Detailed Notes on Module B – Hamlet Shakespeare

Resource Description

Context:

• Renaissance Humanism vs Christian virtues/renaissance scepticism 
• The divine right of kings/great chain of being

 Themes:

• Free Will vs Determinism 
• Morality & Justice – what is just 
• Mortality & Existential anxiety – What is the point of doing anything, acting or not acting if we all die – why should we do the right thing if we all die
• Metaphysical questioning of reality – why do we understand the world is the way it is, why is this reality, what you see as truth is questionable – Do we know the ghost is his father? Claudius is the murderer? Hamlet pretends he’s going mad, don’t know which point he actually goes mad
• HAVE A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF HAMLET
• Epistemology – how do we know what we know, what process in which we can determine reality is. He doesn’t know what is true and what isn’t, there’s no way we can know what we think is real 
• Power/Corruption

Act I Scene I

• Foreshadowing
• Metaphysical questioning of truth and reality
• Disruption of natural order
• Bleak, dying imagery

1.2

Shakespeare employs paradoxical language for Claudius to reflect duplicitous Machiavellian character (someone pragmatic)

First Soliloquy

• Overdramatic language
• Negative language
• How Hamlet paints the world – e.g. unweeded garden, lamenting on corruption
• Looking at the frailty of human being & women 
• Oedipus complex – idea that you don’t like your father because he’s with your mother and you want to have sex with your mum, tension between father and son
• Sense of betrayal and injustice in the world