Hamlet (place)

About: Hamlet (place) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2771 publications have been published within this topic receiving 16301 citations.

“To be, or not to be”: Shakespeare Against Philosophy

Abstract: This essay hazards a new reading of the most famous passage in Western literature: “To be, or not to be” from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. With this line, Hamlet poses his personal struggle, a question of life and death, as a metaphysical problem, as a question of existence and nothingness. However, “To be, or not to be” is not what it seems to be. It seems to be a representation of tragic angst, yet a consideration of the context of the speech reveals that “To be, or not to be” is actually a satire of philosophy and Shakespeare’s representation of the theatricality of everyday life. In this essay, a close reading of the context and meaning of this passage leads into an attempt to formulate a Shakespearean image of philosophy.

The Character of Hamlet’s Mother

Abstract: HE character of Hamlet's mother has not received the specific critical attention it deserves. Moreover, the traditional account of her personality as rendered by the critics will not stand up under close scrutiny of Shakespeare's play. None of the critics of course has failed to see Gertrude as vital to the action of the play; not only is she the mother of the hero, the widow of the Ghost, and the wife of the current King of Denmark, but the fact of her hasty and, to the Elizabethans, incestuous marriage, the whole question of her "falling off", occupies a position of barely secondary importance in the mind of her son, and of the Ghost. Indeed, Freud and Jones see her, the object of Hamlet's Oedipus complex, as central to the motivation of the play.' But the critics, with no exception that I have been able to find, have accepted Hamlet's word "fraility" as applying to her whole personality, and have seen in her not one weakness, or passion in the Elizabethan sense, but a character of which weakness and lack of depth and vigorous intelligence are the entire explanation. Of her can it truly be said that carrying the "stamp of one defect", she did "in the general censure take corruption from that particular fault," (I. iv. 35-36). The critics are agreed that Gertrude was not a party to the late King's murder and indeed knew nothing of it, a point which on the clear evidence of the play, is indisputable. They have also discussed whether or not Gertrude, guilty of more than an "o'er-hasty marriage", had committed adultery with Claudius before her husband's death. I will return to this point later on. Beyond discussing these two points, those critics who have dealt specifically with the Queen have traditionally seen her as well-meaning but shallow and feminine, in the pejorative sense of the word: incapable of any sustained rational process, superficial and flighty. It is this tradition which a closer reading of the play will show to be erroneous. Professor Bradley describes the traditional Gertrude thus:

At Sea about Hamlet at Sea: A Detective Story

Abstract: "All at Sea about Hamlet at Sea" argues that the record of performances of Hamlet off the coast of Africa in 1607 is a forgery and should not be used as a basis for discussions about performances of the play-as it is continually. The essay further suggests that the forger is John Payne Collier, who had a hand in countless forgeries in works of early modern literature. Who forged the 1607 document is less important, however, than the fact that it is forged. The essay discusses the history of arguments for and against the document's reliability and finishes with a review of three recent essays that use the document to advance their arguments. It concludes by noting the difference between the attitude of historians toward the 1607 document and that of literary critics who rely on historical documents to support their arguments.

Black Hamlet : Psychoanalysis on Trial in South Africa

Abstract: This article examines Black Hamlet, written in 1937 by the pioneering South African psychoanalyst Wulf Sachs. Sachs’s book stages a cultural exchange in the guise of a professional dialogue between the author and a Manyika healer-diviner given the pseudonym John Chavafambira in the book. Sachs reports the dialogue extensively and stages it artfully, yet the superiority of Western medical-scientific and psychoanalytic practices to traditional African healing remains his governing premise throughout the book. When Sachs identifies John as the “black Hamlet,” he accordingly proclaims the universal applicability of psychoanalysis, grounded in the Oedipus Complex. This paper argues that Sachs’s attempt to inscribe the South African native subject within the global imaginary of 1930s psychoanalysis proves subject both to reversals and transferential complications that render the entire enterprise highly ironic; the racialized unconscious ultimately on display is that of the analyst rather than his subject. Rather than assimilating the native subject then, psychoanalysis finds itself exposed in a setting conceived as alien. As a complex cultural text, Black Hamlet actively lends itself to the postcolonial critique of universalizing Western psychoanalysis.

Kozintsev's Shakespeare Films: Russian Political Protest in Hamlet and King Lear

Abstract: This book is a study of Grigory Kozintsev's two cinematic Shakespeare adaptations, Hamlet (Gamlet 1964), and King Lear (Korol Lir 1970). The films are considered in relation to the historical, artistic and cultural contexts in which they appear, as well as the contributions of Dmitri Shostakovich, who wrote the films' scores, and Boris Pasternak, whose translations were used in both films. The films are also analyzed respective to their place in the translation and performance history of Hamlet and King Lear from their first appearances in Tsarist Russian arts and letters; in particular, the ways in which these plays have been used as a means to critique the government and the country's problems in an age in which official censorship was commonplace.