Shakespeare the tragedies

S4
Uncertainties permeate every part of this tragedy
Its main development is centered firmly on a single character
Interpretations change with every retelling but not the storys power to hold
attention
The hero has such energy in thought and feeling that he seems to possess fresh
life in every situation that the story yelds and in contact with a wide variety of
other persons.everytime he shows new resources
Hamlet is a unique problem in that it has three primary source texts, and the three
source texts are profoundly different.The tragedy has survived in three different
versions.The two earliest editions are in Quarto format, dating 1603 and 16045.The first, Q1, known as the bad Quarto, is a shortened and defective version
with 2200 lines , assembled from the memories of actors who had performed
in the play= some characters name are different.The second quarto, Q2, with
nearly 3800 lines is believed to have been printed from Shakespeares own
manuscript, being the better text and also the more complete.It has a title page
claiming it had been "newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much again as it
was, according to the true and perfect Coppie".The presence of some first thoughts
alongside their revisions, together with inconsistencies in speech and inadequate
stage directions, indicate that it wasnt a finished version.As a printers copy, the
manuscript was hard to read and the compositors used for guidance Q1. The third
Hamlet-230 lines shorter, was included in the "First Folio" of Shakespeare's
complete work, published in 1623-seven years after the authors death and
some twenty after Q2, by his friends and theatrical colleagues. Its authenticity
is compromised because of this difference of time, the occasional reference to
Q2, the probability of non-authorial changes such as the replacement of the
old- fashioned words, the cutting of significant passages. No Act or Scene
divisions are marked in first two editions, and in the Folio only the second Act is
marked.
Modern edtions rely on Q2 because it is the plainly closest to Shakespeares own
manuscript, but they turn to F for its restored cuts and for frequent minor
improvements.

http://truepennyhamlet.blogspot.ro/2014/01/the-three-primary-texts-of-hamlet.html
Throughout the first Act, Hamlet is a prince of a warlike state
Hamlets impassioned and convinced response.He acts now with an impulsive
and almost crazed violence, deciding to obey the Ghost and revenge the foul
and most unnatural murder and to hide fis intention by a pretence of
madness.
Hamlet-silent when he is first seen,When the others leave to celebrate the
marriage, hamlet remains alone-first soliloqui-words driven by strong emtion
as he speaks of suicide, all that is gross and rooting in the world, his mothers
remarriage and his inability to speak from his heart.He stops abruptly as
other people are approaching.
All other characters are helping to define hamlet by contrast to him
R and G-Although they fail to hide their mission from their former friend,
they draw Hamlet to speculate and speak his mind more freely than he does
with other persons.He may pretend to be mad, dusguising his true feeling with
an antic disposition, as he had intended, but, in their company, he often
speaks with the accents of sober and uncensored truth- I could be bounded in
a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space-were it not that I have bad
dreams.(II.ii.254-6)
A bitter irony
Escaping from a duty to set right what is out of joint(I.v.196-7), Hamlet may
be said to have come into his own.
Wide range of feelings-affection, anger, frustration, humour, refinement
Open to question
Hamlet condemns his own idleness and ineffectual words
He doesnt say a word about his love until her death
Hamlet does not or cannot allow mutual understanding to last:he dares not to
trust her, or trust himself.Disbelief, fear, revulsion, or unappeasable desiresome inexpressible drive-makes him break away and attack the defenceless
person who is so close and so open towards him.He denies loving her and
dismisses her, villifying himself and the entire word of men.long delayed

encounter.All his struggle either to hide or express his feelings will be

accentuated by the simplicity of Ophelias replies.
Speaking so comprehensively and clearly about a loved person immediately
after violent rejection is remarkable by any standards of theatre of or of lifeOphelia has little to say in the entire play, but the self-control necessary for
this sustained expression of her anguish shows that her love for Hamlet is
deeply anchored.
Physical contact with Ophelia hasunkenneled passionate feelings in Hamlet
as nothing else has done, not even his fathers ghost.
At once Hamlet is very different, smoothly and confidently telling professional
actors what to do,insisting on the need for order, discretion, perfection- no
sign of stress is here, but rather an earnest lucidity that sets him apart from
the others.He seems to be everywhere; making enquiries and speeding up
preparations, privately arranging for Horatio to watch Claudius reaction.
Has planned everything in advance;assumes an idle madness.busy
manipulator and intrusive interpreter.
Once alone, he proclaims that he could drink hot blood and the barbaric
origin of the source-story surfaces.
At the beginning of the Act,Hamlet had been alone with Ophelia and now, at
its close, he is alone for the first time with his mother.he scarcely hesitates in
what he says or does.he speaks with such obvious passion that she is about to
think to murder her and so cries out for help.After an appalling battle of
words,violent,intimate, sometimes strongly sexual, and accompanied with
tears and near-madness, a new and steadily maintened concern for each other
bring an acceptance of what has happened and a degree of peace between
them./ both are left greatly affected, mentally and physically
Affection, powerful and sometimes destructive emotion, and sexual awareness
can by now be identified as driving forces in this tragedy, alongside political,
moral, philosophical, and heroic concerns.
His assumed madness to mock his adversary and express his own bitter sense
of betrayal
Being told about the military expedition, he soliloquizes yet again and says,
yet again, that he does not know why he delays his revenge;this time, however,

