HAMLET DEAD: A Modern Reframing of HAMLET

And we have for centuries. The Reframe For that reason, Hamlet is tired. Many productions seem to be vanity projects - actors or directors wanting to tackle this great play, offering their drop of creativity to the sea of Hamlet exploration. But does that serve the audience? Does seeing one more slightly different, slightly new take on the same character provide an audience with a fresh view of the play, themselves, or their own world?

The film of Hamlet starring David Tennant does some of this, and provided the point of departure for our reframing. Among other things, it wonderfully depicts Denmark as a surveillance state. Even when Hamlet is alone in the room, CCTV cameras are on him, and we imagine Claudius and Polonius watching his every move from a control room at the heart of Elsinore. It begged the question: We wouldn't see Hamlet rationalizing his every decision. We would not see him ponder the meanings of life and death. We would not see him encounter the ghost of his father, which launches him on his vengeful crusade.

Instead we see him suspiciously greet his visiting friends, brutally break up with his girlfriend, kill one of Denmark's top advisers, and get sent to England because his behavior doesn't suit a prince.

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So we leave the frame of Hamlet, but find we need an anchor, a new perspective. It turns out there is quite a bit left in Hamlet , once you take away the prince of Denmark or his perspective. A newly wed king and queen. A prince who is unhappy about something, but we're not quite sure what. An impending invasion from Norway. Polonius, too, speaks of him as if he is very young: Similarly, what the queen says to him sounds like what might say to someone much younger than 30 [quotes ]. He mentions several other allusions, more or less compelling, , Rolfe refers to other opinions: Minto says Hamlet is 17; Dowden, Bradley and most others make Hamlet Wilson TLS p.

In act 5, for instance, Hamlet is thirty years old, and in Act 1 only about eighteen. Wilson [ cam 3] ed. Wilson is against that p. Wilson is against them too: The actor does determine the apparent age of the character, but through the beginning of the twentieth century, an actor of any age could impersonate youth. Vide Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson who played the role in a film when he was Scoloker, apud Ingleby , p. But in sadnesse, then it were to be feared he would runne mad: In sooth I will not be moone-sicke, to please: With the tragicall ends of two Emperors, and one Empresse, within one Moneth during his being there.

K, M2, apud de Grazia , p. Of the Gudunow family: Contains a character named Hamlet, a madcap servingman: Whither run you now? Dekker and Webster West-ward Hoe sig. H3, , apud Ingleby et al. Furnivall considers this an allusion to a non-Shn work: Dekker Lanthorne and Candle-light. H2 , , apud Ingleby et al. Gypsy women hide their theft and subsequent butchering of animals. Thus as early as , a writer assumed Hamlet was mad. D2 , , apud Ingleby et al. Lucy Toulmin Smith detects a possible allusion to Hamlet's revenge: Wright , apud Vickers , 1: But an indifferent play, the lines but meane: Hamlet is an indifferent good part for a madman, and the scene in the beginning of the 5t Act beetweene Hamlet and the gravemaker a good scene but since betterd in the Jealous Lovers [by, Vickers says, Thomas Randolph, ].

Evelyn , apud Vickers [, 1: Farquhar, George Discourse upon Comedy, , Williamson, p. Downes Roscius Anglicanus , p. Betterton, Sir William having seen Mr. Taylor of the Black-Friars Company act it, who being instructed by the author, Mr. Betterton in every particle of it; which by his exact performance of it, gained him esteem and reputation, superlative to all other plays. And Joseph's description of Hamlet is in accord with Betterton's, as Steele describes, below. Betterton behaved himself so well, that though about seventy, he acted youth, and by the prevalent power of proper manner, gesture and voice, appeared through the whole drama a young man of great expectation, vivacity and enterprise.

For it does not appear, that the Usurpation of the Crown from him, sits heavy on his Soul. Both sets of page numbers appear in the following extract, with more from the Tatler than Stubbs quoted: He has touched upon every Circumstance that aggravated the Fact, and seemed capable of hurrying the Thoughts of a Son into Distraction. The Widowhood had lasted for Two Months.

