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Recommended: Gender roles
Michael McClain
Mrs. Baringer
Honors World Lit
16 December 2013
Gender Roles For Hamlet
Act 1
King Claudius- "'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
[…] but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool'd." (1.2.290-300)
Plot Context: King Claudius is talking about Hamlet mourning the death of his father still. His mother Gertrude says she also still misses her husband but you have to move on.
Analysis: In this quote, Claudius is saying that Hamlet needs to stop complaining about his father's death. That mourning for this long is very unmanly. He is basically saying that everyone else is happy why can't you be happy.
Act 1
Hamlet-" That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month—
Let me not think on't—Frailty, thy name is woman!—"(1.2.341-350)
Plot Context: In this part of the story Hamlet is very upset with his mother. His mom has just gotten married to his uncle 2 months after his father's death. In the speech he is talking about losing faith in woman especially his mother.
Analysis: In this he is talking about all his mother wanted was to have a man in her life. She is so weak that she couldn’t go 2 months without a man. He says that her "appetite" has grown and she needs to feed on so...
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...easty collection, which carries them through and through the most fond and winnowed opinions; and do but blow them to their trial, the bubbles are out. (181-188)
Plot Context: Hamlet it talking to Horatio about the duel that will happen. He also makes about Laertes is not ready for the duel.
Analysis: In the quote Hamlet is talking about praised and he isn’t ready. Men have cockiness and don’t know what’s really going to happen. He is going to lose because he isn’t prepared.
Act 5
GERTRUDE: He’s fat, and scant of breath.—
Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows.
The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet. (5.2.281-283)
Plot Context: Hamlet is dueling Laertes and is winning. He strikes Laertes again and Gertrude comes out with wine and a rag.
Analysis: Gertrude is playing the common role of a caring mother. She wants her boy to win and do well so she comes out
Throughout the play, Laertes is as an extremely caring member of his family. His strong emotions for family have an opposing side to it, a shadow that has repressed feelings of anger which cause him to add to the disaster in Denmark. An example that depicts this is when Laertes attempts to request more rites for Ophelia’s funeral. After he is denied, he starts a commotion by calling the priest “churlish”, explaining that Ophelia will be “A ministering angel” while the priest will “liest howling”(5.1.217-218). His compliments to Ophelia shows how much he loved her, while his nasty insults to the priest show his repressed rage. While this is occuring, Hamlet hears Laertes’s mention of Ophelia during the commotion and throws himself into a brawl with Laertes. It is the conflict built up from there that causes Claudius to target Laertes as his next weapon to kill Hamlet with. Laertes’s deep anger for Hamlet makes himself the best candidate for Claudius’s manipulation. Once Laertes’s sides with Claudius, he shows his dark intent by requesting Claudius to not “o'errule me to a peace”(4.7.58). On the day of the duel, Laertes undergoes a confrontation of his shadow while he clashes with Hamlet. His realization of his shadow comes too late into the duel when both Hamlet and Laertes are struck by poison, as this happens he declares that he is “ justly killed with mine own treachery (5.2.337).” In the moments that he is still alive, he dismisses his shadow and ends the circle of murder by announcing the true nature of Claudius. Laertes’s repressed anger guides the play into the duel where many deaths occur including Hamlet’s.
In Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” Hamlet and Laertes act as dramatic foils, where their similarities are used to highlight their differences. Each character learns that his father has been murdered and each plots his revenge against the murderer. In the first act of the play, the ghost of Hamlet’s father tells him “Let not
These questions prove that Gertrude is much more complex than the reader thinks initially. However, her character in the play is an enigma, shallow in depth. Gertrude seems to put on a facade of ignorance. She must protect her own interests.
Laertes makes another unfair move in the film – he wounds Hamlet while Hamlet is on the floor with his back turned. In the text, Laertes wounds Hamlet during their fight...
He criticizes women for making men behave like monsters and for contributing to the world’s dishonesty by painting their faces to appear more beautiful than they are. This illustrates Hamlet shifting from sane to insane. During Hamlets talk between him and his mother, he hears a noise behind the bars. Hamlet storms into the room and asks his mother why she has sent him. She says that he has offended his stepfather.
