hello everyone welcome to module 5.2 Renaissance drama focusing on William Shakespeare and specifically his play Hamlet so let's start off with some basic context of William Shakespeare and please remember to watch the posted videos and remember to also read the opening material in your textbook associated with William Shakespeare and Hamlet so a couple of things his overall active years are from 1589 to 1613 he dies in 1616 we recently celebrated his the 400 year anniversary of his death with this text that you see here this this image is an image from his first folio printed in 1623 and on the 400 anniversary of his death the first folio and its various copies traveled around the world to various museums and we were lucky the Detroit Institute of Arts actually hosted the first folio and you could actually go and see the actual first like official printing of Shakespeare's works from 1623 and you the the text itself was actually opened up to Hamlet to the famous line to be or not to be and so that was a really cool honor that Detroit had just a few years ago so okay the precise amount of his plays is not entirely agreed upon because some material that is sometimes associated with him may not actually be his works and we may have a couple of plays that have since been lost so it seems to be that he's written probably about 38 or 39 plays give or take and was probably a contributor to other plays plays that plays that were associated with other authors of the time his plays are commonly categorized in three main categories and you see that actually on the image as well you see comedy history and tragedy so comedy plays plays like Twelfth Night Taming of the Shrew these are plays that often end happily they end with marriages they often involve maybe magic or disguises or mistaken identities these are sort of typical tropes of comedy and then we have the history plays and these are plays that are closely associated with history historic figures and for Shakespeare they are largely historic figures of England so Richard plays like Richard ii Richard the third famously the play Richard the third it has that opening line of now is the winter of our discontent made made glorious summer by this son of York the other part of that line so history plays are often associated with Kings former kings of England and then we have the tragedies and Hamlet is perhaps the most famous tragedy or maybe Romeo and Juliet is the most famous tragedy or maybe Macbeth or a fellow or King Lear these are plays that if you recognize those names these are plays that and badly in terms of with a lot of sorrow with a lot of death and so with Hamlet we are reading a tragedy there's also a fourth category that's been thrown around in more modern times called romance and these are some plays that came about in Shakespeare's later years of his career where they are often comedies but there's like there's weird sort of problems associated with them they're sometimes called like the problem plays and so there are these late comedies where they don't quite fit traditional molds of his earlier comedic work so we have a little bit background on genre and his cannon a quick bio so many of you probably already know but he was born in stratford-upon-avon to a relatively comfortable family it seems he was the third of eight children and the eldest surviving son not all eight children survived into adulthood at the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway who was about eight years older than him they had three children Susanna and then the twins Hamnet and Judith he seems to have been known as a writer and and perhaps as an actor by 1592 there are a little bit of some lost years in the late 80s where the late 1580s where we're not entirely sure maybe what Shakespeare is doing there isn't too great of a historical record available but by the time some blurbs about him emerge in the early 1590s it seems like people already know who he is so we can I think surmise a little bit that he's been active then in the theater scene of London previous to 1592 he was a member and part owner of the Lord Chamberlain's Men which was after 1603 renamed the King's Men in honor of the newly crowned King James the first who replaced Queen Elizabeth when she died in 1603 and this group they built the Globe Theatre on the south side of the Thames River and the original theatre burnt down in the early 1600s so we don't have really any existing renderings of the original theatre there are drawings of the replacement theatre that was built afterwards but here we have a conjectured rendering of what the original globe looked like based on historical materials and records so we've got a little bit of bio and some opening material concerning his career so with Hamlet itself the text so the story of Hamlet is based on a Scandinavian legend of The Legend of Amla and this legend was preserved by the writer Saxo grammatica s' in his book the deeds of the Danes that the deeds of the Danes the guests Odin orem and that was written back in the 1200 s so this is a story that is preserved from medieval times and Shakespeare is adapting it and expanding it and turning it into his own a couple of quick facts about the play it is Shakespeare's longest play and the character Hamlet has more lines than any other Shakespearean character and he speaks more in proportion to the other characters more than any other Shakespearean character so Hamlet has a lot to say and I think we should listen so we're gonna look at quite a few of his soliloquy and dialogue a couple of key events to be aware of that could set up a little bit of context a little bit of inspiration for the text so I mentioned in the previous slide that Shakespeare