This is his First Reflection: But as his Indignation rises, he sinks to scarce Two months: Afterwards into a Month; and at last, into a Little Month. But all this so naturally, that the Reader accompanies him in the Violence of his Passion, and finds the Time lessen insensibly, according to the different Workings of his Disdain. As railing at the Sex in general, rather than giving himself Leave to think his Mother worse than others.

And, to speak Truth, all Comick Circumstances, all Things tending to raise a Laugh, are highly offensive in Tragedies in good Judges; the Reason in my Opinion is evident, viz. This Assertion of mine will appear indisputatble, if my Reader considers well the whole Tenour of this Scene, with the grave and excellent Instructions which it contains, from Polonius to Laertes , and from both to Ophelia. It is impossible that any Buffoonery could be here intended, to make void and insignificant so much good Sense expressed in the true Beauties of Poetry. To conform to the Ground-work of his Plot, Shakespeare makes the young Prince feign himself mad.

Which Design, had it taken effect upon his Life, he never could have revenged his Father's Murder. To speak Truth, our Poet, by keeping too close to the Ground-work of his Plot, has fallen into an Absurdity; for there appears no Reason at all in Nature, why the young Prince did not put the Usurper to Death as soon as possible, especially as Hamlet is represented as a Youth so brave, and so careless of his own Life. Had Hamlet gone naturally to work, as we could suppose such a Prince to do in parallel Circumstances, there would have been an End of our Play.

The Poet therefore was obliged to delay his Hero's Revenge; but then he should have contrived some good Reason for it. Charlotte Lennox , reported in CR 1: Sheridan apud Boswell, London Journal 6 April , p. He made it clear to us that Hamlet, notwithstanding of his seeming incongruities, is a perfectly consistent character. Shakespeare drew him as the portrait of a young man of a good heart and fine feelings who had led a studious contemplative life and so become delicate and irresolute.

He shows him in very unfortunate circumstances, the author of which he knows he ought to punish, but wants strength of mind to execute what he thinks right and wishes to do. In this dilemma he makes Hamlet feign himself mad, as in that way he might put his uncle to death with less fear of the consequences of such an attempt. We therefore see Hamlet sometimes like a man really mad and sometimes like a man reasonable enough, though much hurt in mind.

His timidity being once admitted, all the strange fluctuations which we perceive in him may be easily traced to that source. We see when the Ghost appears which his companions had beheld without extreme terror —we see Hamlet in all the agony of consternation. Yet we hear him uttering extravagant sallies of rash intrepidity, by which he endeavours to stir up his languid mind to a manly boldness, but in vain.

For he still continues backward to revenge, hesitates about believing the Ghost to be the real spirit of his father, so much that the Ghost chides him for being tardy. When he has a fair opportunity of killing his uncle, he neglects it and says he will not take him off which he is at his devotions, but will wait till he is in the midst of some atrocious crime, that he may put him to death with his guilt upon his head.

Now this, if really from the heart, would make Hamlet the most black, revengeful man. But it coincides better with his character to suppose him here endeavouring to make an excuse to himself for his delay. We see too that after all he agrees to go to England and actually embarks. In short, Sheridan made out his character accurately, clearly, and justly. The men on guard duty are so frightened that they turn to jelly, as Horatio tells us.

Steevens Theatrical reviews , in Vickers Heritage 5: Flaws as a character: His excuse to Laertes is a lie. At one time, mild, courteous and contemplative; at another animated with the keenest feelings; upon occasions, all wrath and fire; looking down, at all times, as if from a superior orb, upon whatever was little, insincere or base among men. Resentment, revenge, eternal indignation, stimulated Hamlet at one moment; at the next, we have mere unbending and recoil of his passions; and not only this, which was transient, but there followed, almost at the same instant, that gentleness which so seldom left him.

