ENGLISH PAPER 2 NOTES

Hamlet

1992 – Paper 2 – Drama

“Horror and disgust at his mother’s behaviour, and a spreading and deepening of that horror and disgust to include all life, dominates the soul of Hamlet.” Discuss this view of Hamlet’s character supporting your answer by reference to or quotation from the play Hamlet.

In the play Hamlet, Hamlet is a victim of melancholy. It is this which causes him to act at times rashly, at others merrily – a symptom of melancholy in Elizabethan times. The reason for this is his horror and disgust at his mother’s behaviour, as she herself perceptively notes, “I doubt it is no other but the main

His father’s death and our o’erhasty marriage”

and soon spreads and deepens to include all life.

From the moment Hamlet is presented to us at the beginning of the play his bitter resentment of his mother’s behaviour is evident. This is so due to his biting remarks to her

“Seems, madam? Nay it is. I know not ‘seems’”

and to Claudius

“A little more than kin and less than kind”.

His horror and disgust at his mother is explored further in the Closet Scene where he resolves to “...set [her] up a glass where [she] may see the inmost part of you”.

Here he chastises his mother for marrying his uncle less than two months after he has murdered her first husband. Hamlet also suspects that she was unfaithful to his father, which further deepens his horror and disgust. The coarse and revolting imagery together with the terse and forceful statements used by Hamlet convey his horror and disgust at his mother’s behaviour.

“Such an act that blurs the grace and blush of modesty”

“Do not spread the compost on the weeds

To make them ranker.”

It is Hamlet’s attitude to his mother’s behaviour that colours his attitude to women in general and in particular Ophelia. This attitude is first presented to us through Hamlet’s outburst “Frailty thy name is woman”. We see this attitude demonstrated in his treatment of Ophelia. At first he trusts her and feels close to her. He runs to her chambers “as if loosed from hell to speak of horrors”, seeking comfort and solace from her. Yet by the Nunnery Scene his behaviour towards her has changed to the extent that he orders her “get thee to a nunnery. Why, wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?” This outburst is caused by his belief that she will become as false as his mother and his disillusionment with the prolonging and perpetuation of life.

This horror and disgust at all life has also developed through the play and stems from his horror and disgust at his mother’s behaviour. In his first soliloquy, in which he first reveals his attitudes to his mother’s “o’erhasty marriage”, his thoughts turn immediately to suicide

“O that this too too sullied flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter.”

His state of mind is not helped by the Ghost’s revelation that he was murdered and his insistence that Hamlet revenge both his death and his wife’s “falling off”. Once again Hamlet rues his very existence “O cursed spite

That ever I was born to set it right”

This is further compounded by his inability to enact this revenge. He cannot understand his inaction and his horror and disgust is deepened.

“A dull and muddy-mettled rascal,

peak like a John-a-dreams unpregnant of my cause

And can say nothing.”

This once again awakens a contemplation of life and of death

“To be or not to be that is the question

Whether ‘tis nobler of the mind to suffer the slings

And arrows of outrageous fortune, or take arms

Against a sea of troubles and by opposing

End them.”

This cycle is repeated throughout the play where resolve is followed by inaction, followed by disgust.