What, has this thing appeared again tonight - in TRI (original) (raw)
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ARTICLE Hamlet and the Ghost: A Joint Sense of Time
Johns Hopkins Project Muse PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE , 2013
Key points: The paper addresses the question: why and how does Hamlet lose track of time in the Prayer-Closet scene sequence? While Deleuze aptly notes the poetic formula “the time is out of joint” is indicative of time no longer being subordinate to cyclical rhythms of nature, or as Polonius asserts: “Time is time”(II. ii. 88), but rather movement being subordinated to time, it is argued that the HAMLET text goes further in its pre-figuration of Kant’s concept that time is a mysteriously autonomous form. More specifically, it is explicated via a close textual reading that in Kantian terminology Hamlet's temporary identification with the Ghost’s categorical sense of what is possible and impossible in accordance with the passage of outer time is what causes Hamlet’s temporal confusion.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GHOST APPEARANCE IN HAMLET
The careful observer can easily realize that certain cultural practices from afar look strangely like those performed in his/her own culture. As an African, I definitely perceive this reality through Shakespeare's works. The appearance of a ghost is highly significant since it may reveal hidden facts. The one presented here-King Hamlet-has a matter to settle with his murderer and brother Claudius. And to achieve this, he confides in his son Hamlet. Its recommendation is clear: give me justice. Its repeated appearance prompts this son, so dull and brooding, to pass to the act. What if the latter had other reasons to do so! That is what this article will consider, focusing on Hamlet, prince of Denmark. Our goal is to reveal these hidden reasons. Resume L'observateur attentif peut aisément se rendre compte que certaines pratiques relevant de la culture d'ailleurs ressemblent étrangement à ce que présente sa propre culture. L'Africain que je suis le remarque fort bien avec les oeuvres de Shakespeare. L'avènement d'un fantôme par exemple est chose curieuse et redoutée car ce 'revenu' a certainement des choses cachées à révéler. Celui que nous présente le dramaturge-King Hamlet-avait un contentieux à régler avec son meurtrier et frère Claudius. Et pour y parvenir, il se confie à son fils héritier Hamlet. Sa recommandation est claire : rends-moi justice. Son apparition répétée finit par décider ce fils-trop pensif et timoré-à passer à l'acte. Et si ce dernier avait aussi d'autres raisons de le faire ! C'est ce que cet article étudiera en s'appuyant sur l'oeuvre Hamlet, prince de Danemark. Notre objectif est de révéler ces motifs dissimulés.
Fooles of Nature: The Epistemology of Hamlet
English Literary Renaissance, 2020
Bar. Whose there? Fran. Nay answere me. Stand and vnfolde your selfe. Bar. Long liue the King (4-7; 1.1.1-3) 1 W e begin in uncertainty. It is dark, midnight in fact. The circumstances-the speakers are soldiers, situated on a platform, distant enough from each other to be unidentifiable-invite hostility and distrust. Seeking information that will resolve the uncertainty, Francisco demands stability ("Stand") and transparency ("vnfolde your selfe"). The man arriving, in this case Barnardo, must be manageably contained for examination and probed for information that is represented as concealed beneath the surface. Without more light and more soldiers, Francisco cannot be sure that either of his demands will be met. Barnardo in fact ignores his demand for visually verifiable information, but resolves the uncertainty and tension in a different way-by affirming a shared allegiance. It does not matter in the immediate that the king to whom they swear allegiance is, as we discover, a villain. In the enterprise of the watch, the 1. This is the second quarto text of 1604. I have retained original spelling and punctuation to discourage domestication of this very familiar text, which would be counterproductive in an essay dedicated to enhancing our sense of the richness of the experience of Elizabethan readers and theatergoers with Hamlet. My source is The Three-Text Hamlet: Parallel Texts of the First and Second Quartos and First Folio, ed. Paul Bertram and Bernice W. Kliman (New York, 1991). Parenthetical Hamlet references include the Q2 through-line numbers, followed by the equivalent act, scene, and line numbers from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (1972) as provided by The Three-Text Hamlet; the few Q1 and F references are so designated. Quotations of Shakespearean works other than Hamlet are from The Norton Shakespeare, ed.
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 2009
The present article tries to answer the question whether it is possible to think of William Shakespeare's Hamlet as a dream vision in which the Ghost plays the role analogous to the Dreamer's supernatural guide, which is the situation we meet with in medieval dream visions, such as Chaucer's The book of the Duchess, or The Pearl. It seems that such an interpretation is possible, even though it should be approached cautiously because medieval ghosts and dead souls, and other supernatural phenomena, not only in dream visions, usually function as a means to solve, or at least alleviate, a crisis, whereas in Hamlet the Ghost comes rather to exacerbate it, and make it more tragical. To prove this point, the author makes comparisons not only between Hamlet and dream visions, but also some medieval ghost stories, and the thirteenth century romance Havelok the Dane, which is based on a narrative pattern not very different from that of Hamlet. Another problem examined in this article is that of the extent to which we can talk of the motif of reduplication and monstrous double as a leitmotif in Hamlet, and also in some of its analogues. Some comments and ideas by Frank Kermode and Harold Bloom are made use of in this context. The topic of the present paper is a little paradoxical. Strictly speaking, Shakespeare's Hamlet is clearly not a dream vision, nor are there any dream visions inside it. And yet the motif of sleep and dream figures in it very prominently, the play is permeated with it, we might even say. It all starts with Bernardo's words, at the beginning of Act 1, scene 1: "get thee to bed, Francisco" (I.1.7), goes through Hamlet's dreamlike seeing his father in his "mind's eye" (I.2.185), and ends with the famous words of Horatio, from Act 5, scene 2, addressed to Hamlet just after the latter's death: "Good night, sweet prince; and flights of
New Old Readings in the Texts of Hamlet
1998
This paper seeks to draw attention to several original readings in the early texts of Hamlet – specifically those from which the play is commonly known– which traditional or standard critical editing has relegated to oblivion in the small print of textual apparatuses, that section of critical editions which the average reader seldom or never reads. The standard critical edition of Hamlet aims to reconstruct or approximate the text its author wrote. To that end, editors study the textual transmission of the play, by analysing and comparing its early texts, especially those that are not derivatives from any previous witness and therefore are accorded primary authority: namely, the First Quarto printed in 1603, the Second Quarto dated 1604/5 and the First Folio published in 1623 (no witness has survived that has a direct relationship with the author’s hand, such as holographs or authorially corrected copies). 1 Having a preconceived history of the ‘text’ of Hamlet, editors establish th...