From this, he could not, at any time, act in cold blood; he could strike only in the fiercest moments of provocation. In the general tenor of his mind he could do nothing. Upon the fluctuation of his mind between contriving and executing, between elevation, sensibility and gentleness, hangs the whole business of the tragedy. He uses his thesis to reconcile the melancholy and jocularity in Hamlet Malone [ mal ed.

To speak truth, our poet by keeping too close to the ground-work of his plot, has fallen into an absurdity; for there appears no reason at all in nature, why the young prince did not put the usurper to death as soon as possible, especially as Hamlet is represented as a youth so brave, and so careless of his own life. Had Hamlet gone naturally to work, as we could suppose such a prince to do in parallel circumstances, there would have been an end of our play.

Coleridge , apud Williamson, pp. Indeed, that this character must have some connection with the common fundamental laws of our nature may be assumed from the fact that Hamlet has been the darling of every country in which the literature of England has been fostered. In order to understand him, it is essential that we should reflect on the constitution of our own minds. Man is distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense; but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect; for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his natural power if action.

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Now, one of Shakespeare's modes of creating characters is to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty as diseased, under given circumstances. In Hamlet he seems to have wished to exemplify the moral necessity of a due balance between our attention to an equilibrium between the real and the imaginary worlds. In Hamlet the balance is disturbed; his thoughts and the images of his fancy are far more vivid than is actual perceptions, and his very perceptions, instantly passing through the medium of his contemplations, acquire, as they pass, a form and a colour not naturally their own.

Hence we see a great, an almost enormous intellectual activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action consequent upon it, with all its symptoms and accompanying qualities. This character Shakespeare places in circumstances under which it is obliged to act on the spur of the moment. Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve.

Thus it is that this tragedy presents a direct contrast to that of Macbeth: Lamb , apud Williamson, p. All the Hamlets that I have ever seen, rant and rave at her as she had committed some great crime and the audience are highly pleased, because the words of the part are satirical and they are enforced by the strongest expression of satirical indignation of which the face and voice are capable. But then, whether Hamlet is likely to have put on such brutal appearances to a lady whom he loved so dearly, is never thought on.

See also CN and on for discussions of Hamlet's behavior in the scene with Ophelia. Coleridge Table Talk, 24 June , apud Williamson, p. He does not want courage, skill, will or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking; and it is curious and, at the same time, strictly natural, that Hamlet, who, all the play, seems reason itself, should be impelled, at last, by mere accident, to effect his object.

I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so. Almost every theory of his character can be plausibly argued but none will comprehend the whole depiction pp. He considers him, and claims that others consider him, a man, not a character in a play. The text is where one may find the result of his character, but one must go behind the text to figure him out. He idealized his father, made his father his model Because he loves Ophelia so much, he gives her up so as not to entangle her in the mess p.

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His mind is not healthy because of the circumstances in which he finds himself: In his calmer moments, when his energies are not engrossed in controlling his emotions, he revels amid the very regalities of poetry and philosophy. Hudson [ hud1] ed. He has a wonderful interest for all, yet none can explain him; and perhaps he is therefore the more interesting because inexplicable. We have found by experience that one seems to understand him better after a little study than after a great deal, and that the less one sees into him, the more apt one is to think he sees through him; in which respect he is indeed like nature herself.

We shall not presume to make clear what so many better eyes have found and left dark. The most we can hope to do is, to start a few thoughts, not towards explaining him, but towards showing why he cannot be explained; nor to reduce the variety of opinions touching him, but rather to suggest whence that variety proceeds, and why. Yet all write as if he is a real person. Hamlet is all varieties of character in one; he is continually turning up a new side, appearing under a new phase, undergoing some new development; so that he touches us at all points, and, as it were, surrounds us.

