ENGL 225 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: King Claudius, Revengers, Erectile Dysfunction
Hamlet (1599 – 1601)
Hamlet
• Succession & inheritance
• Human identity
• Interpretation
• Morality
• Meaningful action
• Fate & free will
• REVENEGE
Senecan Revenge Tragedy
• The Elizabethan dramatists found Seneca's themes of bloodthirsty revenge more congenial to English taste than
they did his form. The first English tragedy, Gorboduc (1561), by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, is a chain
of slaughter and revenge written in direct imitation of Seneca.
Revenge Motifs
• Reege f so fo fathe’s death
• Intervention of supernatural
• Use of real or pretend madness
• Exploration of suicide
• Scheming villains
• Philosophic soliloquy
• Sensationalism
• Play within a play
• Hesitation
Revenge: Reappraisal & Critique
• Revenge against Christian precept
• Revenge against Natural law
• Revenge against English law
• Revenge against custom
Lex Talionis
• the principle or law of retaliation that a punishment inflicted should correspond in degree and kind to the
offense of the wrongdoer, as an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; retributive justice.
• Act of revenge drives on mad, revenge and suicide go hand in hand
Revengers in Hamlet
• Fortinbras
1.1.84ff HORATIO
Our last king,
Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet--
For so this side of our known world esteem'd him--
Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal'd compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
And carriage of the article design'd,
His fell to Hamlet
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Hamlet (1599 – 1601)
1.1.99ff HORATIO
young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in't; which is no other--
As it doth well appear unto our state--
But to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost:
1.2.17ff
CLADIUS
young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
Or thinking by our late dear brother's death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleagued with the dream of his advantage,
He hath not fail'd to pester us with message,
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother. So much for him.
Now for ourself and for this time of meeting:
Thus much the business is: we have here writ
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,--
Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears
Of this his nephew's purpose,--to suppress
His further gait herein; in that the levies,
The lists and full proportions, are all made
Out of his subject: and we here dispatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand,
2.2.57ff
CLADIUS
Welcome, my good friends!
Say, Voltimand, what from our brother Norway?
VOLTIMAND
Most fair return of greetings and desires.
Upon our first, he sent out to suppress
His nephew's levies; which to him appear'd
To be a preparation 'gainst the Polack;
But, better look'd into, he truly found
It was against your highness: whereat grieved,
That so his sickness, age and impotence
Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests
On Fortinbras; which he, in brief, obeys;
Receives rebuke from Norway, and in fine
Makes vow before his uncle never more
To give the assay of arms against your majesty.
Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,
Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee,
And his commission to employ those soldiers,
So levied as before, against the Polack:
With an entreaty, herein further shown,
• Laertes
4.5.121ff
LAERTES
That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard,
Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow
Of my true mother.
…
How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with:
To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes; only I'll be revenged
Most thoroughly for my father.
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Hamlet (1599 – 1601)
4.7.108ff
KING CLAUDIUS
Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart?
LAERTES
Why ask you this?
KING CLAUDIUS
Not that I think you did not love your father;
But that I know love is begun by time;
And that I see, in passages of proof,
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;
And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a plurisy,
Dies in his own too much: that we would do
We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o' the ulcer:--
Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake,
To show yourself your father's son in deed
More than in words?
LAERTES
To cut his throat i' the church.
KING CLAUDIUS
No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize;
Revenge should have no bounds.
5.2.309ff
LAERTES
Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric;
I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery.
…
LAERTES
It is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art slain;
No medicine in the world can do thee good;
In thee there is not half an hour of life;
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
Unbated and envenom'd: the foul practise
Hath turn'd itself on me lo, here I lie,
Never to rise again: thy mother's poison'd:
I can no more: the king, the king's to blame.
• Pyrrhus
o Hamlet uses this character to help act out revenge plan. Pyrrhus character from Aeneid. He was Achilles
so ho ated eege fo his fathe’s death
2.2.433ff
HAMLET
I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was
never acted; or, if it was, not above once; for the
play, I remember, pleased not the million; 'twas
caviare to the general: but it was--as I received
it, and others, whose judgments in such matters
cried in the top of mine--an excellent play, well
digested in the scenes, set down with as much
modesty as cunning. I remember, one said there
were no sallets in the lines to make the matter
savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might
indict the author of affectation; but called it an
honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very
much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I
chiefly loved: 'twas Aeneas' tale to Dido; and
thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of
Priam's slaughter: if it live in your memory, begin
at this line: let me see, let me see--
'The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,'--
it is not so:--it begins with Pyrrhus:--
'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
With heraldry more dismal; head to foot
Now is he total gules; horridly trick'd
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Baked and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and damned light
To their lord's murder: roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
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Document Summary
Senecan revenge tragedy: meaningful action, fate & free will, revenege, the elizabethan dramatists found seneca"s themes of bloodthirsty revenge more congenial to english taste than they did his form. The first english tragedy, gorboduc (1561), by thomas sackville and thomas norton, is a chain of slaughter and revenge written in direct imitation of seneca. Intervention of supernatural: re(cid:448)e(cid:374)ge f so(cid:374) fo(cid:396) fathe(cid:396)"s death, use of real or pretend madness, exploration of suicide, scheming villains. Revenge: reappraisal & critique: philosophic soliloquy, sensationalism, play within a play, hesitation, revenge against christian precept, revenge against natural law, revenge against english law, revenge against custom. Whose image even but now appear"d to us, Was, as you know, by fortinbras of norway, Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands. Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror: Thereto prick"d on by a most emulate pride, Was gaged by our king; which had return"d. Dared to the combat; in which our valiant hamlet--
