"If Hamlet is carried away from himself, say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get original essay And when he himself does not harm Laertes, then Hamlet does not, Hamlet denies it. Who does it then? enemy."(V.ii.230-235)Hamlet's self-description in his apology to Laertes, expressed in the appropriately spaced and divided third person, explicitly points to the greatest antagonist of the ludic consciousness. The obligatory cultural baggage that accompanies Hamlet pays little attention to the incestuous Claudius while focusing entirely on the legendary melancholy of the gloomy Dane and the resulting delays in revenge. As Laurence Olivier introduced his 1948 film version, "This is the tragedy of a man who cannot make up his mind. ". Following the thread of "thought" throughout the play, I will examine the conflicts that preclude Hamlet from unified decisions that lead to action. Shakespeare is not satisfied, however, with the simple notion of thought as a mere signifier of the battle between mind and body. The real clash is that of consciousness, of Hamlet's oscillations between infinite abstraction and chained solipsism, between the recognition of the heroic ideal and his limited means, between the methodical mixture of sanity and chaos total madness. I repeat "between" not only for anaphoric effect, but to suggest Shakespeare's conception of thought; that is, a set of prospectively fragmented realities that can be resolutely merged, for better or for worse, only by the mediating hand of action. Any discussion on Hamlet, a work full of contradictions and doubles, needs to investigate the passages concerning the opposition to thought, that is, those of corporeity. And, since Shakespeare engages his audience's imagination primarily through metaphor, I will use "thought" as a catapult to critique sections relevant to my argument. The main definition of "thought" revolves around the basic concept of mental process: "The action or process of thinking; mental action or activity in general, especially that of the intellect; exercise of the mental faculty; formation and arrangement of ideas in the mind " (OED, 1a). A further subset of definitions can be categorized into a Manichaean view of positives and negatives and which apply equally to Hamlet's central consideration of conscience as a blessing or a curse. There is an emphasis on the potentiality of thought that fits Hamlet's obsession with the infinity of man: "Conception, imagination, fancy" (OED, 4c). But this is followed by the negative view of thought as quasi-action, a direct link to Hamlet's stalling tactics: "The entertaining of some design in the mind; the idea or notion of doing something, as contemplated or entertained in the mind ; therefore, intention, purpose, design; especially an imperfect or half-formed intention; with negative or implicit expression = not the slightest intention or idea of ​​doing something" (OED, 4d). Likewise, the neutral past tense sense of "Remembrance, mind" (OED, 5e) is contrasted by the negative anticipatory connotation of: "Anxiety or distress of the mind; solicitude; pain, sorrow, problem, worry, vexation" (OED, 5a). It is important to keep this current of duality in mind as we explore its ramifications in Hamlet, one of Shakespeare's most ambiguous texts. Hamlet's problems lie in the gulf that separates God from Man, or at least in what is divine from what is bestial in man. . His disgust with the "swine" (I.iv.19) nature of man is evident in his denunciation of all corporeal things and elevation of the divine. His self-destructive impulsesthey are verbalized in the first lines of his first soliloquy: “Oh, that this too filthy flesh would melt, / Would melt and resolve itself into dew” (I.ii.129-130). Harold Jenkins, in the ArdennesHamlet proposes that "to become dew is to die" (187), but the dew, with its seemingly magical birth during the night and lack of history, embodies the denial of the past that Hamlet is so desperate for. Although some editors choose "solid" instead of "dirty", both words are applicable, underlining Hamlet's degradation of the palpable or dirty body with the Elizabethan convention of the duplication of "too much", which here suggests the many doubles of the body's limbs , eyes, etc. and foreshadows the duality to come in the next two lines: "O that the Eternal had not set / His canon against self-killing. O God! God!" (I.iv.132) While Hamlet here invokes the name of God as a cry to providential reason, the juxtaposition with the human body sets the stage for a subsequent elaboration on man's obligation to utilize his potential: "So is a man / If his main asset and market of his time / To be only to sleep and feed, nothing more / Of course he who created us with such a broad speech, / Looking before and after, there gave / That divine ability and reason to penetrate us unused" (IV.iv.35-39). The word "discourse" is not chosen at random; the notion of flow is what makes Hamlet's mind spin and stops his action. This almost perfectly echoes his lament in his first soliloquy about his mother's rapid remarriage: "O God, a beast that wants the discourse of reason / Would have wept longer" (I.ii.150-151). The roots of this bipolar vision can be traced back to Hamlet's paternal double, his Sun-god (the Sun is also the royal emblem) biological father and animalistic stepfather: "So excellent a king, who was for this / Hyperion for a satyr" (I.ii.139-140). Hamlet creates metaphors of infinity to further his God/man separation, but