This complexity and versatility of character are often mistaken for inconsistency: Doubtless he seems the more real for this very cause;. Hamlet has never had occasion to distrust anyone. The only time he does soliloquize, Hamlet weighs not murder vs. Thus it appears, that Hamlet is distracted with a purpose which he is at once too good a son to dismiss, and too good a man to do. Not daring to abandon the design of killing the King, he is yet morally incapable of forming any plan for doing it: In him, will is strictly subject to reason and conscience; and it rather shows strength than otherwise in refusing to move in conflict with them.

Under the injunction with which he knows not what he do, he casts about, now for excuses, now for censures, of his non-performance; and religion still prevents him from doing what filial piety reproves him for leaving undone. Hamlet seems to lack rather the power of seeing what he ought to do, than of doing what he sees to be right. There being, as we think, sufficient grounds for [his scruples] we cannot refer them to any infirmity of his as their source. It is not, however, the incapability of action which Shakspere portrays in Hamlet, for when the latter does act, he acts with energy, decision, skill, and success—ever equal to the call of the moment.

But in him the abstract intellect is too strong for the active impulse. Into the Philosophy of Hamlet we have not now time to enquire; it only needs a careful examination, however, to perceive that this is quite as wonderful as his character. If merely the virtue in belonging to this elevated class, the practical element is necessarily not entirely absent, it is even present in manifestations of no ordinary force; but this force is displayed fitfully, irregularly, by sudden provocation or unpremeditated impulse, and by its very effort exhausts itself and gives way to the more even reign of the tendency to plan rather than execute, and to reflect and generalize rather than to form a specific plan.

He has the means, the skill, the courage, and what should be sufficient motive, but the active stimulus is unequal to the contemplative inertia that opposes it, and never thoroughly masters and possesses his nature; it gains no permanent hold on his attention; his spirit is soon wearied and oppressed by the uncongenial intrusion, and he relapses into the vein more natural to him; it is a cursed spite to be called upon to bring back to order an unhinged world,—we may believe from his manner that he finds no great hardship or disgrace either, in having lost the chance of governing the kingdom, of the foreign affairs of which at least he has not cared to inform himself, and there is such entire absence of expressions of regret for his frustrate love that I am not sure he does not feel some relief in getting rid of an importunate and interrupting passion.

I confess to be inclined to take the latter view, which by no means excludes the recognition of a main stream of sanity running through the action. But some such extremity of excitement seems to form part of the supernaturalism of the play;.

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His susceptibility of irritation has received a wrench, and although he professes to his mother with every appearance of conviction to be merely mad in craft [ Some palliation moreover must be borrowed hence for his treatment of Ophelia, which otherwise more than verges on the brutal. If we could assume for a moment that his madness is entirely feigned we should stumble over the inconsistency that it is so carried out as to answer no reasonable purpose, excites suspicion instead of diverting it, covers not, and is not fitted to cover, any secondary design, and would amount at best to a weak and childish escapade of ill humour and spleen.

The parroted precepts of Polonius, strung together with no leading principle, which are so much a matter of rote that he regains the thread of his discourse like an actor by a friendly cue, bring out the freshly welling originality of the diverging rather than desultory reflections that carry Hamlet from time to time away from his theme. Hence the use and the effectiveness of such a scene as that between Polonius and Reynaldo, with the instructions for roundabout enquiry as to the proceedings of Laertes, in a style that it is obvious would have any other tendency than either to elicit truth or benefit the character of the person so equivocally cared for.

Compared with this, the scheme of Hamlet to entrap the conscience of the king into self-betrayal by the play, is wisdom, is simplicity itself, and we are prepared to appreciate his penetration in fathoming at once the insidious questioning of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Reserving the plea of injured sanity, shall we say that the fault of Hamlet is grievous, but that pity tempers our indignation?

