English
notes 5-2-2014

HAMLET

Shakespeare's plays: human being = core (emotion; experience).

Hamlet is useful to investigate on the human being. People are doomed, they have to die and they try to remove this memory. Hamlet makes us aware of this.

Whatever the human being implies, our mind is very busy and we are going to understand through workings of the human mind.

Thinking and reflection are strictly connected to pain and suffering.

Existential suffering: what is the sense of our life?/What am I living for?

A text becomes a tragedy when into it there is a hero who dies and who follows ideals.

Prince Hamlet, who will be responsible of a kingdom (Denmark).

What is the spring of the tragedy? His uncle killed Hamlet's father, king of Denmark → replaced by stepfather/his uncle.

Rotten → in the Great Chain of Being, this implies unstability → new king by murder.

The ghost wants Hamlet to avenge him → lot of conflicts → inability to decide, to believe = to know what to do → he's stuck.

Ghost = metaphor of what? It stands for the workings of Hamlet's mind, Hamlet's psiche , that is full of doubts. Ghost was in line with Renaissance terms.

Hamlet's struggle → strange behaviour = to talk in riddles; cruel behaviour with his beloved Ophelia; he does not trust anyone.