Category Archives: Hamlet

Insightful Rhyming Couplets

Hamlet, Rhyme and pattern, Verbal texture, ,

There are beautiful and captivating soliloquies within Hamlet that provide thought provoking imagery. Hamlet’s speeches alone stand out among the rest for obvious protagonist reasoning, but the most iconic part of them are the rhyming couplets he always ends with. Once you weed out the lunatic jargon, and assess the point of his rantings, he always brings it home with two rhyming lines that beautifully summarize his sentiments, as when he says, “I’ll have grounds/  More relative than this. The play’s the thing, / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King” (2.2.615-17). With the same number of syllables in both lines and fitting the rhyming scheme of a couplet, these two lines provide a clarity to his mad rants.

A couplet is usually inserted by an author to provide entertaining and make the content of the speech more interesting. I believe it is inserted by Shakespeare to provide clarity to the audience as well as a brief relief from some of the difficult terminology and symbolism Hamlet uses. It provides relief for the audience as well as the main character himself. His inner turmoil,  which spills out into soliloquies that aren’t exactly lucid at times, always come to fruition with the insertion of a couplet.

Hamlet’s battle with his love for his mother and the betrayal he feels his father did not deserve with her new marriage is a tough one for him. At times, the audience does not know if he means to spare her as he sheds light on his thoughts with the couplet, “How in my words somever she be shent, / To give them seals never, my soul, consent!”(3.2.406-407). This indicates that Hamlet’s defeat of the King will absolve his mother of any sin he feels she has committed, but he still very much loves her and does not wish her harm, only absolution.

We see these lucid couplets again and again, bringing Hamlet’s rampant thoughts full circle and alleviating the reader of difficult and at times confusing verse style. One of the last times Hamlets speaks in couplet is “To hide the slain? O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!”(4.4.65-66), as he decides to take action against the wrongdoings towards his late father. Inspired by the blind but brute force of soldiers with no personal vendetta, simply carrying out someone else’s orders, Hamlet gathers up the courage to go through with his plan. The couplets dissolve from here and the audience does not need a few lines to inspire excitement because the play’s ending is already full of action. In fact Hamlet’s last lines in the play before his eminent death are quite simple and emphasize the importance of telling someone’s story. He ends his life and rants with “- the rest is silence” in act 5, scene 2, indicating that he is all out of words and it is someone else’s turn to relay his message.

More Learning, More Problems

Death and dying, Hamlet, Psychological states, Tragedy, Tragic hero

As a very educated man, Hamlet serves to be a good example for some of the virtues of intelligence. Unfortunately for him, these virtues also end up playing a role in his downfall. His passive and pensive attentions to detail are as much parts of his character as his reluctance to act on his true will are. I have no doubts it is particularly easy for us to empathize with Hamlet for having suffered from his scholarly pursuits, especially during the end of the semester. I would imagine this also calls into question whether or not it is these traits that made Hamlet a scholar or his being a scholar that brought these traits in him, but that is an argument for another piece of writing.

What makes Hamlet such a memorable character are the endless facets of him we can find ourselves empathizing with. Everyone at one time or another has probably caught himself or herself pondering a decision that needs to be made, and finding every distraction and diversion to keep away from making that decision. And that is perfectly understandable considering that some actions are more final than others. In Hamlet’s case, not many more decisions are more final than to murder someone. What lies in Hamlet is a truly frightening existential question. This question gives light to his famous “To be, or not to be…” line that feels applicable to so many of Hamlet’s questions: to act, or not to act, and to kill, or not to kill seem to be high on that list. I believe the interpretation of that line that is most accepted is probably the very morbid one of being or not being alive. Perhaps a contemplation of suicide might be one of the harder reasons to empathize with Hamlet, but it does represent the fatalistic attitude Hamlet has for much of his play.

Clowns, Skulls, and Melancholic Musings: Group 3 Critique

Class and status, Costumes and props, Death and dying, Hamlet, Prose passage, Rhyme and pattern, Stage techniques, Tragedy, Verbal texture

Savage Chickens- Hamlet

Satirical Summary of the gravedigger scene

The graveyard scene in Hamlet is one of the most iconic moments of the play often referenced out of context, and as a result many of its important details go missed.  As a group, our initial meeting focused on planning and logistics.  We wanted to do Shakespeare’s work as much justice as we possibly could in light of our modest situation, and what became readily apparent was that even if nothing else was available Yorick’s skull had to be used as a main prop. Something that we all felt as a profound truth in this experience is that Shakespeare’s plays were certainly meant to be seen, heard, and performed. There is undoubtedly so much more to be learned from playing one of his characters instead of simply reading the lines.  As fortune would have it we were able to use an area of the Baruch Performing Arts Center that allowed for ease of filming, the sound of our voices to carry well to our amateur filming apparatus, and also for our characters to be positioned in a way that we felt truly made the scene come to life.