It is not thus that ceremony is handled by potentates and aspirants, who are aware that they are for the most part but ceremonies themselves, and may not long remain that, if the fact gets wind and is talked about. But it is by so much as Hamlet is recalcitrant against the habitudes of his position that he gains dignity, and interests our affections as a man. As the world goes—for that matter it goes now as it always went—the arts and habits that make up the specific manners of the gentleman have come to mean little less than cool dexterity in offensiveness in one direction, balanced by efficient self-seeking complaisance in the other, and there is probably no rarer wild bird that your gentleman of gentlemanly feelings.

Hamlet assuredly is something better than a prince and courtier-scholar; soldier as he is, he is in sympathy with that best democracy, of which Novalis said that Christianity is the base, as it is the highest fact in the rights of man. He merely has his task. Below, Werder says the murder of Polonius forces Hamlet to take on the pose of madness again. Hamlet urges his mother not to reveal that he is not mad. He acts madly in 4. He would not want to make his friends think he is mad. Hamlet has every reason not to act crazy, and yet he does.

The actor can make this action high spirits, an excess of exuberance after having determined that he need not hold his tongue after all. And he has a foreboding of his own death. The play, acted before the King, is his only success, and even in that he has been baffled. Hamlet is already at the goal, although he does not know it. The fulfillment, the judgment, even the death of the King, come quicker than Hamlet or we could have foreseen.

He wins by the service he gives to the task, by the destiny arising from it, by his aim and action. Staunton [ stau ] ed. Our duties to your honor. O your loves, your loves , as mine to you. Turgenev ; Anon. Robert Nichols [London, ] , praises the trans. But the latter does far more harm to others through his activity than Hamlet does through delay. Turgenev refuses to see the lovely prince in Hamlet. Duty lies in taking up arms and fighting. Samuel Johnson had a similar preference for Don Q.

His arguments similar to those in , below. When he is alone he reasons clearly and consistently. In him we all find ourselves depicted; our highest aspirations, our dearest hopes. Hamlet, in his brief career f a five-act play, goes through the cycle of trials—actual, mental, and moral—that beset mankind; and mankind watch his career with the sympathy of brotherhood. Recall the old joke about the person who changes his tire outside a madhouse, watched by the inmates. When the driver loses the nuts accidentally spilling them into a ditch , one suggests to the driver that he could use one from each of the other wheels as a temporary expedient.

All those whom Hamlet loves die either innocent or forgiven; and thus the divinity knows not only how to shape our ends when we rough-hew them with our best energy, but it can, out of human faltering, instability, weakness, and delay, work out its gracious purposes in its own appointed path. Surely it would not have been well that the penances should be unsuffered, and the forgiveness unearned.

Nor would it have been well that crime should lose this lesson, that those who shrink from punishing it bring on fresh sternness of judgment by every moment of delay and unwillingness to perform this holy duty. He would argue that from the one evil act of his mother, first, that her motive must have been simple and unmixed evil; then, that her whole nature must be homogeneous with this motive; and, lastly, that all women must be as corrupt as she is.

He is claimed for his task, like the prophet of old, by the light of his eyes being thus taken from him: Weeks pass under this deprivation, and thoughts ever more and more bitter come with them. So, after a night apparently spent in sleepless horror, he bursts into the room where she sits at work, gazes at her with a frenzy of wordless anguish, and ends by finding his ay out as it were without his eyes, keeping his gaze fixed on her to the last. She, knowing none of his dread secrets, thinks that his mind is overthrown; we, who know them, are less certain.

For Polonius , the father of the sweet Ophelia , has taken, as we may safely conjecture from several indications, a most prominent part in robbing Hamlet of his succession to the throne, and placing Claudius there instead of him. The result is, that while Hamlet loves the daughter with the most ardent passion, and has the kindest feelings to her brother Laertes , the sight of her father fills him on every occasion with angry contempt, which does not rise into positive hostility only because the man is too old to be an adversary worthy of him. This view will perhaps agree best with all the facts.

