her relatively quick marriage to Claudius. Meanwhile Ophelia’s father is under the impression that his denial of the love between Ophelia and Hamlet is causing the prince’s madness. Neither of these views was entirely correct of course, for his vicious quest for revenge is probably the true cause as to why Hamlet is very much insane by the end, when he kills Polonius instead of Claudius, stating "How now! A rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!" Yet those existentialists and others who do believe in spirituality also would suspect his father’s early apparitional appearance would also bring Hamlet’s sanity into question. There is also a school of thought in which some believe Hamlet’s madness was an elaborate ruse by him so that he could deliberately insult and hurt those he sought his revenge on. In his 1916 work Hamlets Antic Disposition, Alexander Crawford points out that very few characters in the play actually believed that the prince was truly insane and Hamlet himself said he was to act "strange or odd" and to "put an antic disposition on". He even tried to intimate to his mother that he was not mad and “assures her that he is intentionally acting the part of madness in order to attain his object” (Crawford). The final perspective that will be discussed is that of the nineteenth century German philosopher Karl Marx, the so-called “Father of Communism”. Marx pointed out that during Hamlet’s time, fortunes were won or lost on the backs of artisans and laborers, the tree couldn’t become a cabinet except for somebody’s ultimate sweat and labor. Therefore the “ghosts” of those laborers haunted the wealthy merchant classes and the monarchy alike. Louis A. Ruprecht Jr. takes that theory one step further. He compares the most famous scene in all Hamlet, the prince’s famous soliloquy of “To be or not to be” where Hamlet was referring as to whether to kill Polonius, to the teeter-totter effect of the Western stock trading system. Instead of the real value of Marx’s artisans, the market represents a series of specters. Ruprecht points to such corrupt modern Claudius like Bernie Madoff, who in one series of terroristic moves destroyed the life savings and retirement capabilities of millions of people. Like Hamlet, suicide and insanity are only two by-products of such criminal enterprises (Ruprecht). Hamlet is rife with historical significance in that a heretofore fun loving young prince is informed by his dead father’s ghost that the king’s brother (the prince’s uncle) had poisoned him through the ear, surely even in Shakespeare’s time a very unusual way to die. The ghost asks the young Hamlet to “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder”. From this point the prince agrees and confides in his friend Horatio that he must "put an antic disposition on" in order to carry out the deed. This was probably the moment that Hamlet began his descent into true madness. As part of his ruse he enters the bedchambers of Ophelia, the lady with whom he had a courtship. Her father Polonius passes that off as infatuation but still informs Claudius and Gertrude of her son’s erratic behavior. Meanwhile admonished by the ghost to treat Gertrude gently, Hamlet does his best to convince his mother to leave her husband the new king, which would have been impossible even if she was agreeable. We see Gertrude assert herself in this situation even though Hamlet and his father’s spirit truly believe that she was adulterous, even though it is unclear if this actually happened prior to the king’s death or was simply because of her marriage. Hamlet eventually kills Polonius by accident and his son Laertes avows revenge on the prince. At the same time Claudius, suspicious of Hamlet’s actions, attempts several different methods to kill him, all of them unsuccessful. Forbidden to be around Hamlet, Ophelia is driven mad and eventually dies, perhaps from accident but more than likely from suicide. In one final attempt kill Hamlet, Claudius enlists the help of Laertes, using a poisoned sword and augmenting it with poisoned wine. In an ironic twist of fate, Claudius manages to kill his wife instead. Yet Laertes loses the swordfight but not before pricking Hamlet. Dying, he reveals the murderous plot and Hamlet then kills Claudius. Every era has its political figures, some that are not as popular as others. I had an idea on Gertrude’s motives but always suspected the people thought of Elisabeth I as a refreshing change from her father. In reading Hamlet many times, I had also looked over the references to mythological/historical figures as simply filler and never really understood their significance in the storyline. In a society that thought of women as little more than chattel, one sees Ophelia’s madness as a symbol of feminism, her ability to speak her mind once and for all, whereas madness of itself is a form of escapism for both Hamlet and Ophelia, especially when you consider how his father was murdered and his uncle became his stepfather, mostly overnight. As a philosopher Marx was one to use analogies and I am quite sure his view of a young and wealthy bourgeois prince with little to do but think of revenge was somewhat tainted. WORKS CITED Lavery, Doctor Hannah, “Hamlet and Elizabethan England”, Web, May 20, 2012, < http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/literature-and-creative-writing/literature/hamlet-and-elizabethan-england >. Grudzina, Douglas, Teaching Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prestwick House, Web, May 20, 2012, < http://www.prestwickhouse.com/PDF/SAMPLE/301553.pdf >. Showalter, Elaine Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism, Web, May 20, 2012, . Crawford, Alexander W. Hamlet, an ideal prince, and other essays in Shakespearean Interpretation: Hamlet; Merchant of Venice; Othello; King Lear. Boston R.G. Badger, 1916. Shakespeare Online. Web, May 20,2012, . Ruprecht Jr., Louis A., “Hamlets Wager, or, The Ghost of Capitalism” Religious Digest Weekly, May 21, 2009, Web, May 20, 2012, . Read More