Download Hamlet - Curve

Revenge: Here we sit down to see
this mystery,
And act as chorus in this tragedy.
Thomas Kyd: The Spanish Tragedy [I.i (90-91)]
Renaissance Theatre
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Reasons for disappearance of medieval plays:
1.
Church had been weakened by internal conflict
2.
The rise of universities across Europe had led to new ways
of seeing the world
3.
Reformation challenged the Catholic church's authority
•
Emerging revival of interest in classical culture led to
Renaissance:

Decline of feudalism

Growth of cities
Elizabethan Theatres
•The Theatre and The Curtain – first purpose built theatres
in London
•Owned by James Burbage, father of actor Richard Burbage
•“Tiring house” – place to change costumes
•Lord Chamberlaine's Men – Shakespeare’s company
•Globe Theatre
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Hollar’s drawing of the Globe Theatre (detail)
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Visscher’s “Long View of London”
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Visscher’s “Long View of London” (detail)
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Johannes de Witt’s drawing
of the Swan Theatre
(as copied by Arend van
Buchel)
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New Globe Theatre
The stage
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Gentlemen’s rooms
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2nd and 3rd level
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Backstage curtains
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Heavens
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Blackfriars Theatre
Elizabethan Theatres
•Philip Henslowe’s inventory of props and scenic pieces
includes: rocks, three tombs, hell mouth, cage, pair of
stairs, two steeples, the “City of Rome,” bay tree, small
altar, bedstead, moss bank, chain of dragons, cloth of the
sun and moon…
•Musicians on third floor
•Sound machines in attic?
•No women allowed on stage
•Therefore: few roles for women in Shakespeare’s plays
•Many plays in which women dress as men
Will Kemp
•First Folio of 1623, edited by John Heminges and Henry
Condell
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Shakespeare Facts?
•The works: 37 plays (38 including Edward III)?
•Baptized at the parish church in Stratford on April 26,
1564
•Bond dated 27 November, 1582 to secure a pre-marriage
contract between Shakespeare ("Shagspere") and Anne
Hathaway
•Children: Susanna, Hamnet and Judith (twins)
•His acting in Ben Jonson’s plays
•Testament
•Burial on April 25, 1616, two days after his death
Shakespeare Facts?
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References to Shakespeare’s works:
• Robert Greene: “An upstart crow beautified with our
feathers, that, with his Tyger’s heart wrapt in a player’s
hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank
verse as the best of you, and being an absolute Johannes
Factotum is in his owne conceit the only Shake-scene in a
countrie.”
• References by Ben Jonson (who berates him for verbal
excesses—”would he had blotted out a thousand [lines]”)
and John Webster (who considered him inferior to some
second-rate playwrights of the period) are mostly critical
of his writing.
The Usual Suspects...
Francis Bacon
William Stanley, Earl
of Derby
• Francis Bacon
• Christopher Marlowe
• Queen Elizabeth I
• William Stanley,
the Earl of Derby
• Edward de Vere,
the Earl of Oxford
Edward de Vere, Earl
of Oxford
Queen Elizabeth I
Shakespeare Myths – The Oxford Debate
•The “Oxfordians” argue:
•Shakespeare’s six signatures look ill-written
•His wife and children were illiterate
•No reference to his profession in any of the documents
•No mention of his literary remains in his will
•Why did he retire so young, in 1604, in the midst of his triumphs?
•Aristocrats weren’t supposed to dabble in lowly art of playwriting,
so Oxford had to assume a pen name (from a second-rate actor
with the Lord Chamberlain’s men)
•Many references to de Vere’s great promise as a poet
•Oxford travelled to all of the places mentioned in Shakespeare’s
plays, incl. a meeting with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
•His homosexuality is reflected in the sonnets addressed to a “fair
youth”
Shakespeare Myths – The Oxford Debate
•Oxford died in 1604, and Shakespeare was referred to in
past tense after 1604, when he was supposed to have
retired in Stratford
•Oxford had the training and background one would
expect from the evidence of the plays; he was connected
to senior officials and the Queen
•Oxford’s literary output (poetry) received more
dedications than anyone else
•A ‘spear-shaker’ was a term to describe an invisible
person
•His crest shows a lion shaking a broken lance (Ben
Jonson about Shakespeare: “He seems to shake a
lance/As brandish’t against the eyes of ignorance.”)
•Etc., etc.
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Hamlet:
I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so the soul that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions
Hamlet II:ii 585-590
Seneca’s 5 point model
• EXPOSITION (someone - often a ghost
- explains the action leading up to the
start of the drama)
• ANTICIPATION (the avenger explains
the methods he will use in order to
achieve revenge)
• CONFRONTATION (between avenger
and intended victim - both sides
conceal intentions)
• PARTIAL EXECUTION (avenger suffers
a temporary setback)
The Origins of Hamlet