Not less does the philosophic idealist appear a madman to the realistic world, than, from the standing-point of the philosopher, does this same world appear to be a world of madmen. And when he felt a serious presentiment with respect to the fencing match with Laertes, and Horatio urged him to decline the challenge, he replied that if the predestined time for his death had come, any attempt to avoid the stroke of destiny would be fruitless and vain: The true explanation, I venture to think, lies deeper than this.

We see that Hamlet is propelled rather than propelling. But why is this turn given to the delineation? We cannot exactly tell. Perhaps some of the very charm of the play to the adult mind is its mysteriousness. It awakes not only thoughts of the grand and beautiful, but of the incomprehensible. When this restraint is removed there is no lack of decision. But here again there is indication of the working of the invisible. The first soliloquy [] precedes the revelation made by the Ghost, and the second [] follows immediately afterwards. These need no detain us. In this soliloquy we may, I think, find strong evidence in support of the position that Hamlet was under restraint.

The particular manner of restraint, at the time of this soliloquy, appears to have been by a vivid suggestion that, after all, the revelation made by the Ghost may have been an illusion diabolical in its origin, and of pernicious intent. Hamlet, therefore, summons his powers to action with the view of obtaining better and more conclusive evidence: Certainly it would appear, as the text now stands, that Hamlet speaks of executing the task imposed upon him, that is, putting his uncle to death; and with this act he mysteriously connects his own death.

And so, as we may with probability conclude, by a suggesting emanating from a supernatural power, his hand is still restrained: Hamlet, though possessing both courage and energy, has, nevertheless, a peculiarly reflective disposition, a mind ever prone to turn inwardly on itself. A mind of such a nature, we may reasonably suppose, was regarded by the poet as especially susceptible of impression and suggestion from unseen and supernatural influence.

But such influence might well be sometimes more and sometimes less manifest. The testimony of this soliloquy is very important, and deserves especial attention. Hamlet distinctly declares that the reason why he does not perform the required task is to him incomprehensible. He cannot tell why it is that he still fails to act: I cannot easily see how any man could say this, if his mind was in an ordinary and normal state.

And it is especially worthy of notice hat in the Hystorie of Hamblet , he does so ascend the throne. It must be said, I think, in reply, that the testimony of the tragedy with regard to the doctrine of immortality is, on the whole, by no means clear and unambiguous. At least, this must certainly be maintained, if Hamlet is to be regarded as interpreter.

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He is indeed at first confident that the spirit of his father has revisited earth: How can he be sure of the return of a spirit from the regions of the dead, when the immortality of the soul lies entirely beyond the sphere of experience? Immortality is merely possible: Man must execute the purpose of a Higher Power. But what is the nature of that purpose, what its intent, what its destined issue, is shrouded in mystery. Calamity and disaster fall upon men without regard to individual character. A retribution beyond death is possible; but the future destiny of mankind is obscure and doubtful.

The question is one which I shall not now attempt to answer. But in estimating the relative value of the evidence thus afforded, special regard should undoubtedly be given to the veil of enigma thrown over the philosophy of Hamlet. It was perhaps omitted on account of the extreme length of the play, and as not helping the action. But you see how artificial the language is, and that his real feeling for his uncle is only contempt, that he regards him simply as a vulgar knave, whom there is no satisfaction in thinking about, and no comfort even in hating.

Malleson says, what was brought home already. It is this which really fills his mind, and it is because he is so intensely pre-occupied with this, that he is so languid about what he feels ought to engage his attention more. As Mr Malleson very truly says, it is his mother who, by putting him out of humour with all women, causes him to behave so strangely to Ophelia, and the coarseness of his language to her in this very scene shows that he is brooding on the subject at this particular moment.

Quite otherwise if the speech dealt with the mother. He also makes several other comments that rely on Goethe, Coleridge, and others. Notwithstanding his apparent blemishes, I do not think that he is so deformed as Mr. Steevens has represented him. But surely Hamlet did not come to disturb the funeral of Ophelia; for, till Laertes called the dead body his sister, he knew not whose grave was before him. Nor did he manifest the least sign of wrath, till Laertes bestowed a more than tenfold curse upon him.