had a son named Hamnet and he died in 1596 so by all accounts the play Hamlet was written somewhere between $15.99 and 1601 those are the traditional dates that are associated with it we don't know exactly which of those years is the accurate year but we do based on this timing know that Hamm Shakespeare's son had died in fairly close proximity to the writing of Hamlet another thing to consider and this depends a little bit on what year the play was actually written if it was 15.99 or 1601 but we know that Shakespeare's father died in 1601 and so that could possibly have some connection to the play and to some of the the plot lines that Shakespeare has created for this play so we have those personal notes that could set up some influence on the play of Hamlet I also have this third item here Queen Elizabeth's death in 1603 this obviously isn't really a personal connection to Shakespeare although he did with his acting troupe the Lord Chamberlain's Men he did perform in front of Queen Elizabeth quite a few times so there's that sort of sort of personal connection but I want to set this up a little bit as a potential political connection with Queen Elizabeth she was famously known as the Virgin Queen she never married she never had any children and so the line of succession who was going to replace her upon her death it wasn't entirely certain James the King of Scotland was assumed to be he was the next in line but the line of succession it wasn't clear-cut in terms of would the succession go peacefully and go smoothly or would there be potential chaos or other claims to the throne that could cause the Kingdom that could cause England some political turmoil and trouble so this play is written on the eve of her death when we have historic records people really expressing a lot of anxiety over the health of the Queen and the death of the Queen so I think we have that as a and is an interesting possible political set here as the play Hamlet shows us a kingdom that will shows us a family that is in chaos but that family in chaos essentially represents like it's a microcosm of a kingdom in chaos and so is there some sort of connection that we can make there with Queen Elizabeth's death coming very soon after this play was written and just as a side note Queen Elizabeth did see a hamlet performed so that's a interesting tidbit okay so to think about some themes so yeah something's rotten in the state of Denmark so that line connects to that last remark that I made so the idea of something's rotten in the state of Denmark well something's rotten in with this family with Claudius and the death of the elder King Hamlet something's rotten in this family and therefore something's rotten in the state of Denmark the whole nation the whole state is going to suffer from it so we have some key themes here we have the theme of revenge and Hamlet obviously seeking revenge for the death of his father seeking revenge against supposedly Claudius as the murderer of King Hamlet we then have the theme of doubt and delusion Hamlet oftentimes doubts himself he often struggles with the ability to act in revenge to take action he sometimes doubts the statements that the ghost makes to him and so if he doubts that then he has doubts about Claudius actually being the murderer of his father he also have the theme of delusion one of the most fascinating aspects of the play for me as a reader is trying to decipher Hamlet's level of madness Hamlet after he has seen the ghost confides in Horatio that he is going to purchase entually tend to go mad and and by pretending to go mad well that will allow him to essentially sort of act strangely and say strange things and act sort of suspiciously but not actually be put under any sort of suspicion because everyone will sort of say oh well that's just Hamlet going sort of crazy so he's a little bit of cover for what he is going to possibly do in terms of planning a revenge against Claudius but although he claims to Horatio that he's just going to pretend to be mad there's definitely some room to wonder well it has Hamlet sort of sunk into his own plan his own fake plan so although he is claiming to pretend to go mad at some point does he actually cross the line into some measure of madness we have the theme of death and the mystery surrounding death the great sort of unknown connected to death we don't know what happens when people die concretely we don't know what that experience is like and so Hamlet is often wondering about the circumstances of life and the circumstances of death and the inevitability of death for everyone we see that play out in the plot at several times and we also have this theme of again unstable family equals an unstable nation and I've gone ahead and covered that a few times already there are some additional important motifs to consider here we have the Matty foam misogyny so unfortunately Hamlet has many moments in which he expresses real contempt for women and real suspicions of women's actions and certainty that all women will be unfaithful and be backstabbing and succumb to due to desire and so we have a lot of moments from Hamlet in which he expresses some pretty problematic images and thoughts about women the idea of fakery so being a brown-noser or a yes-man the play has several characters who are essentially courtiers they are you know advisers and political go-getters and so they're there they suck up to King Claudius or to Hamlet but it's it's all very quite you know yes-man and all sort of fake and superficial and Hamlet as a character has some real contempt for these kinds of people who seem to just be all over the castle all over his his family and him we also have this last theme of incest there