he also considers what it is Rightly to be great(IV.iv.53). now he has a wider

perspective on his predicament than before and a harsher objectivity about
his own course of action;O, from this time forth /My thoughts be bloody or be
nothing worth (IV.iv.65-6).
Hamlets Wordplay
Throughtout the play, Hamlet is often difficult to understand. From the start,
he uses words with an agility that requires an agile audience to keep up with
him.
In going against the expectation,the stream of most peoples thoughts The
Tragedy of Hamlet was leading the audience towards a new sense of self and
of the word in which they were beginning to live. Self-questioning and an
attempt to be true to ones nature and the half- conscious promptings of
instinct were part of a new consciousness that was to break up the last
protections and restrictions of feudal society and threaten the formulations of
authoritative religions.
The effect might be to distance the play from their own lives,freeing them to
follow its story as if it were entirely fictional and to experience new thoughts
and feelings .For others, a memory of this speech might make them hostile to
the plays hero so that they see his death as a judgement on what he has done.
Throughout the story, as well as in the final test, the hero seems to be drawn
restlessly into engagement by his imagination.
Shakespeares achievement was to give this new perception to a tragic
hero,alive in mind and body, subtle and far-reaching in imagination, sensitive
to a wide range of sensual experiences, always changing and complex in
thought.
Changeable, divided and isolated in consciousness-destructive and barbaric
impulses together with tender affection,
The great courage to have lived almost entirely alone in a harsh and
unknowing world.
S3
The Tragedy of Hamlet,Prince of Denmark .more driven hero than Brutus,
who also questions what he should do but more insistently and feeling more

frequently an insurrection within his being when caught between idea and
action.he seems to forget himself in anger, frustration and grief when he
engages fiercely with those nearest to him
His mother and Ophelia whom he loves and also repudiates
The Ghost the main instigator of the action, appearing to numerous peopleexepting Gertrude on several occasions and twice giving precise information
and instruction to Hamlet.
Hamlets story is very old, being traced down for the first time in a written
account by Saxo Grammaticus.He recorded this Nordic legend in about AD
1200 in his Latin collection of tales-the Gesta Danorum, first printed in Paris
in 1514. Saxo provides the earliest complete account of a legendary tale9thcentury fragments are known from the Icelandic sagasof Amleth, a Danish
nobleman who took revenge after his uncle killed his father and married his
mother. The name Amleth, means 'dim-witted' or 'brutish', in reference to his
stratagem of feigning madness after his father's murder. Many other elements
of Hamletincluding a dramatic encounter between Amleth and his mother,
during which he kills a spy; his love affair with a beautiful woman; his exile to
condemning his escortsare present in Saxo's account.
In 1582, Francois de Belleforest translated it into French for the fifth volume
of his Histoires Tragiques.An English edition did not appear until 1608, when
Shakespeares play was already written, published, and performed.It is more
likely that he took out the plot from a play referred to by scholars as the UrHamlet, believed to have been written by Thomas KYD and clearly inspired
from Belleforest's version.
Modern features-the action relocated in contemporary Europe
Hamlet is not a pagan barbarian, but a prince of Shakespeares own times,
university educated, skilled at rapier and dagger, brilliant in speech,with
knowledge in many subjects, an enthusiastic amateur of the arts, a sceptic in
thought, a person capable of tenderness as well as fury, and quick to recognize
faults in himself as well as in others.Ophelia describes him as the epitome of
Renaissance nobility:
The courtiers, soldiers, scholars eye, tongue, sword,
The expectancy and rose of the fairy state,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form(III.i.153-5)

Hamlets soliloquy on the way to visit his mother, is both brutal and
frightening, the pagan source coming to the surface mixed with Christian
superstition.He imagines a hellish corruption spreading over the earth:
This now the very witching time of night,
When churcyards yarn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business that the day
Would quake to look on. (III.ii.379-83).
The mixture of compulsive btutality, courtly accomplishmentay lif, and gentle
temperament is responsible for some of the tragedys most characteristic and
disturbing effects.Any actor of hamlet must be able to manage great shifts of
emotion.
it were better my mother had not borne me.I am very proud, revengeful,
ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.( III.i.123-7)
The play reproduces many of the formalities and civilities of life at
Elizabethan court and in the great houses of that time ,political unrest,
passions and feelings that have no part in the business of everyday life.
When the soldiers on the battlements see the Ghost ,they know at once that
There is something rotten in the state of Denmark.(I.v.90)
Marriage with a brothers wife was considered incestuous throughout
Christendom 139
In the graveyard scene, Hamlet describes thedrossy age in which a politician
would circumvent God, a flattering courtier praise a lords horsewhen he
meant to beg it, and a lawyer usehis tricks to convey land to his own use:
The age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near to the
heel of the courtier he galls his kibe.(V.i.76-137)
Innate barbarism co-exists with civilized complexity and helps to destroy a
corrupt power in a diseased society.