Less than two months after his father’s death, Prince Hamlet’s mother Gertrude gets remarried to his father’s brother Claudius, which upsets the prince immensely. During Hamlet’s first important soliloquy, he states
In theory women during the Elizabethan Age had no power in their homes. In royal families the women are the breeders, they had the responsibility to keep the royal bloodline flowing by having male children to keep the male dominance. “A woman whose job is to represent the family, is doing the traditionally female job of being wife or mother.” (Billig) Gertrude’s role in the play had fairly little significance, besides that she was a mother and wife. She showed no reasons as to why she was in such a rush to remarry after her husband, King Hamlet’s death.
In the play, Hamlet is described as an intelligent, emotional, and grief-stricken protagonist but he is consumed by his own thoughts which make him a highly-indecisive individual; Hamlet’s inability to act on his father’s murder, his mother’s hasty remarriage, and his uncle assuming of the throne are all evidence that Hamlet does not know what is going on in his own life. Perhaps Hamlet wants to place the blame on someone else after he wreaks vengeance on King Claudius, or capture the attention of certain characters so that he may find out exactly what has gone “rotten in Denmark” (Act 1, Scene 5, Line 90). Throughout the play Hamlet is deeply hurt by his mother’s decision to remarry his uncle. As Hamlet says, “Frailty thy name is woman”, her actions cause Hamlet to curse women all together (Act 1, Scene 2, Line 146).
In “Hamlet,” Shakespeare commendably conveys a, if you will, a “love story” between the major characters in the play. Hamlet, Gertrude and Claudius are the individuals he writes about. In this story, Gertrude must choose between her son, a loyal, sincere male figure in her life that has always supported and loved her, or a man who can offer her power and fulfill her dependency trait, which one may say is what she has always strived to attain. Gertrude’s inability to see the bigger picture of King Claudius’ deceit and ill morals is what makes Gertrude a weak and submissive character. While Gertrude means no harm, her poor judgment contributes significantly to the rotten events that occur throughout the play. The choices Gertrude does make ultimately leads to her death and the downfall of the ones she loves as well.
soliloquy, that Hamlet is beginning to loath his mother for marrying Claudius only one month after King Hamlet’s
In the beginning of Hamlet, the Prince behaves as any normal person would following the death of a loved one. Not only is this a loved one, but an extra special someone; it is his loving father whom he adored. Hamlet is grief stricken, depressed, and even angry that his mother remarried so soon after his father’s death. Having witnessed how his father had treated his mother with great love and respect, Hamlet cannot understand how his mother could shorten the grieving period so greatly to marry someone like Uncle Claudius. He is incapable of rationalizing her deeds and he is obsessed by her actions.
middle of paper ... ... Gertrude betrays Hamlet as a mother, she does not believe in him or trust him, she goes behind his back and blocks out Hamlet and his feelings and marries Claudius which really hurts Hamlet. Gertrude as a wife and mother, hurts the people she most loved, her family. The Shakespearean play of Hamlet captures the audience with many suspenseful and devastating themes, including betrayal. Some of the most loved characters get betrayed by those who they thought loved them most.
Claudius begins his speech with an acknowledgement of Hamlet’s death and his own marriage to Gertrude. Claudius claims that the “green” memory of his “dear brother’s death” “befitted” Denmark to contract into “one brow of woe” (1.2). Despite Claudius’ affectionate reference to Hamlet, his hypocrisy is transparent. The colour imagery reveals the freshness of Hamlet’s death. The metaphor used suggests the kingdom is expected to unite and share the grief over its loss but the diction in “befitted” hints Claudius disapproval of expected mourning rites, causing the audience to doubt his sincerity. Furthermore, Claudius adds that “discretion fought with nature” causing him to think of Hamlet together with a “remembrance of [himself]” (1.2). The metaphorical conflict between “discretion” and “nature” contrasts Claudius’ hasty marriage to the expected mourning after Hamlet’s death. Moreover, in Claudius’ statement, the dependen...
“Frailty thy name is woman,” is the summary of the feelings towards women for the entire play. Gertrude cannot spare any time to grieve over her late husband; she must find another man to rule the kingdom. That man turns out to be her late husband's bro...
Hamlet has just come from watching Claudius praying for forgiveness, his emotions and his nerves are very brittle, and he has just missed a chance to kill his uncle. Hamlet releases his pent up frustrations upon Gertrude, lashing out at her and condemning her despite the ghost’s order not to. Hamlet lashes out with his id, insulting her and accusing her, she defends with her Superego, innocent in her mind of any crimes he accuses her of.