lit201 - week 7 - HAMLET

Did the ghost come from purgatory or hell?

Is the ghost his father?

These questions haunt the play.

One of the great tensions of this play is the Christian world view and yet the context of the play is Protestant. So there's a problem between the Christian world view, which itself is complicated, and the Classical World View. And that hinges upon Hamlets uncertainty, the Classical hero just goes and kills whoever deserves to die.

What Hamlet contemplates, to damn Claudius to hell, is far more awful than what the classical hero does - simply taking the temporal life.

Ghosts just don't start walking around without something being wrong in the state.

In this case the evidence seems to suggest that appearance is similar with reality.

page 8 - line 77, people are working throughout the whole week and the night. Why? What makes this haste? King Hamlet and Fortinbas are preparing to do battle? The fathers provide a counterpoint to their sons, one of the things that we see is that young fortinbras is like his father more so than Hamlet is like his.

A parallel is being established between young Fortinbras and Hamlet. Is Prince Hamlet going to show the same, kind of, resolve as young Fortinbras does? It also means that this subplot, this war between Norway and Denmark, shows how it is linked to the main plot. These men are watching for incursions from the Norwegians but what they get is an incursion from another world. The Ghost has come just like Athena goes down to Athenicus to steel him to a braver pitch - the ghost has come to stir up Hamlet to rouse him to a level where he can secure the future of the Danes. You will notice that young Fortinbras has guts. It's not just words.

page 10 - line 128 - STAY ILLUSION

Horatio - rationalist - sceptic - voice of reason

The important thing to note is that the objective presence of the Ghost is established. They see the ghost therefore it's something outside Hamlet - it's not just a product of his imagination, they all see the ghost together. But later, when Hamlet is with Gertrude and the ghost visits, only Hamlet sees the ghost. And the difference between the two events suggests the possibility that the subsequent apparition is part of Hamlet's imagination.

"my sometime sister, now my queen" "my cousin Hamlet, now my son"

"i am too much in the sun" too much in your presence, too much the son of you. Page 14 - line 65

page 15, line 73, appearance "if it be..."

page 16, stresses duty and formality, ironic because of what Claudius has done.

Page 17, hamlet's speech - this angst comes from his incomprehensibility as to of his mother's actions.