have been critiques of Hamlet in terms of him having such trouble with his mother marrying his father's brother this would have been considered incest and at the time and there have been critiques about Hamlet having a sort of Oedipus complex with his mother and that's the you know the possible and you know the possible seed for some of his anxiety and so that's part of some modern readings of the text so we've got these basic themes and motifs to consider and let's go ahead and take a look at some some lines and stuff so the place filled with soliloquies especially soliloquies from Hamlet so a soliloquy is used in drama this is an utterance by a person who is talking to himself or herself and is disregardful or oblivious to any hearers present so it's sort of like a it's like an interior monologue it describes the character's innermost thoughts and communicates them to the audience and no one else can hear them so it's like an interior monologue but spoken out loud to the audience and it's from these moments that we often learn why a character is feeling the way they feel what has led them to this point what are they struggling with now and then what are they gonna do next and so soliloquies often offer us this insight throughout the play and so we're going to look at a few soliloquies and a little bit of dialogue so first off we have this this is Hamlet's first soliloquy of the play it's act 1 lines 129 to 146 it's Hamlet's first soliloquy coming early on in the play and I don't I don't want to read these lines I would rather have you hear them from a more polished voice so I'm gonna play a recording of this so let's listen to Hamlet's first silly look we [Music] [Applause] [Applause] okay so how can we parse out some of these lines so first off the context so this first soliloquy is offering us sort of some exposition we're getting a little bit of history as to why Hamlet is upset in these early stages of the play we learn that his father has just recently died but as the soliloquy goes on we then learn that just as soon as his father has been and married that his mother Gertrude has now gone and married his brother Claudius and so he finds Gertrude to lack strength and we get this line of frailty thy name is woman and so this line of how women all women are the embodiment of weakness and so this is a line showing some of that misogyny he is obviously bitter against his mother and her actions but we also see Hamlet thinking really drastically about life and death already oh that this too too solid flesh with melt he's saying that he just wishes he he just wishes he would die he just wishes that he would just no longer be because he's so disturbed by his father's death and then the consequent actions of his mother but he just wishes that his body would would no longer exist because well the everlasting God and you know his Canon the rules there against self slaughter so Hamlet here is saying that suicide self slaughter in the eyes of you know religion is often seen it is considered a sin and so he wishes that her his life was over but he cannot end it himself because it is sin he finds life to be filled with disgusting things bad things that life will sort of naturally turn ugly and so we have some some negative musings about life itself here which would then lead into the details of his father's passing and so this is our opening close look at Hamlet and we learn from this moment about what has happened with the characters up until this point we see that Hamlet is stewing against his mother and against Claudius and we get those images already of life and death and some misogyny against women okay the next soliloquy that I'd like to look at comes from Act two point two and in this moment we're seeing a couple of themes once again pop up so the theme of revenge the theme of doubt and Hamlet's anxiety and and his failure to act so in this soliloquy Hamlet is thinking about enacting revenge against Claudius but he can't he keeps on essentially chickening out he's not confident in his actions and he's also needing further proof that Claudius has indeed killed his father and so we have Hamlet concoct a plan in which to sort of trap Claudius and get proof that Claudius feels guilty and it feels guilty about killing his brother killing King Hamlet and so a play troupe of actors has showed up to the castle and Hamlet says that he's heard that during plays he's heard of audiences in the past where when they saw a scene acted out that they were so struck by it that they even confessed their own sins so essentially you know the idea that if you were to watch a movie or a play or a TV show and maybe you saw a scene that really connected to something in your own life you would probably have a more immediate and extreme reaction to that moment whether it's a sin or not or whether you're feeling guilt or not so here Shakespeare and the character Hamlet are taking that basic reaction so people who find who are viewing something that they can personally connect to they often react to it and so specifically with Hamlet here he feels that if he has the actors play out a scene that resembles the murder scene of his father that that Claudius will confess that he will somehow give some sort of show something that is observable to Hamlet that will show Claudius as guilt and so Hamlet's plan is to have the actors portray such a scene and he's going to then observe his uncle and see what his how his uncle reacts to the play and this whole moment ends another another famous line of the plays the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king and so we have Hamlet putting his plan into action to help him get further proof that Claudius has indeed killed King Hamlet