No other quote on Shakespeare’s Hamlet could have more precisely summed up the play’s echoic, reverberant and hauntingly evocative self-referential quality. No other playwright deployed the language, conventions and the resources of the theatre as effectively, so as to bring alive the whole world of the text/stage to the world of the audience. This connecting chord between the script on the page and the script in performance in Shakespeare leads to a plurification of significance and meanings to the play. Ian McKellan, in John Barton’s Playing Shakespeare: An Actor’s Guide, rightly avers of the connection:
“Perhaps it's because Shakespeare himself was an actor that he uses the metaphor of the actor and of the theater so often in his plays. Often when a character is at the peak of his emotional problems he compares himself with an actor: "struts and frets his hour upon the stage." This has a wonderful resonance for an audience...” Thus, it is clear that Hamlet is a play that implicates itself within the paradigm of “play” and the various acts of branching out thereof. These would include the notion of “play” itself, the centrality of “play” within the play, the simultaneous power of the ‘play’ and the threat it generates and the thin line of seperation between the ‘play’ within the play & the play and the play & reality. As frustrating and confusing as the above would sound, this particular phase of Hamlet has intrigued and fascinated literary critics, scholars, theatre-goers, drama critics, reviewers and the plebeian alike.
Therefore, the aim of t...
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...Directions. Ed. Hardin L. Aasand. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2003.
Hunt, Maurice. “Art of Judgement, Art of Compassion: The Two Arts of Hamlet.” Essays in Literature 18. 1991.
Malone, Cynthia Northcutt. “Framing in Hamlet.” College Literature 18.1. Feb. 1991.
McGuire, Philip C. “Bearing ‘A wary eye’: Ludic Vengeance and Doubtful Suicide in Hamlet.” From Page to Performance: Essays in Early English Drama. Ed. John Alford. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1995.
Motohashi, Tetsuya. “‘The play’s the thing . . . of nothing’: Writing and ‘the liberty’ in Hamlet.” Hamlet and Japan. Ed. Yoshiko Uéno. Hamlet Collection 2. New York: AMS, 1995.
Wagner, Joseph B. “Hamlet Rewriting Hamlet.” Hamlet Studies 23. 2001.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark in The Norton Shakespeare, gen. ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York and London:W. W. Norton. 1997.
Gender and Social Norms in Shakespeare's As You Like It
1683 Words | 7 PagesPrendergast, Maria Teresa Micaela.Rennaissance Fantasies- The gathering of Aesthetics in Early Modern Fiction. Kent: Kent State UP, 1999. Sparknotes. As You Like It, by William Shakespeare. 8 Nov. 2002 http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/asyoulikeit/.
The Supernatural in Hamlet
3066 Words | 13 Pages1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html Ward & Trent, et al. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907–21; New York: Bartleby.com, 2000 http://www.bartleby.com/215/0816.html West, Rebecca. “A Court and World Infected by the Disease of Corruption.” Readings on Hamlet.
Hamlet's Anger and Morality in William Shakespeare's Hamlet
1538 Words | 7 PagesCritical Essays on Shakespeare's Hamlet. New York: G.K. Hall, 1995. Chapter: "Hamlet and the Imitation of Revenge" Lidz, Theodore. Hamlet's Enemy. Madison, Connecticut: International Universities Press, Inc. 1975.
The Northern Lights
2807 Words | 12 PagesNew York: Riverhead Books, 1998. Goldberg, Jonathan. "Perspectives: Dover Cliff and the Condition of Representation." King Lear, William Shakespeare. Ed.
Patriarchy in Hamlet
1717 Words | 7 PagesExpanded Edition in One Volume. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997. 101-336. Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces.
Main Characters of The Tempest by William Shakespeare
884 Words | 4 PagesHe uses the characters to represent different aspects of the theatre, while also using language and scenes to remind the audience that they are watching a play. This play demonstrates the blurring and sharpening of the border between art and reality. Shakespeare uses his art to reflect reality through various lenses, while reflecting his art as well. This self-reflexive play was the ideal outlet for Shakespeare to bid farewell to play writing and the theatre.
Early Greek Theater vs Elizabethan Era Theater
917 Words | 4 PagesSince these tragedies were being performed for such a huge audience, lessons and/or the reinforcing of cultural values were often hidden in a playwright’s work. Elizabethan audiences went to plays specifically to be entertained. This forced Shakespeare and other playwrights of that era to give the audience exactly what they wanted to see. Judging by the success of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar and other plays by Shakespeare, death and violence must have been near the top of the list of their demands. Setting and staging is essential to a play, and once again Greek and Elizabethan eras differ in the way they are done.
William Shakespeare's Hamlet
1327 Words | 6 PagesWorks Cited Hughes, Geoffrey. "The Tragedy Of A Revenger's Loss Of Conscience A Study Of Hamlet." English Studies 57.5 (1976): 395. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web.
Psychoanalytic Analysis of Shakespeare?s Hamlet
1293 Words | 6 PagesYoshiko Uéno. Hamlet Collection 2. New York: AMS, 1995. 3-19. Adair, Vance.
Custom Shakespeare's Hamlet Essay: Hamlet and Gertrude
1925 Words | 8 Pageshttp://www.freehomepages.com/hamlet/other/jorg-hamlet.html Lehmann, Courtney and Lisa S. Starks. "Making Mother Matter: Repression, Revision, and the Stakes of 'Reading Psychoanalysis Into' Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet." Early Modern Literary Studies 6.1 (May, 2000): 2.1-24 . Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
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