Shakespeare inserts them as subtle hints at Hamlet's efforts to achieve abstraction but ending in solipsism. Hamlet's series of laudatory phrases testifies to this: "What a work is a man, / How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties" (II.ii.303-304); “His virtues otherwise, be as pure as grace, / As infinite as man can undergo” (I.iv.33-34); “O God, could I be enclosed in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space” (II.ii.254-255). The final quote, alluding to the cosmos, also brings Hamlet into the scientific realm. When the work was written in the early 17th century, the relatively new Copernican heliocentric system of De Revolutionibus was still contested (Harvard continued to teach the obsolete Ptolemaic geocentric system for several years after its opening in 1638) by intellectuals and laypeople . The theory struck the imagination of the metaphysical poets, namely John Donne, who added the poetic layer of the macrocosm to the pre-existing microcosm and geocosm. Marjorie Nicolson, in "The Breaking of the Circle", argues that the new cosmology failed to win over the Elizabethans and cites King Lear as an example of Shakespeare's fascination with astrology rather than astronomy. However, I believe that there is ample evidence in Hamlet that points to Shakespeare's admission of the possibility of a heliocentric universe, and that one could, in fact, argue that the entire play is an extended metaphor for the spatial confusion that plagued the West. world between the De Revolutionibus and Galileo's visual evidence in the Sidereus Nuncius. Without deviating too much from our reasoning, I will limit myself to citing two examples of this cosmological crisis. The first is in Hamlet's love letter to Ophelia, which requires little explanation: "He doubts whether the stars arefire, / Doubt the sun moves" (II.ii.115-116). The second instance is based on a triple pun as Hamlet bids farewell to the Ghost: "Do you remember? Yes, poor ghost, while memory takes a place / In this distracted globe" (Iv95-97). The globe as head, earth and theater merges Hamlet's chaos of microcosm, geocosm and macrocosm (the theater as imaginative universe) and his inability to place his thoughts in just one realm. While Hamlet's position is unclear, there remains a schism between his unbounded thought and earthly soul, brought about by the visit of the Spirit who "shakes our disposition / With thoughts beyond the reach of our souls" (I.iv.55-56). Hamlet's thoughts are never in accord with any other part of his being; what he values ​​most in man, his mental reach, not only surpasses the worldliness of the body, but is also elevated beyond the height of the soul, supposedly the only infinite and eternal trace of man in Platonic philosophy, Hamlet is too clever for his own good despite his vast reserves of lyricism, intellectuality, and curiosity, he is hampered by his princely duties and the rigid mentality they impose. If I Henry IV is a play about the making of a king, as Marjorie Garber claims, then Hamlet is about the undoing of a prince, the laying bare of Hamlet's vulnerabilities that stifle his kingship. In fact, there is no mention of the political process that allowed Claudius to ascend the throne in favor of the prince; we must assume Hamlet's impotence in the matter. The name of Hamlet's lookalike, Fortinbras (French for "strength in the arm"), resonates in Claudius's remonstrances to Hamlet to end his melancholy: "Show a will very wrong towards heaven, / An unfortified heart.. . And we beseech you bend to stay / Here, in the mirth and comfort of our eyes... / This gentle and unforced agreement of Hamlet / Sits smiling to my heart" (I.ii.95-6, 115- 116, 123-124) (italics mine). It is this lack of strength and will, the "unforced agreement", that afflicts Hamlet, and Claudius does not hesitate to identify the problem: "...persevere / With obstinate grief.../ ...'is little pain virile" (I.ii.92, 94). Without labeling Hamlet a woman, the suave politician humiliates the prince with denial of castration, and it is this gender gap that crushes Hamlet's self-esteem and drags him into his soliloquies. The ingredients of Hamlet's "thinking too precisely about the event" (IV.iv.41) are described as follows: "A thought that, quartered, has but one part wisdom / And always three parts cowardly" (IV.iv .42-43). Aside from the idea of ​​particularization reflected in Hamlet's own compartmentalization of modes of thought, "quartered" takes on various meanings that confirm Hamlet's views of Claudius as a double agent, "the body of a person, especially of a traitor or criminal" . ” (OED, 1b) and as royal rapist: “To place or bear (charges or coats of arms) quarterly on a shield; add (another's coat of arms) to one's hereditary arms; place in alternate quarters with" (OED, 3a). The military implications, especially those of accommodation, foreshadow Hamlet's "shame" at seeing "The impending death of twenty thousand men" who "Go to their graves as beds, fight for a plot / Where numbers cannot try the cause" (IV. iv.59-60, 62-63). Despite his troubles, Hamlet can still return to his warm castle and invariably does so, in his thoughts. A soliloquy which begins with the intensely solipsistic "As all occasions inform against me" (IV.iv.32) and moves quickly to abstract meditations on thought, then to reflections on soldiers but only insofar as it affords him another opportunity complaining about one's fategeneral trope of his soliloquies, from an