توضیحات

 Critical Formalist approaches to Hamlet

Introduction :

From its premiere at the turn of the 17th century, Hamlet has been one of Shakespeare’s best-known, most-imitated, and most-analyzed plays. The character of Hamlet played a critical role in Sigmund Freud‘s explanation of the Oedipus complexand thus influenced modern psychology.^[1] Even within the narrower field of literature, the play’s influence has been strong. As Foakes writes, “No other character’s name in Shakespeare’s plays, and few in literature, have come to embody an attitude to life […] and been converted into a noun in this way.”^[2]

  ۴۹ صفحه  فایل ورد فونت ۱۴ منابع دارد قیمت:۵۹۰۰ تومان

پس از پرداخت آنلاین میتوانید فایل کامل این پروژه را دانلود کنید

 اگر مطلب مورد نظر خود را در این سایت پیدا نکردید میتوانید از قسمت سفارش پروژه جدید کار تحقیقی خود را به ما سفارش دهید

Renaissance period

Interpretations of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s day were very concerned with the play’s portrayal of madness. The play was also often portrayed more violently than in later times.^[3] The play’s contemporary popularity is suggested both by the five quartos that appeared in Shakespeare’s lifetime and by frequent contemporary references (though at least some of these could be to the so-called ur-Hamlet).^[4]These allusions suggest that by the early Jacobean period the play was famous for the ghost and for its dramatization of melancholyand insanity. The procession of mad courtiers and ladies in Jacobean and Caroline drama frequently appears indebted to Hamlet. Other aspects of the play were also remembered. Looking back on Renaissance drama in 1655, Abraham Wright lauds the humor of the gravedigger’s scene, although he suggests that Shakespeare was outdone by Thomas Randolph, whose farcical comedy The Jealous Lovers features both a travesty of Ophelia and a graveyard scene.^[5] There is some scholarly speculation that Hamlet may have been censored during this period: see Contexts: Religious below. Theatres were closed under the Puritan Commonwealth, which ran from 1640–۱۶۶۰٫

Restoration

When the monarchy was restored in 1660, theatres re-opened. Early interpretations of the play, from the late 17th to early 18th century, typically showed Prince Hamlet as a heroic figure.^{[citation needed]} Critics responded to Hamlet in terms of the same dichotomy that shaped all responses to Shakespeare during the period. On the one hand, Shakespeare was seen as primitive and untutored, both in comparison to later English dramatists such as Fletcher and especially when measured against the neoclassical ideals of art brought back from France with the Restoration. On the other, Shakespeare remained popular not just with mass audiences but even with the very critics made uncomfortable by his ignorance of Aristotle’s unities and decorum.

Thus, critics considered Hamlet in a milieu which abundantly demonstrated the play’s dramatic viability. John Evelyn saw the play in 1661, and in his Diary he deplored the play’s violation of the unities of time and place.^[6] Yet by the end of the period, John Downesnoted that Hamlet was staged more frequently and profitably than any other play in Betterton‘s repertory.^[7]

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Language

Hamlet’s statement in this scene that his dark clothing is merely an outward representation of his inward grief is an example of his strong rhetorical skill.

Much of the play’s language is in the elaborate, witty language expected of a royal court. This is in line with Baldassare Castiglione‘s work, The Courtier (published in 1528), which outlines several courtly rules, specifically advising servants of royals to amuse their rulers with their inventive language. Osric and Polonius seem to especially respect this suggestion. Claudius’ speech is full of rhetorical figures, as is Hamlet’s and, at times, Ophelia’s, while Horatio, the guards, and the gravediggers use simpler methods of speech. Claudius demonstrates an authoritative control over the language of a King, referring to himself in the first person plural, and using anaphora mixed withmetaphor that hearkens back to Greek political speeches. Hamlet seems the most educated in rhetoric of all the characters, using anaphora, as the king does, but also asyndeton and highly developed metaphors, while at the same time managing to be precise and unflowery (as when he explains his inward emotion to his mother, saying “But I have that within which passes show, / These but the trappings and the suits of woe.”). His language is very self conscious, and relies heavily on puns. Especially when pretending to be mad, Hamlet uses puns to reveal his true thoughts, while at the same time hiding them. Psychologists have since associated a heavy use of puns withschizophrenia.^[25]

Hendiadys is one rhetorical type found in several places in the play, as in Ophelia’s speech after the nunnery scene (“Th’expectancy and rose of the fair state” and “I, of all ladies, most deject and wretched” are two examples). Many scholars have found it odd that Shakespeare would, seemingly arbitrarily, use this rhetorical form throughout the play. Hamlet was written later in his life, when he was better at matching rhetorical figures with the characters and the plot than early in his career. Wright, however, has proposed that hendiadys is used to heighten the sense of duality in the play.^[26]