and so he eventually even gets Horatio to help him with this and so the two of them are going to watch King Claudius to look for signs of guilt during the play and as the play is presented Hamlet and Horatio both find that Claudius looks to be acting quite guilty during the play so we have those scenes of revenge and doubt and failure to act but we also have a little bit of so here this is a play within a play and so here we have a moment of Shakespeare commenting on his own work the power of drama and so so Shakespeare being aware of his own writing being aware of the performative act of drama and plays so we have that being expressed here as well okay so this is arguably the most famous speech most famous line in the English language to be or not to be that is the question and so in this speech again a soliloquy from Hamlet in this speech he's contemplating death life the mystery of death the the multitude of experiences of life the lack of control that we have in life and then again the concept of suicide but that how ultimately suicide provides no relief because death is just as frightening as life is and so let's take a listen to part of this to be or not to be speech [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so to be or not to be so by to be or not to be that means you know to exist or not to exist to be alive or to not be alive so this is what Hamlet is contemplating here whether to exist or not to exist so we have this opening line that's really focusing in on to kill to kill oneself is it better to suffer the slings and arrows of fortune so basically all the stuff that life throws at you all the the material that we have no control over when we're alive or do we perhaps fight against that and then and instead take up a moment and and die and then die to sleep so to die to sleep to sleep perhaps to dream I there's the rub so the thing about dreams is we can't control our dreams either and so we have no idea what our dreams are going to be so I there's the rub so uh there's the this is the the wrench in everything we don't know what dreams will come so essentially we have we know that life throws us these challenges we know that life does perhaps all these things to us we undergo oppression we have to deal with proud men we have we love someone who doesn't love us back we lack justice so all of these things can be part of life and part of what can sometimes make life difficult but what's on the other side of that well we don't know and so therefore there's potential for dread of something after death because we don't know what's on the other side of that and so we have a speech here that is about suicide we have a speech here that is about death but it's also about the ebbs and waves of life and the inevitability of that okay next up so something a little different here this is not a soliloquy this is some dialogue and so here I want I'm showing this excerpt because here we have a moment that deals with fakery and wit here we have Hamlet speaking with Guildenstern Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are two of Hamlet's like school friends friends from childhood but they've been brought in by Claudius basically to spy on Hamlet or you know to talk to Hamlet and try to get to the bottom of why Hamlet's acting the way he is and then they're gonna go report it back to Claudius so they're there right now sort of Claudius's henchmen trying to gain the trust of Hamlet and get him to talk a little bit so that they can then report back to the king and so so they're they're they're fake and Hamlet though they're also not terribly smart Guildenstern and Rosencrantz Hamlet though I think is the smartest man in the room no matter the room and so here we have Hamlet really kind of running circles around guildenstern here cuz Hamlet he can he's able to sniff them out he knows what's going on he knows what Guildenstern is trying to do and so what we have here is the players the act the actors who have come in they there are some now who have some small flutes and Hamlet grabs one of the flutes and says to Guildenstern well will you play upon this pipe will you play this flute and Guildenstern doesn't really know what's going on so I cannot Hamlet is trying to egg him on over and over again and Guildenstern keeps on saying well no I cannot I can't play the flute so Guildenstern over and over again you know I have not the skill I cannot do what you're asking me to but then Hamlet starts to dig in here well why look you now how unworthy a thing you make of me you make of me you would play upon me and you would seem to know the stops you would pluck out the heart of my mystery you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass and there is much music excellent voice in this little organ yet cannot you make me speak so here Hamlet has turned himself into the flute so he's here charging Guildenstern by saying well okay you can't play this little flute here but yet here you are trying to play me trying to hit all my buttons trying to get me to talk like the way you would get an instrument to talk and so Hamlet knows the game and ends this with you know call me what instrument you will you cannot play upon me such a great moment there of Hamlet pretty bitingly calling out Guildenstern here in his fakery and one thing that can be and just sort of it an interesting thing to make note of as you go through the play is to look for the ways that Hamlet really does run circles around everyone else whether it's Polonius whether it's Guildenstern and Rosencrantz Hamlet is very good at at digging into people and so sometimes this can be pretty pretty cool to look at someone just really be able to run circles around everyone else in terms