Reid by far had the most challenging task in portraying Hamlet; a character whose tendency to branch into soliloquy made his portion of the scene the lengthiest and most long-winded.   His task in our practice readings, and finally in the ultimate performance was preventing the words from melding together and becoming a drone. His use of vocal inflections and varied expressions, a result if his familiarity with the piece, brought the character to life, making what could have been a boring recitation into a worthy theatrical effort.

For Nolan, embodying the character of Horatio really helped him to understand the importance and significance of this character. Horatio was the one person that Hamlet had full trust and confidence in. Where every other relationship he has falls into disarray, the one he has with Horatio stays constant and cordial. This certainly allows the reader to delve further into the mind of Hamlet, but for the actor playing Horatio this effect is even more profound. Horatio has very few lines in the gravedigger scene so he has plenty of time to observe and ponder Hamlet and his sudden return to Denmark. He’s the first individual to truly see the changes that Hamlet experiences, the first person to understand the implications of what actions are to come, and the last person alive to see how these necessary events unfold.

Karina was fascinated by the depth provided by a character that is so often glossed over.  She jumped at the chance to portray the comic relief, whose few lines and small role held so much life and character and spoke volumes of the tone and mood of the play itself.  It was a very different experience seeing a character portrayed, and being the character yourself. Speaking his jokes, singing his songs, ‘sitting in his grave’ added a layer to the play that reading lines in a book failed to provide.  The gravedigger provides exposition from an outsider’s point of view, he is a common man who faces death not with melancholy or petulance, but with rationality and realism.  As Hamlet stated “the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense” (5.1.70),and after digging an imaginary grave for seven minutes it is easy to see why humor and honesty would be necessary to make the most of the gravedigger’s vocation.

One thing for sure, it is very easy to see how easy it is for Shakespeare’s work to be represented differently in each production. Lines and scenes can be interpreted differently by different directors and actors causing these variations. We each had different ideas of what the scene would look like and it was especially fun having the opportunity to let the scene flow forth from each of our minds into physicality. We got to collaborate and create a shared organic vision for the scene, and share this interpretation with others.

Variations of the scene in film (Mel Gibson vs. Kenneth Branagh):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbxMhvcxJJc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXixlEy5Gfc

Exploration into the importance and properties of Yorick’s skull

Pianist’s dying wish: human skull used in performance


Who’s Next?

Hamlet, King Lear

Although Shakespeare had crafted many characters and numerous plots, he still managed to tie them together. Hamlet and King Lear, for instance, both touch on the idea of succession. In Hamlet, Claudius murdered King Hamlet to seize the throne. In King Lear, the king passed down his kingdom to the wrong daughters. Both plays questioned the legitimacy of succession.

Perhaps Shakespeare found interest in exploring the idea of succession because of what was happening in England at the time. In the years between the writing of Hamlet and King Lear, the crown had been passed down from the “Virgin Queen” to James I. Towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign, the queen put a ban on the discussion of succession because she had neither married nor had children. Shakespeare, nonetheless, embedded the topic into his plays.

In both Hamlet and King Lear, succession had taken a turn for the worse. In Hamlet, Claudius’ rise to the crown was blatantly illegitimate. By killing his brother, Claudius not only had the opportunity to marry his wife but to also derail prince Hamlet from the path to becoming king. This situation stands in stark contrast with Harry’s situation in Henry IV, in which Harry suddenly had to assume the role of the “second-in-line.” To fix the illegitimate succession, Hamlet turned to destruction. Almost everyone died, except for Horatio who lived on to tell the story. Succession inevitably went on but beyond the scope of the play.

In King Lear, the king sought to fix his misjudging of character. Lear, like Elizabeth, had been on the throne for a long period of time. Lear was concerned with preserving his legacy. However, he was blindsided by the flattery of his daughters Goneril and Regan. The king turned all that he had into nothing.

