Hamlet
Lecture Outline
Prof. Chin-jung Chiu
3 key events around which the basic action pivots:
mathematically equidistant from each other in the running time
1.5 apparition sequence
3.2 mousetrap scene
5.2 dueling scene
Plot: Act/Scene/Line *references to Arden
1.1. change of guard on the night shift
1.2. King’s elaborate, hypocritical speech at a time shortly after his coronation 5-25; 64-85
129-59 first soliloquy “O that this too too sullied flesh”; “Frailty, thy name is woman” 146
1.3. Laertes counsels Ophelia; Polonius counsels Laertes
5-18; 55-81 “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”; 99-110 “tender” used both as v. & n. 4 times
1.4. Horatio reports to Ham. about the ghost; link to the next scene
1.5. 80-91 “O horrible! O horrible! Most horrible!. . . Adieu, adieu, remember me.”
98- “from the table of my memory”
157 “Swear”
180 “To put an antic disposition on—“
end “The time is out of joint”
2.1. (1) Polonius sends Reynaldo to spy on Laertes.
(2) Ophelia reports Ham.’s queer behavior to Polonius. 77- “as I was sewing in my closet,” “Mad for thy love?”
2.2. (1) R & G summoned to the court 15- “To draw him on to pleasures”: their mission; 146-50 symptoms; 171-91; 303-10 “What piece of work is a man”;
243 “
(2) Troupe of traveling actors coming to
motif: acting
550- “And all for nothing! / For Hecuba! / What’s Hecuba to him, or he to
to her, / That he should weep for her?”
660-01 “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”
3.1. nunnery scene
56-163 soliloquy “To be , or not to be . . . lose the name of action.”
3.2. mousetrap scene
20-30 “the purpose of playing”
92- motif: capons crammed with air; 224-35 “Madam, how like you this play”; 255-64 “Give me some light”; 384- “I will speak daggers to her, but use none.”
3.3. Claudius praying 36-43
3.4. closet scene 7-45; 88-96; 161-82 Oedipal complex (cf. Mel Gibson & Glen Close Hamlet [1990])
4.1. Queen tells Claudius Ham. has killed Polonius in a fit of insanity. Claudius
sends R & G to find where Ham. has hidden the corpse.
4.2. Ham. ridicules R & G. 4-26 motif: sponge
4.3. Claudius tells Ham. he is sending him to
33-37 “seek him in the other place yourself”
61-71 “And
4.4. On his way to
4.5. Ophelia mad. 21-66 songs with motifs of death, burial , and sex
173-83 Ophelia’s distribution of flowers
4.6. Horatio receives Ham.’s letter: Ham. has slipped out of the trap laid for him in
4.7. Ophelia died. 165-85
Motif of many paintings ex. English Pre-rephelite painter J. E. Millais
5.1. graveyard scene: awakening to life and death 1-30; 65-85 “Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness”;178-89 “Alas, poor Yorick”; 264-66 “I lov’d Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers / Could not with their quantity of love / Make up my sum.”
5.2. Ham. teasing Osric, the mincing courtier. 10-11 “There is a divinity that
shapes our ends”; 215-30 “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow”; “If Hamlet from himself be taken away”; 290 “He is fat and scant of breath”
343-44 “Report me and my cause aright”; 360-365 “He has my dying voice”
Characterization of Hamlet:
Richard Burbage (died in 1619)
Joseph Taylor—Restoration 1660:
vivacious, enterprising character in a version that had most its poetry & philosophy cut; stressed the horror at the appearance of ghost
Kemble, end of 18th c:
gloomy, melancholic prince; reduce the physical horror; lasting love for Ophelia, tameness in his confrontation with mom; agreeable, tender + wild, excited
19th c:
keen witted, bitter; sense of being haunted; self-generated excitement verging on hysteri
1925 modern-dress Ham.
Sir John Gilgud: youthful, sensitive, lonely prince incapable of coping w/ elder people; full of bitterness & nausea at the discovery of the ugly side of human life
Kenneth Branaugh 1988-92: a sane Ham. whose madness was always a pretense
Daniel Day-Lewis: There lurked real hysteria behind simulated madness.