openly bitter lament to philosophical reflections and back to an irresolute conclusion. What seems like a conclusion of conviction in this monologue is yet another of Shakespeare's clever uses of "thought": "Oh, henceforth / Let my thoughts be bloody or worthless" (IV.iv.65 -66). Thoughts, however bloody, are still just thoughts,” and “is more appropriate here than “or.” The double position of "to be" also continues the passive tense motif, most famously with the subjunctive "or") in Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy, which is less concerned with the advantages and disadvantages of existence than with destruction of the heroic ideal. Frazione prefaces the question with "Whether it is more noble to suffer in the mind" (III.i.56-57), pairing his twin obsessions of nobility and mentality with his Buddhist "life is suffering" beliefs (I don't want, for a moment, claim that Hamlet carries with it a hidden Buddhist message, especially since Hamlet ultimately triumphs through revenge, not detachment). As Jenkins points out, the following oft-quoted lines are just as often misinterpreted: "The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or take up arms against a sea of ​​troubles / And counter them end them" (III.i.58-60 ). Jenkins states that the sheer impossibility of defeating the extraordinary natural might of the sea calls into question Hamlet's motivations: "The absurd futility of competition is what Shakespeare's much-abused metaphor of taking up arms against the sea suggests so vividly. .. It is precisely because the heroic act is necessarily disastrous that it becomes possible to discuss whether it is noble” (490-491). My only amendment to Jenkins' comments is that he bases much of his reading on the debated word "slingshots", which he admits that it might originally have been "stings" (278), "stings" transforms the reading of "To be or not to be" into an apical pun and continues the thread of passivity through the image of being beaten, be they by stings, slings, or arrows. Hamlet concludes, as he usually does, with an iteration of his original idea: "So conscience makes cowards of us all, / And so the native color of resolution / Is weakened by the pale tinge of thought" (III. i.83-85). Shakespeare modifies the meaning of "thought" beyond the colorless to representation as a half-formed intent through the sense of "casting" in making forms: "melting metal, etc.; mold; pattern" (OED, 1. IX). Yet this evidence only denotes Hamlet's total lack of virility (which is not necessarily a flaw); Where does Coleridge find support for his claim that Hamlet suffers from a preponderance of effeminacy? For this we must look at Hamlet's relationships with the only women in the play, Ophelia and Gertrude, and his assertion of a gender division in consciousness. When Hamlet jokingly and cruelly retorts to Ophelia that "nothing" is "a fair thought to lie between the maids' legs" (III.ii.117), Jenkins explains that "nothing" brings numerous sexual puns to the table, namely say Ophelia's virginity and the yonic imagery of figure O (295). Furthermore, "what" can carry a phallic allusion; thus, women's sexual organs present themselves as sterile, half-formed "thoughts" that require male rigidity for structure and completeness. Hamlet's abusiveness towards Ophelia can be attributed to his misanthropy, in which he includes himself: "We are all knaves, believe / none of us" (III.i.129-130). More salient evidence comes from the Player King's longer speech, which some critics believe is made up of the "dozen or sixteen lines" that Hamlet inserts into the text.Speaking of the opposition between "will and fate" (III.ii.206), the Player King expresses Hamlet's contempt for Gertrude's infidelity: "Our thoughts are ours, their ends are not ours. / So think that you will not marry a second husband, / But your thoughts die when your first lord is dead" (III.ii.208-210). The intention of the thought is separated from the result of the action, and, assuming these are Hamlet's lines (and even if they are not), women especially have a tenuous hold on carrying out and sticking to plans. This is very ironic, as Hamlet has the least perseverance and constancy of thought among all the characters. Therefore, his capriciousness towards Ophelia is an offshoot of his underlying fickle feminine disposition. This may help to further explain how Hamlet's feigned "antiquated disposition" (Iv180) is similar to Ophelia's real madness. As Polonius points out of Hamlet's verbal leaps, "Though this be madness, yet there is method / in not" (II.ii. 205-206). Jenkins agrees, citing the sexual undercurrent running through Hamlet's seemingly disjunctive comments to his wavering father about Ophelia. If Hamlet has the intuitive ability to so accurately mimic the chaos of madness, it follows that his normal mental state is also fractured. Without turning this into a postmodern critique of Hamlet, I would now like to quote Fredric Jameson's explanation of Lacanian schizophrenia:...meaning is not a one-to-one relationship between signifier and signified, between the materiality of language, between a word or a name and the its reference or concept. Meaning in the new vision is generated by the movement from signifier to signifier. What we generally call the meaning, meaning or conceptual content of a statement, must now be seen rather as an effect of meaning, as that objective mirage of signification generated and projected by the relationship of signifiers to each other. When