Showing papers on "Hamlet (place) published in 1972"

Shakespeare and the Critics

Abstract: Acknowledgements Note on texts 1. Introduction: what do we bring to Shakespeare? 2. Hamlet 3. Othello 4. King Lear 5. Antony and Cleopatra Index.

Discourse on Hamlet and HAMLET: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry

Abstract: Dr. Eissler's double expertise as psychoanalyst and Shakespearian scholar becomes quickly apparent. Shakespeare's plays, he says, offer a "mind-created world... but a complete one, parallel to the one we know... the vicissitudes of human life appear to be compressed into... solid and meaningful forms..." The "New Criticism," he points out, finds the psychoanalytic approach a deliberate attempt to equate Shakespearian characters with living human beings, in an effort to unearth unconscious motivations. In the body of Shakespeare's work, there are depths that scientific psychology has not yet come tounderstand, for Shakespeare is "a master in the presentation of human passion, character and destiny whose scope could be asserted only after psychology had caught up with his insights." Brilliantly, he uses a dream metaphor to clarify the plays and their analysis, speaking of the "manifest" and the "unconscious" content. In the problem of understanding Hamlet, Dr. Eissler selects

The Play Within the Play: the Muscipula Diaboli in Hamlet

Abstract: NE of the most attractive metaphors in all of Shakespeare is Hamlet's title for his play within the play: "The Mousetrap". For this tragedy of Duke Gonzago, this slightly blurred reenactment of the poisoning of Hamlet senior by his brother Claudius, Hamlet's finely wrought and skeptical mind has planned a device designed to "catch the conscience of the king" (II. ii. 580).' Thereafter, and for the first time, Hamlet knows for sure and Claudius knows that he knows. The uncle, in terrified recognition, rushes from the hall as Polonius demands, "Lights, lights, lights", and Hamlet seeks final intellectual confirmation from his stoical friend Horatio for what has already been confirmed by his senses-the obvious guilt of Claudius. This pivotal event was a trap set by one who would cleanse a diseased kingdom, and Hamlet named his device accordingly. When asked earlier by Claudius what he called his courtly entertainment, Hamlet replied, "The Mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically" (III. ii. 227). Innumerable editors have pointed out the pun on "tropically", a word pronounced in Shakespeare's day like "trapically", the spelling in the first quarto of the play (i603). Thus the title indicated both a figure of speech, a trope, and a trap. So arresting is this metaphor that many critics have sustained it in their discussions of this decisive portion of the play, but perhaps none more fully than J. Dover Wilson in his vastly influential study, What Happens in Hamlet?2 In his fifth chapter, "The Multiple Mouse-trap", he uses the metaphor in virtually every conceivable sense, speaking of "uncle-mouse" and "cheese for his majesty the mouse". In the following passage Wilson asks one of the key critical questions posed by the play within the play: