Showing papers on "Hamlet (place) published in 2015"

Random Comments on the Character of Hamlet

Abstract: Hamlet is considered to be the summit of Shakespeare art and one of the Shakespeare’s masterpieces. Although Shakespeare wrote the play and created and described this character of Hamlet more than 400 years ago, Hamlet is still appreciated by both Europeans and Chinese people. The image of Hamlet appears so vividly before us and the character of Hamlet is still so deeply endeared and admired by numerous Chinese readers that the study of Hamlet constantly becomes a hot topic of Chinese scholars in China. This paper tries to make some comments on the character of Hamlet by analyzing him from the perspective of his inner-mind changes with the story development, especially exploring the formation of his melancholy and its causes in more details, and then attempts to indicate its historical significance of the play so as to give the future readers more implications and draw some lessons from Hamlet as well.

The road to Townsville's early success: the engendered cultural landscape of Hervey Range and the community 'at its foot'

Abstract: This thesis focuses on a small, rural hamlet that was established in 1866 'at the foot' of Hervey Range in Far North Queensland. The hamlet was centred on the Range Hotel, but was also known to have had a small blacksmith shop and a cemetery. The hotel was one of five built alongside Hervey Range Road, which linked the newly gazetted port of Townsville to the inland supply town of Dalrymple and the gold, silver and tin mines of the hinterland. The research undertaken to investigate this settlement was constructed around four main questions: can archaeological evidence contribute to our understanding of the cultural landscape of the hamlet; the social role of the Range Hotel within the community; how women experienced and actively contributed to early settler life; and whether social respectability was important to the residents of a hamlet that was centred on the provision of alcohol. Archival and genealogy research revealed three new families who had resided in the hamlet, identified some of the social interactions and events, or instances of community (Yaeger & Canuto, 2000), that occurred during each of the hamlet's 18 years of occupation and provided evidence for an additional five, previously unknown, internments in the small cemetery. Archaeological surveys and excavations located the remains of the blacksmith shop that was built by John McNeill, a related rubbish dump, a stone floor that is likely part of the Range Hotel's stables and the possible site of the McNeill family home. These discoveries were used to examine the cultural landscape of the hamlet and appear to show that the settlement was probably divided into three separate, but related areas: a camping ground for the carriers and road workers, a business/residential area that included the hotel, stables, blacksmith shop and houses, and small cemetery. These areas were linked to each other and the wider landscape by Hervey Range Road. The recovered artefacts were used to assess the resident's social aspirations, using Quirk's (2007) six archaeological indictors for middle-class 'gentility' and working-class 'respectability'. Alcohol was often viewed as the 'working man's scourge' and one premise of respectability was the avoidance of this vice. The prominence of alcohol related bottles found across the excavated sites should perhaps have implied that the residents did not desire respectability and yet the recovered evidence did not support this. People in the hamlet appeared to have had comfortable, if simple homes, desired non-essential fashion accessories and used varied decorative ceramics to entertain both family and friends. These findings, therefore, suggest that respectability was achieved, even though alcohol was probably drunk by both the male and female residents. This layered theoretical approach has produced a fine-grained narrative that highlights the experiences and active roles that individual males and females played within their families and in the wider community. The results add to the understanding of how early Far North Queensland was successfully settled, with the residents' daily lives likely mirroring those of many of the other early settlers. This work also demonstrates how the community was not a 'bounded' entity, but was in fact linked across the wider landscape through the fluid movement of people and the formation of fictive-kin networks (Prangnell and Mate 2011). The discussion on gentility challenges the idea that alcohol was the antithesis of respectability, instead concluding that the type of community, the varieties of alcohol bottles found and even the identification of triggers that may have led someone to start drinking all need to be taken into account when drawing conclusions from the archaeological finds at a particular site. This thesis provides an important link to research that has already been undertaken in Townsville and on the pastoral stations and gold mines of the hinterland and also suggests further avenues of research. It also demonstrates how a layered theoretical approach can successfully investigate small communities and be used to highlight how ordinary people often led extraordinary lives. Discovering and telling their stories can help to enhance the past and reconnect it to the present.

Avenger Without a Cause: Hamlet in Hong Kong

Abstract: This chapter deals with the China/West dilemma of Hongkongers through the study of theatre translations of Hamlet in Hong Kong, with a particular focus on Richard Ho’s 1979 version. The preliminary proposition is that the resulting Hongkongness is a unique adaptation of a cultural Britain to a cultural China, whereby the cultural includes the historical but shies away from the political, economic or geographical adaptation.

Forming the nation : early modern England and modern Ireland

Abstract: Previous work links early modern England with modern Ireland solely through the figure of Shakespeare. This thesis broadens the connection to early modern literature more generally, and examines the deeper cultural tie between the two temporo-geographical spaces. In forming nations, writers in the two periods adopt the same strategies; England and Ireland as nation-states emerge into modernity in the same manner because they share a cradle of modernity, characterised by widespread cultural production. The respective polities of Elizabethan England and the Irish Republic are shaped by the same forces: modern Ireland is not merely postcolonial, but is post-early modern England. Without a positive engagement with early modern England, there is no modern Ireland. In five chapters I examine different formal arrangements that are rewritten through literary culture. The relationship between mothers and daughters in James Stephens and Eavan Boland is central to Irish modernity through the motif of maternity, as with Queen Elizabeth I. Fathers and sons in Padraic Pearse, James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and in John McGahern are reorganised into fraternal relationships at the foundation of Ireland’s modernity alongside Love’s Labour’s Lost (1594-5) and King Lear (1605-6; 1609). Ghosts are the ideal figure of the sovereign, descending from Hamlet into J. M. Synge, Joyce’s ‘Hades’ and John Banville. Additionally, bodies are the most alienating form, yet provide the surest path to personal sovereignty from Volpone (performed 1605-6; published 1607) to Troilus and Cressida (1602), through to Samuel Beckett and Edna O’Brien. Finally, a national poet emerges from the nationalised land in the dance of John Davies’ Orchestra (1596) and W. B. Yeats, as in the digging of Hamlet (1600-1) and Seamus Heaney. We have long known about early modern writers’ importance to the shape of the nation, and here those ideas are updated. They now show how modern Irish writers’ contribution to the Republic’s polity forms through their English forebears several centuries earlier; the literary form of the nations gives rise to authors’ sovereignty – authors who in English script the modern Irish nation. Note on the Text When citing William Shakespeare I use the latest Arden editions, but I do not footnote references; instead I cite in parentheses in the main text. Occasionally I have used a different Shakespearean text, which has been signalled in the notes. Standard systems of reference have been adopted for Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and Joyce’s Ulysses. I parenthetically cite line numbers for poems, rather than increase the number of notes. For prose and for drama, aside from Shakespeare, notes are used. Notes are reset for each chapter.

Counter-Reformation Versions of Saxo: A New Source for "Hamlet?"

Abstract: It has always been assumed that either Shakespeare or the author of the "Ur-Hamlet" was the first to introduce controversial religious allusions to the pre-Christian setting of Saxo's Amleth saga. But this article seeks to relocate the legend in the competing confessional narratives to which it belonged in mid-sixteenth-century Europe. A new link between Saxo, Belleforest, and Shakespeare's versions of the story is identified in the ethnographic histories of Johannes and Olaus Magnus of Sweden. The overlooked "Historia Olai Magni" (1567) is proposed as the source of local details (like the "sledded Polacks") in "Hamlet."

Hamlet and Oblomov: A Comparative Study

Abstract: The aim of this research paper is to explore by comparing and contrasting between the two literary characters Hamlet and Oblomov how they are in their essence indecisive that are exploited by William Shakespeare and Ivan Goncharov in different historical ages to project different visions of the human situation. Every author is influenced by his age to certain degrees and if the art of characterization of William Shakespeare is set against that of Ivan Goncharov, it is because of the difference of ideological perspectives. William Shakespeare’s character Hamlet comes from the Renaissance England and Ivan Goncharov’s character Oblomov comes from the nineteenth century Russia. The former is in certain ways different from the latter despite the fact that those traits of the both characters are the same as indecision and procrastination. The comparison and contrast will be highlighted in this paper in terms of Marxist hermeneutics, which is scientific theory and method of analyzing the social and literary types in the context of class milieu. Applying Marxist literary hermeneutics to the art of characterization of both the authors, the present study tries to introduce new portrait and re-evaluation of the personages of the two literary types in an innovative perspective.

Soliloquies in Hamlet: Necessary or Unnecessary In the Context of the Play

Abstract: Hamlet (1600-1601), a world famous play, Shakespeare's most debated work and perhaps the longest play written by William Shakespeare (1564, 23 April-1616, 23 April) has given rise to radically different interpretations. Several soliloquies uttered by the hero, Hamlet, are considered one of the core themes of discussion and these interpretations. The paper tries to examine the necessity of the soliloquies which Shakespeare has mentioned through Hamlet in his famous play, 'Hamlet' as some critics think that the soliloquies are irrelevant, ambiguous not necessary in the context of the play. Mentioning some definitions of soliloquy and its necessity the paper will focus on the topics with some reference of the related lines of soliloquy from the play according to that perspective including some reference of great writers and critics. It is well-known that Shakespeare often has his characters spoken in soliloquies during the course of his plays. Besides, soliloquies are essential to the presentation of a story through the medium of a play because they provide the chance to tell the audience specific pieces of information which cannot be disclosed through normal conversation. In his work, 'Hamlet', Shakespeare's title character is shown to speak in seven soliloquies. Each soliloquy advances the plot, reveals Hamlet's inner thoughts to the audience and helps to create an atmosphere in the play.

"To Thine Own Self Be True": Existentialism in Hamlet and The Blind Owl

Abstract: This article aims at exploring the key concepts of Existential thought in two masterpieces of the world literature, namely, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Sadeq Hedayat’s The Blind Owl ( Buf-e Kur ). Freedom, free will, authenticity, self-realization, self-becoming, and awareness of death are among the main concerns of both writers. Shakespeare depicts authenticity in the character of Hamlet, and it is in contrast to him that the reader finds many instances of in authenticity. The Danish prince has no tolerance whatsoever for in authentic or self-deceiving. The same thing is visible in The Blind Owl in which the narrator-protagonist feels himself above all the low, petty desires of mankind. All in all, both characters’ main challenge is to live authentically . Keywords: Existential philosophy, authenticity, angst, death, being, existence, self-realization

Seneca and the Modernity of Hamlet

Abstract: This essay reassesses Shakespeare's engagement with Senecan tragedy, arguing both that Hamlet's use of the Senecan dramatic tradition is more robust and sophisticated than has hitherto been accepted and also that it is best understood as part of a larger cultural conversation about agency and action in revenge tragedy. The essay therefore offers a revisionary account of the reception of Senecan tragedy in early modern England. In doing so, it also suggests that recovering Shakespeare's engagement with Seneca may require rethinking Hamlet's own reception history, since Shakespeare's play is so often discussed as a key text of emergent modernity.

My Kingdom for a Ghost: Counterfactual Thinking and Hamlet

Abstract: The removal of Claudius’s confession in Hamlet sets up an insurmountable asymmetry in knowledge vis-a-vis what Hamlet knows about goings-on at court from within the play, versus what we have the pleasure of knowing about the play from without. Claudius’s confession is all that makes the play intelligible to us because only the confession verifies Claudius’s guilt, and thereby the Ghost’s story, definitively. But only we hear the confession; no one else in the world of the play hears it, certainly not Hamlet. Therefore, it is entirely within our purview to imagine what the play might look like without the confession. The purpose of this paper is to pose the counterfactual question: what if we, as audience, had not heard Claudius’s confession? Without it, for example, we would have no way of knowing whether or not Claudius did or did not in fact kill the king. Hence we would have no way of verifying whether or not the Ghost’s testimony is true or false. And since Hamlet and those at court are not privy to the confession, how or in what way do they perceive events in contradistinction to how we (are made to) perceive the same events? These questions are not merely pedantic—posing them and attempting to answer them carries profound philosophical and ethical ramifications, some of which this paper attempts to elucidate.

“… the ruins of Europe in back of me.” Jan Klata’s Shakespeare and the European condition

Abstract: Abstract Jan Klata’s Shakespearean productions are famous for his liberal attitude to the text, innovative sets and locations, and a strong contemporary context. His 2004 H., a Teatr Wybrzeże production performed in the Gdańsk Shipyard, reaches to the Polish history of the eighties (the importance of Solidarity and the fall of communism) to comment on the state of the democratic Poland twenty years later. The 2012 Titus Andronicus, a coproduction of Teatr Polski in Wrocław and Staatsschauspiel Dresden, explores the impact of historical traumas on national prejudice and relations within the new Europe. The 2013 Hamlet with Schauspielhaus Bochum again tries to diagnose the contemporary condition and is again deeply rooted in a specific geopolitical context. Discussing both Titus Andronicus and Hamlet, I would like to explore Klata’s formula of working with Shakespeare. Primarily, he takes advantage of the fact that Shakespeare’s texts are not simply source texts but hypertexts with multiple layers of meanings accumulated over the centuries of circulation, production and adaptation. Perhaps similarly to Heiner Müller, whose plays he willingly incorporates in his productions, Klata anatomizes the plays and then radically reconstructs them using other texts, literary and paraliterary. What Klata eventually puts on stage is a hybrid that is rooted in the Shakespearean hypertexts but also heavily draws from historical, cultural and political contexts, and that is relevant to him as the director and to the particular specificities of the venues, theatres and companies he works with. The hybridized and contextualized Shakespeare becomes for Klata a way to comment on current issues that he sees as vital, like dealing with the burden of the past, confronting the reality of the present, or understanding and expressing national identity, problems that are at once universal and specific for a person living in the EU in the twenty first century.

Spectres in Hamlet: An Examination of ‘Spectral Anachrony’ Based Upon Jacques Derrida’s Writings on the Play

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Of Bread and Wine, and Ghosts: Eucharistic Controversy and Hamlet's Epistemological Quest

Abstract: The critical epistemological conundrum, faced alike by characters within and audiences of Hamlet, concerns the ambiguous ontology of the ghost. What is the nature of this supernatural being that so resembles the father and whose enigmatic advent will overturn the world of the son? Irreconcilable disputes over the essential nature of the sacrament of the Eucharist created a similar pressing epistemological conundrum in Shakespeare's world that contributed to its overturning. With allusions to the Eucharist by both the revenant and Hamlet, the playwright imports into the world of Elsinore the contemporary hermeneutic and epistemological anxiety, as well as the tension, associated with the theological controversy, especially the interpretation of Christ's words of institution ‘Hoc est corpus meum’. The oblique analogies drawn between the ghost and aspects of the sacrament imply that the former is an intentionally opaque and ambiguous site of knowledge, a parody of Christ. Furthermore, the Eucharistic...

"I thought Frailty's Name was Carl": Mystery Science Theater 3000, Shakespeare, and Postmodern Canonization

Abstract: William Shakespeare’s Hamlet has become one of the most cited, appropriated, and referenced texts in the Western canon This article examines an overlooked appropriation, the cult classic TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000’s episode entitled “Hamlet” Popularly known as MST 3 K , the show engaged in a very postmodern, metadiscourse by depicting characters watching bad movies and making sarcastic comments about them for the viewer at home But in taking on this gloomy, black-and-white German-language production of Hamlet , this MST 3 K episode poses important questions about what constitutes a canonical work and how exactly a work becomes part of a literary canon Through an analysis of this episode of MST 3 K through the perspectives of aesthetic and postmodern theory, this article suggests that this appropriation of Hamlet ushers in a new type of canon initiation, and, in the case of MST 3 KS take on the play, presents what I would like to call a “postmodern canon”

Haunting Emotions: Visualizing Hamlet's Melancholy for Students in Two Recent Graphic Novel Adaptations

Abstract: The study of emotion and Shakespeare and, in particular, emotion and Hamlet, is well established. Shakespeare's work enables us to experience emotions and their transformations as we try to understand them. From the opening of the play, Hamlet's emotions are all too clearly present; Shakespeare defines him as a passionate and emotional man plagued by melancholy. How is this human emotion interpreted and visualized by authors attempting to adapt Hamlet in the twenty-first century? In recent years, visual literacy has become a prominent aspect of classroom learning. In a changing, more visually dependent world, students need to learn how to read the visual as well as the textual. The medium of graphic storytelling can help students learn how to do this. This paper will examine two recent graphic novel versions of Shakespeare: Kill Shakespeare (2010-current), by Canadian writers Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery (alongside Andy Belanger as head-artist), and Australian author Nicki Greenberg's Hamlet (2010). Each of these graphic novels includes the character Hamlet as the protagonist, and each of these texts approaches adapting the melancholy Dane (and Shakespeare's "text") in very different ways. Through comparisons with Shakespeare's canonical play-text, including Shakespeare's incorporation of humoural ideas of melancholy, we will analyze how this aspect of Hamlet's emotions are visually interpreted and developed in these two new media adaptations. The essay concludes that these adaptations of Hamlet work well as a text for K-12 students because the emotions Hamlet experiences are presented in a relatable way. The texts help these students to understand the emotions, and so relate to a character whose complex personality may otherwise be lost in the difficulty of the original text.

An Analysis of the Termination of Credit Business in Faulkner’s The Hamlet

Abstract: Flem’s economic reformation especially his replacement of credit business by cash business in Varner’s Store in The Hamlet marked the social transition from a more traditional, closer and bonded community to a rather detached, rational and mechanical commercial society. The description in The Hamlet to a certain extent revealed Faulkner’s revulsion at the inhumanity embodied in Flem’s success. Keywords : The Hamlet, Credit Business, Social Transition

Hamlet Reinvents Himself

Abstract: We see the early modern as an open carry society. Hamlet’s success in the swordplay at the end is usually seen as his triumph, fulfilling his father’s injunction at last. The 2013 RSC production of Hamletprojected ambiguity, which I share. The most intriguing angle was Hamlet’s costume. Jonathon Slinger very quickly donned half of a fencing jacket; but the straps of the jacket dangled, strongly suggesting a straight jacket. Half mad, half resolute, Hamlet is driven through much of the play until, I will argue, he reinvents himself as a mad version of divine providence. The providential idea is deeply rooted in the duel ethos, as drawn by Vincentio Saviolo, in Saviolo His Practice. I propose that Hamlet substitutes his will for God’s, claiming the agency of Providence as he strikes down those who beset him. Hamlet’s complacent fatalism is selfconstructed as he enacts the Providence he claims to trust. Hamlet’s moral thoughtfulness becomes his downfall, creating the desperation that is his fall from greatness. [164] The sixteenth century was the golden age of arms. J. D. Aylward, The English Master of Arms In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tempers were short and weapons to hand. The behaviorof the propertied classes, like that of the poor, was characterized by the ferocity and childishness and lack of self control of the Homeric age. . . . Lawrence Stone, TheCrisis of the Aristocracy: 1558-1641 The 2013 RSC production of Hamletprojected ambiguity about male violence in the last half of the play. Under the direction of David Farr, Jonathan Slinger gave one of the edgiest performances I have seen. Slinger alternated between raving and giggles and firm self-assertion, between violence as troubling and as resolution. The most intriguing angle was Hamlet’s costume. He very quickly donned half of a fencing jacket, foreshadowing the final duel with Laertes as well as his need to destroy Claudius; at the same time the straps of the jacket dangled, strongly suggesting a straight jacket. Half mad, half resolute, Hamlet is driven through much of the play until, I will argue, he reinvents himself as a mad version of divine providence exacting revenge--in the duel. I wish to discredit the random duel, especially as providential, and with it Hamlet’s violence. Fraught with baggage, the honor duel is all that remains of the chivalric military role and comes to bear the weight of maleness itself. Aldo Scaglione traces the evolution of the knight into the early modern courtier beginning in Italy and spreading through Western Europe; in early modernism chivalry becomes courtesy, shrinking the military role to personal combat: “Thus, around the middle of the sixteenth century the new sociopolitical situation forced a major shift in the self-image of the nobleman/gentleman. 1Butler University, U.S.A. E-mail: wwalsh@butler.edu 2 International Journal of Language and Literature, Vol. 3(2), December 2015 The ideals of courtliness and chivalry underwent a momentous reduction that centered the new idea of nobility on personal ‘honor,’ with an accent on the duel as the definitive test of truth and merit. . . . [resulting in] the key principle that honor supersedes all other values, including loyalty to the prince and the laws of the country.” The knightly heritage “was adapted to a theatrical show of Castiglionesque gracefulness as the foundation of a new nobility, whose chief function was to serve the prince in his public display of splendor.”iThe age romanticizes confrontation itself as personal integrity in the face of opposition from church and state;ii it is about the individual’s honor and its defense, a still powerful cultural myth of self-assertion. As today, there is a certain theatricality to confrontation, a self-conscious maleness expressed as power.iii The duel is not Hamlet’s first choice. Opportunities for the chivalric challenge appear for Hamlet, but he ignores them. He distrusts violence and pursues moral autonomy independent of the formal duel. Only at the end does he embrace the sword as resolution; action becomes manly and inaction dishonorable. The failure to challenge indicates his rejection of traditional male values, but his own autonomous moral responsibility (“Whether ‘tis nobler” [3.1.56])iv will fail him as well. In a complex state of mind, Hamlet finds serenity in a conventional attitude about the duel, that its outcome manifests God’s justice. I propose that Hamlet substitutes his will for God’s, claiming the agency of Providence as he strikes down those who beset him. Hamlet’s security and fatalism have been embraced by critics, but I find themtragic. Hamlet’s complacent fatalism is self-constructed as he enacts the Providence he claims to trust. Condemned by both church and state (Laertes’ “both the worlds I give to negligence” [4.5.135]), the honor duel nonetheless rose in popularity in England in the later sixteenth century, coinciding with the advent of the rapier (and usually dagger) replacing the broadsword and buckler. The lightweight rapier was a thrusting weapon and, as it turns out, much more lethal than the sword: “The art of fencing . . . was a skill devised solely for the efficient killing of a man in a private quarrel,” and one asset of the rapier was that it was a portable weapon that could be worn at all times.vIt was an open carry society. Might society have been ambivalent? Early modern culture did seek to control male violence and the duel for both moral and political reasons. The ethical issues for the church involve taking life, usurping God’s prerogatives of life and death. Politically, Lawrence Stone places the duel in the context of the Tudor drive to centralize power and monopolize violence for the early modern state. The private violence of the duel was most difficult for the state to contain: “The traditional ambition of the propertied classes to demonstrate their personal courage and to avenge any disparagement of their virtue or their honour was given an outlet which at last affected no one but themselves.”vi Stone is dismissive of such manliness, but the age saw significant bloodshed and eventually James I made serious efforts to contain the practice.vii Jennifer Low focuses on the masculinity issue. She argues that the honor duel was the touchstone of aristocratic masculinity and class a crucial marker for it. Low too places the duel in the context of early modern humanistic self-fashioning. The early modern duel sanctions ritual violence as a quest for “honor.” The duel could be fought for apparently trivial causes because it is the aristocracy defining itself—as male: The duel “embodied a masculine code that shored up the faltering sense of masculinity among young male aristocrats and members of the gentry.” Low emphasizes the sense of individual heroism the duel represented for the aristocrat.viii Despite social and religious disapproval, we suppose that it was widely accepted in early modern times that personal honor may require personal action:Dueling was a daily reality for the Elizabethans. In the 1590s such English actors and playwrights as Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Gabriel Spenser, John Day, and Henry Porter were involved in life-and-death duels that incurred a variety of legal penalties. Londoners enjoyed non-lethal prize-playings or fencing “performances,” especially in theaters and inns in the districts outside the city limits and its regulations. But bloody swordplay was also a common occurrence in London as in most of Western Europe in the sixteenth century. Considered the “golden age of arms,” this century “became the ‘most quarrelsome’ in history.” Aylward observes that in 1586 Holinshed remarked that one rarely saw any Englishmen “‘above eighteen or twenty years old’” without arms; men wore at least a dagger, and the nobility also carried swords or rapiers. Turner and Soper speculate that England, especially after 1603, probably resembled France with regard to mortality rates from duels; in France between 1590 and 1610, despite the illegality of dueling there, “one-third of the nobility—around 4000 men—were killed in private combats.”ix The youthful male aristocrat was easily slighted and responded to real or imagined offense with the challenge to combat. Fencing schools, lessons, books, and demonstrations become commonplace, often in theater settings, sometimes in other designated places in the city of London.x

France and the Norman Lamord in Hamlet

Abstract: The climactic duel of Shakespeare's Hamlet culminates a growing pattern of sympathy between Hamlet's madness and the madness of the Francophilic duel with rapiers. On one level, the play operates as a sustained criticism of the duel of honour as it existed in England at the turn of the seventeenth century, and also of the desire for revenge and recompense that drove it. Hamlet's mental decline is correlated to an increasing sympathy with the rapier, and it is only by breaking this sympathy and returning to chivalric martial English values that Hamlet is able to achieve redemption.Le duel fnal dans la tragedie de Shakespeare, Hamlet, est le point culminant d'une trajectoire qui lie de plus en plus etroitement la folie de Hamlet et un engouement francophile pour les duels a la rapiere. a un niveau, la piece fonctionne comme une critique du duel d'honneur tel qu'il se pratiquait en Angleterre au tournant du XVIIe siecle, et du desir de vengeance et de recompense qui l'animait. Le declin psychologique de Haml...

‘Everything and Nothing’: Shakespeare in Blanchot

Abstract: This article discusses several moments in Maurice Blanchot’s work in which he delves into the space of Shakespeare’s oeuvre. For close contemporaries of Blanchot like Derrida and Levinas, Shakespeare is a decisive figure who inspires some of their major work. On the other hand, Shakespeare is not someone to whom Blanchot turns in decisive ways, except, perhaps, in a discussion of ‘Hamlet’ in The Space of Literature. The article discusses why Blanchot’s thinking may resist moving into the space of Shakespeare and proposes that, for Blanchot, Shakespeare’s name is inextricable from notions of human freedom and mastery that the modern work, which Blanchot is primarily interested in, dismisses. The (non-)relation with Shakespeare explored here reveals itself to be significant in what it discloses about Blanchot’s thought and the way he positions himself in relation to other writers.

A Wave of Destruction: Time's Inexorable Effects in Hamlet and Macbeth

Abstract: This thesis explores the typically cited character flaws of Macbeth and Hamlet and asserts that these flaws are not the main cause of their tragic downfalls, but, rather, it is the immense psychological and corporeal stresses created by the inexorable progression of time on the chief characters of Shakespeare’s plays, Macbeth and Hamlet, which lead Macbeth and Hamlet to their destruction. This thesis begins by examining the typical “character flaw” interpretation of Macbeth and Hamlet, which many critics assert, led to their eventual ruin and deaths of many around them. Subsequently, I cite substantial critical evidence from major literary critics, as well as my own close readings of these two plays, both of which quite strongly support my novel argument that the extreme psychological and bodily stresses of time experienced by Hamlet and Macbeth, and, to a lesser extent, by the other main characters in these two plays, rather than simply their character flaws, ultimately lead to their tragedy, loss, and death. I elaborate on my argument by showing how it fits quite well with other major types of critical approaches to literature, including gender-based literary criticism and psychoanalytic and Freudian analysis of Hamlet and Macbeth. I conclude by demonstrating via a novel approach that only through a comprehensive analysis of the emotional and physical tolls of the inescapable progression of time as experienced by Hamlet and Macbeth, and other chief characters, can one achieve an accurate understanding of these two Shakespearean tragedies.

Образ фортинбраса в трагедии шекспира "гамлет"

Abstract: The article analyzes the image of the Norwegian prince Fortinbras from the tragedy “Hamlet” by W. Shakespeare. Traditionally this image is examined by critics as a positive one, and the handover of power to a foreigner at the end of the play is perceived as a favorable moment for the Danes. The author of the paper has a different point of view and proposes her own interpretation of Hamlet’s revenge.

Shakespeare on Russian Film and Television: The National and Global*

Abstract: The paper covers a special role of Shakespeare as a constant of Russian culture on national screen and television. The author examines a number of phenomena of contemporary Rus> sian screen culture that somehow adapt and/or reference W. Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and “Othello” in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The author analyzes black comedy “Playing the Victim” (dir. K. S. Serebrennikov) with some obvious and cryptic allusions to “Hamlet”, a modern adaptation of the great Shakespearean tragedy “Hamlet 21st Century” (dir. Yu. V. Ka> ra), two episodes of children’s comedy TV show “Yeralash” which allude to “Othello”, episode 10 “Hamlet, Prince of Dacha” in comedy TV series “33 Square Meters” as well as an example of modern political satire — an episode of Russian TV show “Puppets” that depicts Boris Yeltsin in the ‘situation’ of Hamlet. The author considers some cultural tendencies and the correlation between the national and global in the context of the reception of Shakespeare and his works on contemporary Russian film and television. In his opinion, the national is represented more and more often only on the verbal level, and the global is reflected usually on the visual level. The examples presented give yet more proof that Shakespeare’s legacy is still a ‘mirror’ of Russian culture where we can see both problems it faces during unstable periods of changes and its specific traditions.

Visualizing Shakespeare: Iconography and Interpretation in the Works of Salvador Dalí

Abstract: Although William Shakespeare’s 16th century classical literature is rarely contextualized with the eccentricities of 20th century artist Salvador Dali, Shakespeare’s myriad of works have withstood the test of time and continue to be celebrated and reinterpreted by the likes of performers, scholars, and artists alike. Along with full-text illustrations of well-known plays, such as Macbeth (1946) and As You Like It (1953), Dali returned to the Shakespearean motif with his two series of dry-point engravings (Much Ado About Shakespeare and Shakespeare II) in 1968 and 1971. The series combine to formulate 31 depictions where Dali interprets Shakespeare’s text in a single image with classics like Romeo & Juliet as well as some of Shakespeare’s more obscure plays, such as Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens. Gettysburg College owns several of these prints, housed in the library’s Special Collections. Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens were on display in Schmucker Art Gallery as part of the Method and Meaning exhibit in the fall of 2014. Shakespeare’s plays are an eclectic repertoire of iconic characters such as Prince Hamlet and Othello as well as timeless themes (both comic and tragic) that easily lend themselves to an extraordinary diverse range of illustrations; from the 18th century historical narratives of Francis Hayman, 19th century whimsical paintings of William Blake, Victorian renditions of John Everett Millais, and then eventually leading to the 20th expressive freedom of Dali. Salvador Dali’s representations, like his predecessors, aim to capture the essence of each Shakespeare play using specific iconographic elements in order to create a visual narration, bringing together the interpretations of the author, artist, and the viewer.

Hamlet: Language and Writing

Abstract: This lively and informative guide reveals Hamlet as marking a turning point in Shakespeare's use of language and dramatic form as well as addressing the key problem at the play's core: Hamlet's inaction. It also looks at recent critical approaches to the play and its theatre history, including the recent David Tennant / RSC Hamlet on both stage and TV screen.

Productions of Hamlet on the post-Soviet stage in Russia

Abstract: The article covers the special role of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Russian culture. As an iconic character Hamlet has a broad scope of application, for instance, he became a feature of Mikhail Vrubel’s painting “Hamlet and Ophelia” (1888), and a film by Grigory Kozintsev (1964), etc. Hamlet as a cultural constant has been employed in a great range of original works by Russian authors: Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Blok, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Boris Pasternak, etc. The author analyzes some productions of “Hamlet” in Russia of the 1990s–2000s (by Peter Stein, Yuri Butusov, Alexander Titel, Valery Fokin, Vitaly Poplavskiy) as a part of the Shakespearean sphere of national culture, world culture and subcultures and tries to trace down the mechanism of how eighteenth century neo-classical adaptations set a pattern for some of the post-Soviet interpretations of “Hamlet”.

Shakespearean canon in the Russian literature at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries

Abstract: The article is concerned with the problem of formation of the Shakespearean canon in the new Russian literature at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries. We define the Shakespearean canon as a corpus of original works by the British genius and adequate interpretations of his texts in theater, criticism, cinema, art, cultures of different countries and peoples. The author analyzes Alexander Sumarokov’s adaptation of “Hamlet” (1748). It was a typical neoclassical play based on Pierre>Antoine de La Place’s translation of Shakespeare (“Thйatre Anglois”, 1745–1748). However, in the author’s opinion, it was Sumarokov who introduced “Hamlet” to the Russian theatrical and reading public. The earliest mention of Shakespeare reached Russia via translations and re>translations of French and German publications. Even in the early 19th century his works would frequently be translated to Russian from French Classicist adaptations by Jean>Franc,ois Ducis (1733–1816): “Lear” by Nikolay Gnedich and “Othello” by Ivan Velyaminov were published in 1808; Stepan Viskovatov translated “Hamlet” in 1811 and Petr Korsakov adapted “Macbeth” in 1815. The influence of Shakespeare on Mikhail Muravyov is a good example of formation of the “cult of Shakespeare” and his canon in the late 18th century. Along with historian Nikolay Karamzin, Muravyov became one of the first serious admirers of Shakespeare and popularizers of his canon in Russia. An interesting example is Vasily Zhukovsky’s studies of Shakespeare’s legacy; his poetic practice paved the way for Russian translators of Shakespeare’s works. From the author’s point of view, Alexander Pushkin remains the most outstanding represen> tative of Russian Shakespeareanism. Pushkin set himself a goal to create a national literature in Russia. “In the manner of our Father Shakespeare” Pushkin wrote his tragedy “Boris Godunov” (1825) and adopted Shakespeare’s principles of play>writing especially when he was depicting 374 ЗНАНИЕ. ПОНИМАНИЕ. УМЕНИЕ 2015 — No3