• Saxo Grammaticus - Historia Danicae
(c.1100) - no ghosts
• Francoise de Belleforest - Histoires
Tragiques (c. 1500) - still no ghosts
• Thomas Kyd?
The Ur-Hamlet
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English Seneca read by candle-light yields many good sentences, as
Blood is a begger, and so forth; and if you entreat him fair in a frosty
morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of
tragical speeches. - Thomas Nash Epistle To Menaphon (1588)
The ghost which cried so miserably at the theatre, like an oyster-wife,
Hamlet, revenge! - Thomas Lodge Wit’s Miserie (1596)
Henslowe’s record of a performance at Newington Butts (it brought in
only eight shillings) in 1594
“My name’s Hamlet revenge: - thou hast been at Paris Garden, hast
not?” - Thomas Dekker Satiromastix (1602)
Hamlet
(1602)
• When does the play close? Is it when
the dialogue stops and the lights fade?
No - there follows applause and then
the curtain call, which the actors
rehearse. When does the play begin? Is
it when the first sentry walks out on the
stage? Or has the play already begun in
our mind’s eye as we enter the theatre?
No. In our society Hamlet has, for
complex social and historical reasons,
always already begun. Terence
Hawkes
The Ghost
Horatio: A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted
dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
Hamlet I.i 114-120
The Ghost
MARCELLUS
It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.
Hamlet I:i 159-162
The Ghost
Hamlet:The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this: the play 's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
Hamlet II:ii 596-603
Ghost
I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love-Hamlet I.v 9-21
The Ghost
Ghost
Do not forget: this visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
O, step between her and her fighting soul:
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
Speak to her, Hamlet.
Hamlet III: iv 111-116
All an act?
Hamlet: Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on,
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,'
Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,'
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me: this not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear.
Hamlet I:v 169-176
HAMLET
Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
Hamlet I:ii 76-86
HAMLET I have heard of your paintings too, well enough;
Godhas
given
you
onehim,
face,
anda you m
HAMLET
Alas, poor
Yorick!
I knew
Horatio:
Hamlet III:i 143-147
fellowof infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hathborne
me on his back a thousand times; and now, howabhorred
in my imagination it is! my gorge rims atit. Here hung those
lips that I have kissed I knownot how oft. Where be your
gibes now? yourgambols? your songs? your flashes of
merriment,that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not
onenow, to mock your own grinning? quite chapfallen?Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her,
lether paint an inch thick, to this favour she mustcome;
make her laugh at that.
Hamlet V:i
HAMLET Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;You go not till I set you up a glass
Hamlet III:iv 19-21
The Mousetrap or The Murder of
Gonzago
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HAMLET Ay, so, God be wi' ye;Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERNNow I am alone.O, what a rogue and
Hamlet II:ii
• Hamlet - pretends to be mad
• Horatio - pretends to be ignorant of this
• Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Who are the actors?
pretend to be Hamlet’s friends
• Claudius - pretends to be a noble king
and (later) a good father
• Polonius - pretends to be a friend
• Ophelia - forced to pretend to feel
nothing for Hamlet
• Laertes - pretends to be a noble
opponent
On the stage before us is a play of false appearances in which
an actor called the Player-King is playing. But there is also on
this stage, Claudius, another Player-King who is a spectator of
this player. And there is on stage, besides, a prince who is a
spectator of both these Player-Kings and who plays a player’s
role himself. And around these Kings and that prince is a group
of courtly spectators - Gertrude, Rozencrantz, Guildenstern,
Polonius and the rest - and they, as we have come to know, are
players too. And lastly there are ourselves, an audience
watching all these audiences who are also players. Where, it
may suddenly occur to us to ask, does the playing end? Which
are the guilty creatures sitting at the play? When is an act not
an act?
Maynard Mack The World of Hamlet
Symmetry?
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The Mousetrap/Murder of Gonzago - not one play but two
First information about Elsinore is an account of a duel between Old
Hamlet and Fortinbras the Elder - the play also ends with a duel
King Hamlet poisoned by Claudius - Claudius poisoned by Hamlet
First half, Hamlet sets traps for Claudius - second half, Claudius sets
traps for Hamlet
Hamlet wants revenge for his father’s murder - Hamlet becomes a
victim Laertes after murdering his father
The court of Elsinore is seen four times (interrupted on all four
occasions - the Post-Wedding, The Play, Ophelia’s Funeral, The Duel)
A single poisoning opens the play - The inner play shows an act of
poisoning twice - the final scene shows four poisonings
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