The play gives an impression of life being lived

The text suggest that his mind hesitates, rushes forward, gathers strengh,
comes to a full stop, contradicts itself.Hamlets mind travels widely across
possibilities of both thought and action, draws in examples that go beyond his
own experiences,speaks with feelings that range between the bold and
terrified,only momentarily standing still.
Hamlets permanent suspicion that his fathers ghost might be a an emanation
of his own melancholy and a supernatural being.Horatio, too, believes
initially, that the thing seen on the battlements is but our fantasy.
Hamlets quest for revenge
While Hamlet accepts that the Ghost might be from either heaven or hell, he
never argues whether revenge, in itself, is either right or wrong.
Christian references-Encountering Claudius at prayer, Hamlet is not
reminded that revenge is wrong,but decides that killing him then would not be
punishment enough since he would die forgiven by God and go to
heaven.When he has killed Polonius, thrusting at him unseen behind an arras,
he sees himself as Heavens scourge and minister,as if his violent and
instinctive reaction had been in accordance with Gods will(III.iv.174-7). The
belief that he could drink hot blood and envisions evil spreading throughout
the world.
-the procession led by a priest that brings Ophelias coffin familiar signs of
Christian mourning and theservice of the dead
Hamlet does not stress the necessity of repentence and purification at the
moment of death but,rather, that whatever happens in life should be accepted
as Gods will and that, consequentetly, death should not be feared.
The actors contact the hero very intimately, drawing from him feelings and
thoughts that might otherwise have remained hidden .one effect is to impel
Hamlet towards action at a time when he has failed to say or do anything that
would bring him nearer to fulfill the Ghosts demands.
Anne and William Shakespeares only son, the twin of a second daughter, was
baptised on 2 February 1585 and named Hamnet, a form of Hamlet then
current in England. Only his name would bring this boy who died at the age
of eleven and a half, to his fathers mind when writing about another Hamlet.

S2-terrifying and unnatural acts were prime ingredients for a tragedy

Stephen Gosson a critic-Plays confuted in five actions, 1582-The argument of
Tragedies is wrath, cruelty, incest, injury, murder either violent by sword or
voluntary by poison.
Hamlet and other plays of its time were tragedies of blood in a triple sense,
involving carnal passions, family ties, and blood-spilling.
The bloodletting common in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedies was a
regrettable reflection of an age more primitive than ours
Elizabethan tragedies are not about Christian martyrs-matters of state and
religion were forbidden on the stage-but they were written in a theatrical
tradition that had developed from earlier mystery plays that had presented,
with whatever realism could be managed, various kinds de death, torture, and
suffering as demonstrations of Christian faith and the power of Gods love for
his people.
As Fortinbras and Horatio face each other over the dead bodies in the last
scene, they may be intended to mark two contrasted courses the hero might
have taken and so indicate some cause for his suffering and the brutality that
has taken possession of the stage.
The Elizabethan dramatists, could find in writing an escape from the strict
dictates of the censor since anything said could be explained away as
craziness.
Hamlet does not take to madness solely because he is troubled in his mind and
tormented by feelings he cannot control, but also because it allows him to
express his horror at his mothers remarriage in front of the entire court and
to sound out the kings secret purposes when face-to- face with him.(III.ii.10430) (IV.iii.17-53).
S1
Andrew Bradley in his Shakesperian Tragedy of 1904 traced the various
conflicts between good and evil, the crises in the minds of the principal
characters, their recognition of fate or the supernatural, but all these elements
were judged of less importance than the importance than the intellectual
greatness of the tragic heroes.Shakespeares tragedies were about individuals

who compel our respect because of their hidden reserves of power: being born
to greatness, they achieve even greater greatness.
John Bayleys Shakespeare and Tragedy 1981 offers an alienated hero:
Shakespeares instinct , in a tragic setting, seems always to be at work through
characters who in one way or another are unsuited to the action, its
conventions, its atmosphere. Their natures in fact declare themselves through
this unsuitability: it is this means we get to know them and to feel intimate
with them.
hamlet as a play for an age of doubt
the intention is to give an impression of a mervellous, complex, and
meaningful life arising on stage before us and engaging our imagination.