Hamlet: Acting to Becoming Insane

Death and dying, Hamlet, Psychological states, Tragedy

At the very beginning of the play, Hamlet is a very clever and cunning character, who despises his uncle, the new King Claudius. Hamlet’s fatal flaw is  over thinking.  Hamlet starts to plot against the King as soon as the ghost tells Hamlet of the poisoning that King Claudius orchestrated. Hamlet also attributes Claudius with taking his mother away from him. Hamlet plans to act crazy in order to wait for the best time to kill Claudius. The only person who could actually pose a threat to Hamlet’s plans is fooled by Hamlet’s guise. Polonius our CIA equivalent, believes Hamlet is going crazy for his daughter Ophelia. However Hamlet has it in his mind that he will wait for the best time. He becomes so enveloped in his act that he forgets how much time has elapsed since his father died. He suggest its has been days, while Ophelia corrects him and says its months. At that point it doesn’t seem like Hamlet is in an act anymore. Hamlet literally forgets the lapse of time and at that point he seems to be no longer acting.

Hamlet becomes intrigued by the actors and their natural sense of acting. He seems to be even jealous of it. He wonders how they can cry as though they have lost kin. At this point I also get a sense that Hamlet isn’t as great an actor as he thinks he is. Being a good actor is becoming a part of your role, while staying true to yourself. Hamlet starts out on this dangerous pathway and becomes what he’s supposed to act as. The climax for Hamlet’s madness is when he passes Claudius’ room to Gertrude and strikes Polonius killing him. At this point Hamlet finally has made the first action while plotting for the past months. The unfortunate part is it’s the wrong person. Hamlet causes ruin in the lives of Polonius’ children, Laertes and Ophelia, in which Laertes shows what Hamlet could have done, which is, plot to kill his father’s murder, but actually follow through with it. Hamlet’s over thinking is the end of him, but his madness is the narrow edge that leads him to his fall.

Group 2 Critique

Hamlet

Group 2 Critique

Nick Toth

Levi Weekes

Amzad Hossain

 “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”: this is the line that drew us to choose these scenes. It seemed to us that the characters that spoke these lines had something to hide.  They seemed somehow disingenuous.  Their answers were vague and never seem to truly answer the question that was directed towards them.  It was almost as if they were indifferent to everything, avoiding revealing too much about themselves and why they were there.  This of course turns out to be true, as we learned that they were there to spy on Hamlet.

During rehearsal, while we were practicing speaking our lines out loud, we realized that acting out the scenes gives us a far different perspective of what is going on compared to reading the scenes silently. While reading, we tend to ignore the words that aren’t familiar to us, especially in Shakespearean Era English, because of its often hard-to-pronounce or difficult-to-understand qualities. However, this tendency to ignore words turned into a process of discovery.  “My honored Lord…My most dear Lord…My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do you both?”  These are the first three lines that appeared in our scene, and as soon as we said them the first time, it just didn’t feel right to us. There was something that we were not doing properly, something that we’re missing.  We had to gain an insight into why those words were chosen, and the manner in which they were said.  Words create the characters, their demeanor and their presence on stage; they must be used in the proper tone and manner in order to convey the desired message that the character wanted to get across.  When all these elements are put together correctly, the words and delivery, Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern are brought to life on the stage.

For example, something that was very useful was that this past summer one of us watched ‘The Comedy of Errors in Central Park. His experience of watching the play live came to our aid in our small squared recording room when we were trying to figure out what it was that we weren’t getting right. This was our voice; we were not using our voices in the right tone.  We also had to use proper gestures and body language to support the tone we were speaking in.  Originally we were all very stiff, not moving around, and it came off wrong.  After some time, we read in-between the lines and imagined what type of actions would be going on while these words were spoken.  We stood still on the ground as if we had been nailed in there.

After a few trial runs, we felt that we had finally gotten the proper tone and gestures down pat.  We combined all of it together in order to try to bring these characters to life, the best we could.  We changed our tone when needed according to the dialogues, to show the tension that was happening in the scenes.  The words found the characters, and characters found the words.  Finally, after some diligent analysis of the lines in that small, square and dimly light room, we believe that we found a proper voice to tell the story of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

 

Helpful links:

Scenes:

  • Act 2. Scene 2

~2:00-4:40

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8C4gPU_hEU

  • Act 3 Scene 2

~5:20-6:57

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alfutKH2388&list=PL8653490E2C680C5C&index=15

  • Notes on the recorder scene

http://www.rutgersprep.org/kendall/ap/hamletfolder/analTL01Hamlet.html

The True Villain of The Story (Mystery Solved)