His jumping into the grave, when unexpectedly provoked, may be pardoned. Laertes seized him by the throat; and even then, instead of returning violence for violence, Hamlet begs him to desist. The madness of Ophelia is no farther to be charged to his account than as the unhappy consequence of a precipitant and mistaken action.

They were the cabinet-counsellors of a villain and a murderer; and, though they were strangers to all his guilt, it is not improbable that they were acquainted with the secret of their commission. Upon a mature inspection of their conduct through the play, they must be stigmatised with the brand of willing spies upon a prince, their quondam schoolfellow, whose undoubted title to the crown they well knew, and of whose wrongs they had not any feeling.

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The essay is subtitled: Conceiving designs of punishment, and sensible that he is already suspected by the king, he is thrown into violent perturbation. Afraid at the same time lest his aspect or demeanor should betray him, and aware that his project must be conducted with secrecy, his agitation is such as threatens the overthrow of his reason. He trembles as it were on the brink of madness; and is at time not altogether certain that he acts or speaks according to the dictates of a sound understanding. He partakes of such insanity as may arise in a mind of great sensibility, from excessive agitation of spirit, and much labour of thought; but which naturally subsides when the perturbation ceases.

He quickly sees that this is a good pretense, to cover his further action. He tries it out on Ophelia, in the closet scene: Full of honour and affection, he would seem inconsistent: But, if resentment is ingrafted on the moral faculty, and grows from it, its tenor and conduct will be different. In its first emotion it may breathe excessive and immediate vengeance; but sentiments of justice and propriety interposing, with arrest and suspend its violence. An ingenious mind, thus agitated by powerful and contending principles, exceedingly tortured and perplexed, will appear hesitant and undetermined.

Thus, the vehemence of the vindictive passion will, by delay, suffer abatement: These continue in possession of the heart till the mind reposes and recovers vigour: The mind of Hamlet, weary and exhausted by violent agitation, continues doubtful and undecided, till his sensibility, excited by a theatrical exhibition, restores to their authority his indignation and desire of vengeance. His affections are ardent, and his attachments lasting. He also displays a strong sense of character; and therefore, a high regard for the opinions of others. Accordingly, to Ophelia, to Polonius, and others, he displays more extravagance than his real disorder would have occasioned.

Capell [ capn] , notes for his ed. Thus, he thinks they should be included. Morning Post 21 Sept. And see de Grazia Hamlet without Hamlet. Coleridge ms notes re 4. See Ramsay, who makes the same pt in a footnote. Coleridge apud de Grazia, , p. Gentleman [ gent] ed.



Gentleman [ gent ] ed. In other men, it may appear with the ensigns of high authority: United with amiable affections, with every graceful accomplishment, and every agreeable quality, it embellishes and exalts them. It rivets his attachments to his friends, when he finds them deserving: It even sharpens his penetration. Nor is this so inconsistent with poetical justice as may at first sight be apprehended. His amiable hesitations and reluctant scruples lead him at one time to indecision; and then betray him, by the self-condemning consciousness of such apparent imbecility, into acts of rash and inconsiderate violence.

Meantime his adversaries, suffering no such internal conflict, persist with uniform, determined vigor, in the prosecution of unlawful schemes. We love, we almost revere the character of Hamlet; and grieve for his sufferings. But we must at the same time confess, that his weaknesses, amiable weaknesses! Craig The Lounger [, rpt.

Mackenzie] has given a delineation which appears to me to be a just one. Naturally of the most amiable and virtuous disposition, and endued with the most exquisite sensibility, he is unfortunate; and his misfortunes proceed from the crimes of those with whome he was the most nearly connected, for whom he had the strongest feelings of natural affection. The remark is certainly just.

Goethe Wilheim Meister, c.