of wit and speeches and everything so here we have some dialogue here teasing out some wit and some fakery the last bit here so this is act 3 scene 3 and this is one final scene that I want to show you that really focuses in on revenge and the inability to act and so here we have Hamlet and he he sees he sees Claudius he sees Claudius praying and so his his back is to him Claudius doesn't know he's there and so Hamlet thinks my goodness this is the perfect opportunity I can just I can just kill him right here and be done with it and I will have fulfilled my obligations to the ghost and this can all be done but of course Hamlet is often pretty good at well I like I just said he's really good at wit but sometimes he even sort of outwits himself and Hamlet essentially talks himself out of it and convinces himself that will sense since Claudius is praying in this moment that if Hamlet were to kill him right now Claudius is probably confessing his sins and so in this moment if he were to kill him here Claudius would go straight to heaven as opposed to suffering in purgatory or in Hell and this is interesting because Hamlet in meeting with the ghosts earlier on in the play the ghost specifically sort of talks about being in purgatory because he was killed in a surprise moment and so he didn't have time to confess his sins you know to to a priest and so we have that idea of dying with a clean slate re-emerge here and so Hamlet brings in this convincing logic or I mean logic that he uses to convince himself that he is praying and so he'll go to heaven and you know yes he would be revenge against this villain that kills his father but that same villain would get sent straight to heaven meanwhile his father is currently not in heaven but is currently in purgatory so the idea of why should this villain ultimately have an easier time in the afterlife because I've killed him at this moment and so should I do it when he is perfectly ready for his passage into the afterlife no and so Hamlet does not act and this is a pretty crucial moment because well if Hamlet were to kill Claudius right here that would mean that a lot of innocent people would not die it's pretty close following up to this moment that Hamlet then accidentally kills Polonius which then triggers the sort of series of events of Ophelia going mad and dying or killing herself drowning herself and then from there the play heads towards its its climax of the fencing duel where then we have the rest of our central cast essentially all get killed off and so it's thought that well yes I mean obviously the play would then end and we wouldn't have the rest of the play but if Hamlet had acted here there would have perhaps been a lot of innocent life saved but on the other hand Hamlet would have been you know literally killings you know stabbing a man in the back and so in stabbing a man in the back who is right now praying and so that if he were to kill Claudius here you would have that sort of complicated nature of the act and then of Hamlet as a character here okay so there are a lot of questions to consider with this play I'm throwing out some big ones here what support can you find for Hamlet actually being mad or for faking his madness so do you find evidence of him being lucid and witty and and of his mind or do you find moments of him slipping or and or do you find him slipping into moments of actual madness in what ways does Hamlet a hero and by the time the play is over in what ways is he perhaps a villain once Hamlet actually starts to act a lot of his actions are sort of unwieldy and ultimately innocent people die or I mean at least well you know people other than Claudius die in this play and they are largely because of his accidental actions and then his his planned actions as well and then in the end well we do have a large company of characters who who do die by the play's conclusion why do you think the play why do you think Denmark why do you think this family needs to have that slate wiped clean why do all of those characters need to come to their demise there are lots of other moments to consider throughout the play I haven't even really talked about Polonius and his daughter Ophelia so to think about them as characters actually let me move into this so character interpretations this is really connected to some material that you're going to write about but as you move through the play consider Hamlet obviously as a character and then Polonius how much sympathy do you have for Polonius do you see him as a clownish figure do you see him as a yes-man do you see him as a caring father do you see him as some sort of combination of all of these things how much is his death merited in your in your eyes and then Ophelia do you feel that Hamlet loved Ophelia or or not do you see her madness as being different from Hamlet's purported madness and how so and I'm with Claudius Claudius and I guess you know with his relationship with Gertrude how much sympathy or consideration do you give to Gertrude or do you consider her to be manipulated by Claudius or acting hastily on her own do you think that she is worthy of Hamlet's derision and contempt do you think Claudius is guilty we often assume that he's guilty but there are just such moments of doubt in the play do you what kind of King do you see Claudius being throughout this play and the last thing we have Horatio this is Hamlet's closest friend how does he support Hamlet what role does he play in all of these events why is he essentially the last man standing in all of this okay so there's a lot to work with with Hamlet take your time in reading the play and make sure you complete your written materials for the week this is the end of module 5.2 thanks