5/02/14

English Notes

The text is taken from the University of Birmingham.

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Shakespeare has been praise for portraying human being emotions (Hamlet). Investigating what it means to be a living, thinking and feeling human being. The only thing we are sure about is that we will die, but we must remove this thought. Hamlet tries to make us aware that we have to confront death. Whenever we try to understand what being a human being means our mind is always very busy (Hamlet’s mind was in pain. The word pain is strictly connected to thinking).

Tragedy of Hamlet --> he is the prince of Denmark and since he is a hero he must die;

Hamlet is the tragedy of an adolescence, a prince and a man who will be the King of the reign (god on earth), which means he must be an example of positive life and be someone to look up to.

“There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark”

The social situation isn’t good, there is no stability. Sign that a tragedy will come on.

Spring of the tragedy: Hamlet comes home from university and finds out that his father is dead, and his mother married another man (Claudius). He’s sad and angry with everybody around him. The country of Denmark was broken, when the real king (Hamlet’s father) was murdered. Now there’s a new king: Hamlet’s uncle, who is now his stepfather. One night Hamlet meets the ghost of his father. The ghost wants revenge (to be avenged). So Hamlets since that moment starts to have a lot of conflicts: he doesn’t know if he should believe the ghost or not, and most importantly he doesn’t know what to do. He’s stuck and cannot decide. Just like people don’t know what to do in front of death. So how can we prepare ourselves to this? Accept the idea of life and death.

Why did Shakespeare use a ghost? What does it stand for? It’s a symbol for what? The workings of Hamlets mind are represented in a new way: by a ghost. Magic in the Renaissance was everything men couldn’t explain. Today we’d say it’s the representation of Hamlet’s psych. Hamlet in the tragedy listens to his psych full of doubts.

Vocabulary:

-          Unexpected = strange acting (talk in riddles, being cruel, suspicious of everyone)

-          To mourn = lamentarsi

-          Rotten = being on the point to die (morally corrupted, decay, become weak, degenerate)

-          To come to grips with = venire a patti con

-          Existential suffering = quando ci si chiede qual è il senso della nostra esistenza --> questo tipo di domande sono molto più vicine all’individuo