Shakespeares Ambiguous Hamlet Essay -- Free GCSE Coursework

That ambiguity exists within the Shakespearean drama hamlet is a fact accepted by literary critics. Ambiguity of both pronounce and action occur in the play. Let us examine the problem. shame Nevo in Acts III and IV Problems of Text and Staging explains the ambiguity evince within the heros most famous soliloquy The particular problem arises from the perception that the speech apparently confuses two issues. Since we know what Hamlets obligatory task is, we can non but register the possibility that the fetching of arms and the enterprises of great pitch and moment refer to the killing of Claudius, though the logic of the syntax makes them refer to the self-slaughter which is the posit of the whole disquisition. And conversely, because self-slaughter is the ostensible subject of the whole disquisition, we cannot read the speech simply as a national of conscience in the matter of revenge Christian revenge and the worldly sanctions and motivations of honor. Whether Hamlet is talking of his revenge or of his desire for death, or of both, peerless substituting for the other as mask for truth (or truth for mask) thereof becomes the problem that this speech poses. (46) Other examples of ambiguity are found in this tragedy by the Bard of Avon. D.G. James says in The New mistrust that the Bard has the ambiguous habit of charging a word with several meanings at once Conscience does make cowards of us. There has been, I am aware, untold dispute as to what the word means here. For my part, I find not the least difficulty in believing that the word carries both its uncouth meaning and that of reflection and anxious thought. It is a platitude of Shakespeare study that Shakespeare could, with marvellous ease, charge ... ...es An Impulsive but Earnest Young Aristocrat. Readings on Hamlet. Ed. tangle with Nardo. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The Masks of Hamlet. Newark, NJ Univ. of Delaware P., 1992. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Haml et, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http//www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html West, Rebecca. A judiciary and World Infected by the Disease of Corruption. Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The approach and the Castle. New Haven, CT Yale University Press, 1957. Wright, Louis B. and Virginia A. LaMar. Hamlet A Man Who Thinks Before He Acts. Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Ed. Louis B. Wright and Virginia A. LaMar. N. p. Pocket Books, 1958.