Hamlet Flashcards
(40 cards)
Claudius unconsciously associates his brother with Abel when telling Hamlet his grief is unnatural
‘Tis a fault to heaven,/A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,/To reason most absurd, whose common theme/Is death of fathers…from the first corse
Claudius’ act 3 soliloquy, echoing of Genesis 4:10, 4:11
Claudius: ‘O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;/It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t-/A brother’s murder. Pray can I not’
Bible: ‘the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground’, ‘And now thou art cursed from the earth’
Claudius soliloquy; not being able to get rid of guilt, echoes Isaiah 1:18 and Psalm 51 verse 7
Claudius: ‘What if this cursèd hand/were thicker than itself with brother’s blood-/Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens/To wash it white as snow?’
Isaiah: ‘your sins be scarlet, they shall be white as snow.’
Psalm 51: ‘Purge me with Lyssop and I shall be whiter than snow.’
Claudius’ contrasts being white as snow
O bosom black as death!
Claudius’ repetition of possessive and wants to retain crime, echoes Genesis 4:9
Claudius: ‘My crown, mine own ambition, and my Queen. May one be pardoned and retain the offence?’
Genesis: ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’
Hamlet mentions Cain by name in Act 5 when examining the skull from the grave; political could allude ironically to Claudius
How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if ‘twere Cain’s jaw-bone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician…one that would circumvent God
story of Jephthah’s daughter from the ballad ‘A proper new ballad, intituled, Jepha Judge of Israel (which Hamlet quotes to Polonius)
H: One fair daughter, and no more,/The which he lovèd passing well P: What follows then, my Lord? H: Why, 'As by lot, God wot' and then, you know, 'It came to pass, as most like it was.'
this foreshadowing allows more sympathy for Gertrude when Ophelia’s death is announced
the poor wretch
Hamlet’s first soliloquy; compares Old Hamlet to Hyperion and Claudius to a satyr
so excellent a king, that was to this/Hyperion to a satyr
Hamlet’s first soliloquy; compares Gertrude to Niobe who wept incessantly for her slaughtered children
Like Niobe all tears, why she, even she-/O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason/would have mourned longer
Ovid, Metamorphoses Book 6: ‘even now, tears trickle from her marble face’
Hamlet’s first soliloquy; compares himself to Hercules whilst also comparing his father
no more like my father/Than I to Hercules
later in the play, Hamlet uses classical figures again to compare Claudius and Old Hamlet when condemning his mother
Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,/An eye like Mars to threaten and command,/A station like the herald Mercury
Act 2: audition of the Fall of Troy, description of Pyrrhus brutally avenging his father Achilles’ death on Priam
horridly tricked/with blood of fathers, mothers, daughters sons/Baked and impasted with the parching streets,/That lend a tyrannous and a damned light/To their lord’s murder (Hamlet)
Hamlet’s description of Pyrrhus
the hellish Pyrrhus
Player 1: Pyrrhus’ hesitation mirrors that of Hamlet, shame
So as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,/And like a neutral to his will and matter/Did nothing.
Player 1: emphasis on Pyrrhus’ lack of action
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still/The bold winds speechless, and the orb below/As hush as death
Pyrrhus striking; The Aeneid (Empson Edward Middleton)
Player 1: ‘And never did the Cyclops’ hammers fall/On Mars’s armour, forged for proof eterne,/with less remorse than Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword/Now falls Priam.’
Virgil: ‘How base is Pyrrhus’
Player describes Hecuba
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport/In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs/The instant burst of clamour that she made…would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven
Hamlet doesn’t understand how the player presents Hecuba without truly feeling her emotion
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,/That he should weep for her? What would he do,/Had he the motive and the cue for passion/That I have?
sense of fate which is echoed in the Aeneid
Hamlet: ‘His greatness weighed, his will is not his own’ (Laertes to Ophelia about Hamlet), ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends’ (Hamlet)
Virgil: ‘I laughed at fate/Defied its power over love or maddened hate’
fate again; this time also references classical symbolism of the Némean lion
My fate cries out,/And makes each petty artere in this body/As hardy as the Némean lion’s nerve
Catholic theme of purgatory; ghost wandering
I am thy father’s spirit/Doomed for a certain time to walk the night…Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature/Are burnt and purged away
command of revenge; description of murder also links to Priam’s murder at the altar
Hamlet: Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder (Ghost)
Virgil: Profanes the altar with the father’s gore
Virgil: ghosts giving instructions also a theme
When lo, Creüsa’s ghost! a mournful sprite…I freeze with fright.
