“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” ― Oscar Wilde

Character types, Measure for Measure, Psychological states

Temptation is a key theme in Measure for Measure:  it’s a factor in discovering one’s true self. Angelo can’t resist temptation.  In many ways his proposition to Isabella makes the reader view him as an immoral or evil person. He has no issue with giving into temptation and using someone’s life as bargaining tool. Angelo proves himself to be extremely human, flawed and vulnerable. Isabella, however has many traits in common with Angelo, and yet refuses temptation wholeheartedly. Isabella’s refusal of temptation actually reflects the negatives she tries to hide in her personality. She is proud, pious, and selfish even when Claudio’s life hangs in the balance. Isabella is naturally viewed as a good person: what could be immoral about a future nun?

Isabella in many respects needs to yield to temptation to truly become whole. Here is a woman who is completely uncomfortable with her sexuality, and in her turn her feminine power. How can she reach that next level of becoming holy and righteous if she has never given into the rapture of sin to understand sacrifice?

The question remains are those who give into temptation weaker in character than those who will not?

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.

The Spectacle of Executions

Class and status, Death and dying, Measure for Measure

Since more than one character in the play Measure for Measure  has a brush with death, a deeper inquiry into the code of conduct that went into the job of executioner provides worthwhile insight for the reaction the audience would have about said topic.

Though the play takes place in Vienna, the audience would be familiar with the great symbol of power that stood during their time: The Tower of London. This site, in itself, offers pages and pages of history on how power is exhibited. Drownings, tortures, marriages, imprisonments and executions all took place there.

Executions had their own code of conducts, one of which was the class divide for the process of how an individual would be “dealt with”. The question of how was resolved through class: The upper class were deemed worthy of beheading, as apparently it was considered the least brutal ( accounts of beheadings gone wrong prove otherwise. The source for this information.

Other factors that sealed the fate of the accused included (of course) gender and the nature of the crime. Traitors were deemed especially malicious and had a list of execution methods set all to themselves.

What I found particularly interesting in the executions presented up till now (Act 3) of the play is that almost all the characters had some form of say in their ill fate. Claudio, for example, was handed a reprieve at the hands of his sister’s maiden status. In some way, he had a choice in his death sentence. Barnardine, another example, got to push off his quickened beheading with pure luck, even though his death was long coming and he seemed ready.

With the continuous mentions of birth, pregnancy and life, it’s worthy to pay attention to how death is presented in the play. While pregnancy, or giving life, seems to be met with harsh consequences (for man and woman) and great dispute, death becomes an answer and even a greater indicator of character in the play.

Hotspur…The son that the King always wanted?

1 Henry IV, Character types, Uncategorized

Probably one of the most aggressive characters to play within Shakespeare’s King Henry IV Part 1, Hotspur’s “hot headed” demeanor is one of the most intriguing and entertaining factors of the entire play. It is almost like a New  Year’s Eve countdown reading a scene with him in it, as the audience just waits for the inevitable moment when the soldier would lose his temper and lash out at who is within a 5-mile radius of him. Maybe that is the characteristic the drew King Henry towards him in the first place. While his son Hal had more of a laid back and intellectual savant type of personality, Hotspur’s aggressive nature was an attractive character trait for the King who knew that in order to rule you must have the will to act at all times.

Yet, what if King Henry did have Hotspur as a son? I believe that Hotspur would not have had the lazy and relaxed type nature of Hal, but would have been a very hyper and willing soldier who’d jump into action at the very first sign of disturbance or an altercation. At first I believe that King Henry would have appreciated Hotspur’s dedication to be the best, and probably would have promoted him to the highest rank of military order. But there is a down side to this alternative scenario; as I believe that while the King would have been proud of his soldier-like son; his life span would have also been shortened. Hotspur’s lust for power would have eventually boiled over to the point in which he would take action towards King Henry and take over the throne. It is a situation in which a character’s position does not change his personality, but only reveals it to a hire degree. Though King Henry did kill his uncle Richard in order to take over the throne himself; so therefore I guess he and Hotspur would’ve have still obtained that “like father, like son” quality.

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.