that relationship breaks down, when the links in the signifying chain break down, then we have schizophrenia in the form of rubble of distinct and unrelated signifiers. Part of Hamlet's enduring appeal is the wide spectrum of performances Hamlet offers its actor. That's because, at the simplest level, Hamlet himself is an actor (and a playwright, by at least a dozen lines). His instructions to the acting crew clearly derive from experience both on and off stage, and his machinations are only possible because of his ability to chameleon his interactions when necessary. Also an actor, due to his reliance on speech on multiple "Words, words, words" (II.ii.192) and not on action. To complete the rubble of Lacan, I cite Franco Moretti's description of polyphony applied to Eliot's The Waste Land and Joyce's Ulysses: fragments as symptoms of contemporary disorder, in short. But if the fragments are symptoms, then they are still fully motivated: they are in fact the "expressive form" of modern indecision. The polyphony they create may present local difficulties, just like the flow of consciousness: but the form as such would have a clear reason for being. the fragments contain both Lacan's schizophrenic identity and Moretti's indecision. Hamlet's description of his madness from my opening quote is the same condition that afflicts Ophelia: "Divided from herself and her just judgment, / Without which we are images, or mere beasts" (IV.v.85-86 ). The animalistic analogy is clear enough, but the “images,” which Jenkins calls “soulless exterior forms” (352), seem to me to fall within Moretti's fragment theory. Just as madness breeds a disjointed internal narrative, paintings rarely piece together a coherent narrative the way words can. Only with themEisenstein's theories of juxtaposition and montage moving images "make sense", and in Shakespeare's time, three centuries before the advent of cinema, the narrative connection between images was even more tenuous. But let's get back to the words. One spectator describes Ophelia's behavior: "[She] says dubious things / That make only half sense. Her speech is nothing, / Yet her formless use drives listeners to gather. They aim at it, / And they miss the words conform to one's thoughts" (IV.v.7-10). The "unformed" words still follow one of the definitions of thought as informed action, but more pertinently they serve as fragments of consciousness, much like Hamlet's obstinate schizophrenia. decimates his personality. Shakespeare exploits the controlled madness behind the stream of consciousness when Ophelia distributes symbolic flowers to the court: "And there are pansies, those are for / thoughts" (Iv.v.174-175). the French pun on pensées (538), and the effect here is that of Ophelia's linguistic fragmentation, not a simple Shakespearean pun Shakespeare further examines the transformation of thought into words under less mad conditions. Polonius warns Laertes to "Give no tongue to thy thoughts / Nor any thought disproportionate to his deed" (I.iii.59-60). The balance that drives him to find is summarized in Claudius' opening speech, a model of political phrasing that flaunts his equanimity through contradictions that characterize him less as Janus-faced Janus but more as capable, unlike Hamlet, of reconciling opposing emotions (though they are false, in his case): "With an auspicious and drooping eye, / With mirth in funerals and with dirges in marriage, / In equal measure they weigh joy and sorrow" (I.ii.11-13 ). The contrasting imagery of "auspicious" and "abandonment" is refined by the transposition of "cheer" and "dirge" with "funeral" and "marriage"; the internal slant rhyme of "mirth" and "dirge" and the simple alliteration of "delight and dole" also harmonize the emotional atonality of Denmark, thrice tuned in the three lines by the unifying "e" of Claudio. The subtle repetition also aids Claudius' patterns, such as referring to Gertrude as "The imperial conjoined to this warlike state" (I.ii.9) and then evaluating the "state as disjointed and out of frame" (I.ii.19 ), implying that under its new leadership it will flourish once again. Hamlet's process of articulation is more complicated as, although prone to lyrical turns that led Helen Vendler to name Hamlet the greatest poem of the millennium, it deplores the deception of words. He is either overly modest or ashamed of his own verbal experience, as he writes to Ophelia, "I am sick for these numbers. I have not the art of / calculating my groans" (II.ii.119-120). When Gertrude labels her vision of the Ghost as "the very coin of thy brain. / This ecstasy of incorporeal creation / Is very cunning" (III.iv.139-141) or thought of as incarnation, the fictional Hamlet defends himself by proclaiming the insignificance and interchangeability of words: "It is not madness / that I have uttered / bring me to the test, / and I will ask the question again, from which madness / would spring away" (III.iv.143-146). It is not where his thoughts end up, but where they arise from that Hamlet deems important. Claudius also recognizes the crucial division between the two at the end of his prayer: "My words fly high, my thoughts remain low. / Thoughtless words never go to heaven" (III.iii.97-98) . Despite the impotence of words, Hamlet still manages to "speak of daggers" (III.ii.387) to Gertrude, telling her that either heaven or earth (the text is ambiguous) is "sick of thought in the act" ( III.iv.51) of his new marriage. "Thought Ill" is a poetic expansion of the,, 1982).