Hamlet, Tragedy, Uncategorized

Within the story of Hamlet one is introduced to a grown man who is distraught and immature due to the death of his father, the late King Hamlet. Once Prince Hamlet is introduced in the story he is overly sarcastic and brooding, which he has all the right to be due to the recent death of his father. To tack onto the feelings of anger and despair the young prince has to now witness his mother  (Queen Gertrude) enter into a relationship with his uncle (King Claudius), which would drive any son who loved his father as much as Hamlet did mad. Yet, this man did not attempt to look within the perspective of his mother and begin to ensue hatred upon her. This hatred is not due to the fact that she married Hamlet’s uncle, no that would not be enough anger to fuel the hatred that Hamlet possessed, but it was a result of the happiness that he saw from his mother once she was with Claudius. The way she looked at him was probably a way that Hamlet wasn’t accustomed to when his father and her were together. His father being the soldier that he was, most likely never opened himself up enough emotionally towards the queen for her to have such a connection. Therefore there love was probably a facade within their own eyes, and the only thing that truly linked them together emotionally was that of their son. Prince Hamlet’s first interaction with the ghost of his father was the downfall of the young man’s life,  and in hindsight one of the most evil acts committed within the play. His dead father, who one could not clearly tell was from purgatory or hell, set his son in motion to not only lose his life, but go crazy in for process. Telling this man who is clearly not a soldier capable of killing willingly, but a student who uses his mind more than his fist, to kill his uncle who the ghost “assumes” killed him is an act of villainy unto itself.

I utilized the word assume due to the fact that the events the ghost tells Hamlet has no proof to validate it being true. Yes, maybe there was poison being used and it was poured down the ear of the late king, but the killer’s identity is only a figment of the dead’s king imagination. It is King Hamlet’s only logical choice, but as prince Hamlet has shown throughout the play, the logical choice is not always the best one. One must look at the play and look at how the events unraveled to the very end, for it is within the slightest details that the truth is revealed and that the true killer is unmasked. Prince Hamlet’s anger toward his mother while misguided was correctly placed, because I believe that she did love Claudius, and the only way she could have been with him was to get ride of the independent variable, which was her husband. Queen Gertrude was the true killer in this play, and I believe that Shakespeare has hidden this assumption within his literature for centuries. I believe she was the one who poisoned her husband, and Claudius knowing the situation took the pressure off of her and set himself up to be the bad guy. Though he was only the Macbeth to the Queen’s Lady Macbeth like tendencies.  It is no wonder that the poisonous cup was ingested first by her, for karma has a clever way of coming back to where it all began; and it all started with her. She tricked Hamlet, the people of Denmark, and even her dead husband, but she couldn’t deceive fate. To quote Shakespeare himself “frailty, thy name is woman.“

Valuable Brotherly Advice

Hamlet,

In seems that almost every characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet attempts to control the actions of another. The ghost of Hamlet calls on Hamlet to avenge his death, Polonius uses Ophelia to learn about Hamlet’s mental state, Claudius and  Gertrude order Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet, and Hamlet orders Ophelia “[to] a nunn’ry!” (3.1.120).

For this reason, I find the advice given to Ophelia by her brother Laertes in Act 1 scene 3 to be particularly interesting and a very good idea to keep in mind while reading  Hamlet. Laertes warns Ophelia to be careful romantically involving herself with Hamlet as “his will is not his own, [For he himself is subject to his birth:] He may not, as unvalued persons do, Carve for himself” (1.3.17-20). Laertes is explaining that Hamlet’s decisions are not based on his will alone, rather he must consider what consequences his actions will mean for Denmark.

These lines reveal the presence and importance of a social hierarchy when it expresses the idea that people of lower rank often do not make decisions based on their own free will, but rather are called to action by those of higher social standing. This really confuses the idea of what “action” is in the play.

I have heard many criticisms that Hamlet is a passive character. However, I have come to believe that almost every character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet is passive in some way–either because he does not take physical action and has someone else do his bidding, or because he simply obeys others instead of following will own will. Instead of viewing Hamlet as either active or passive, I like to view him as independent.

(I know that this is a topic that can be debated and I would love to hear what you guys have to say!)

Similarities between Hamlet and Claudius

Character types, Hamlet, Psychological states

In act 3.2 when Claudius delivers his monologue on the nature of his deeds, I was struck by how increasingly similar he and Hamlet grow throughout the play. Claudius’ language reeks of indecision, of a man who is trapped by the oaths he made to himself:

”     Pray can I not, /Though inclination be as sharp as will./My  stronger guilt defeats my strong intent, /  And like a man to double business bound/ I stand in pause where I shall first begin, / And both neglect” (3.3.40-3).

On the one hand there is a part of him that wants to absolve himself of his sins, perhaps by taking the punishment fit for his heinous crime. But on the other hand, he doesn’t want to give up all the things he acquired through this act. His guilt is stronger than his will to repent.

Similarly Hamlet has the “strong intent” of avenging his father’s death, but this intent is ever defeated by internal debates as to a mode of action. He too is to double business bound. By always weighing two courses of action against each other, Hamlet always ends up neglecting both courses.