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As a Dane, a Norseman, he is bound to be blond, and have blue eyes. For people who are dark-haired are rarely like that when they are young. And do not his fits of melancholy, the tenderness of his grief, his acts of indecisiveness, better suit someone like that than a slim youth with curly brown hair from whom one would expect more alacrity and determination? Give us instead some substitute to please us and engage our sympathies. An oak tree planted in a precious pot which should only have held delicate flowers. The roots spread out, the vessel is shattered.

A fine, pure, noble and highly moral person, but devoid of that emotional strength that characterizes a hero, goes to pieces beneath a burden that it can neither support nor cast off. Every obligation is sacred to him, but this one is too heavy. The impossible is demanded of him. Hamlet is here impatient, fretful, and sarcastic; every reply is a contradiction of what is said to him. The king calls him cousin and son; Hamlet at once disclaims both distinctions—he is more than a cousin and less than a son.

The actor who would exhibit Hamlet in this scene as meek, gentle, and pathetic, appear to misconceive the character. He is, it is true, of a highly cultivated mind, a prince of royal manners, endowed with the finest sense of propriety, susceptible to noble ambition, and open in the highest degree to an enthusiastic admiration of that excellence in others of which he himself is deficient. He acts the part of madness with unrivalled power, convincing the persons who are sent to examine into his supposed loss of reason, merely by telling them unwelcome truths, and rallying them with the most caustic wit.

But in the resolutions which he so often embraces and always leaves unexecuted, his weakness is too apparent: He is not solely impelled by necessity to artifice and dissimulation, he has a natural inclination for crooked ways; he is a hypocrite towards himself; his far-fetched scruples are often mere pretexts to cover his want of determination: But he is too much overwhelmed with his own sorrow to have any compassion to spare for others; besides his outward indifference gives us by no means the measure of his internal perturbation.

On the other hand, we evidently perceive in him a malicious joy, when he has succeeded in getting rid of his enemies, more through necessity and accident, which alone are able to impel him to quick and decisive measures, than by the merit of his own courage, as he himself confesses after the murder of Polonius, and with respect to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hamlet has no firm belief either in himself or in anything else: The stars themselves, from the course of events, afford no answer to the question so urgently proposed to them. A voice from another world, commissioned it would appear, by heaven, demands vengeance for a monstrous enormity, and the demand remains without effect; the criminals are at last punished, but, as it were, by an accidental blow, and not in the solemn way requisite to convey to the world a warning example of justice; irresolute foresight, cunning treachery, and impetuous rage, hurry on to a common destruction; the less guilty and the innocent are equally involved in the general ruin.

The destiny of humanity is there exhibited as a gigantic Sphinx, which threatens to precipitate into the abyss of scepticism all who are unable to solve her dreadful enigmas. For was not the Ghost a returned traveller? Ater this relationships with norms and values, and further produce the roles were reversed and Hamlet himself agencies afected by those relationships. What tural and the thematic architectonics of a per- emerged was a reactively evolving choreography carried formance.

Hamlet review – Andrew Scott is a charming prince in a chic yet dotty show

With virtual architectonics of prehensively responded to some of our earlier observa- performance, the repertory of means to stu- tions, according to which dy the very genealogy of performative politics and related practices becomes more aware of [ Learning the functions choices and technological afordances. For example, the multicast many-to-many environments for storytelling and performan- ce in present and future media — increasingly accompanied by degree video technolo- gies and immersive VR or Augmented Reality AR interactions — can and should be criti- cally assessed and developed by employing the information gained through embodied exercises with virtual architectonics of perfor- mance.

As the ield of media constantly shits towards transforming identities, collabora- tion through layered roles of participation Fig. In short, of practical work A Reconstruction, Contributions in Drama and heatre Studies, n. Bibliography Turner, Cathy, Dramaturgy and Architecture: Delbridge, Mathew, Motion Capture in Performance: Ibsen and Distant Visions, Palgra- Katenbelt, Chiel, Intermediality in heatre and Performance: Reworking Hamlet for duction dramaturg.