Roll
No: 11
Paper
No: (8) Cultural studies
Topic:
Study of Hamlet
Enrolment
No:
M.A:
Sem-2
Year:
2015-16
Email:
mdodiya26@gmail.com
Submitted
To: Department of English M.K.B.U.-Bhavnagar University
v Introduction:-
‘Hamlet’ it is Play written
by Shakespeare. Hamlet it’s one type of revenge play also. ‘Hamlet’ is the
story of a prince Hamlet who wants to take revenge of his father’s death by his
uncle Claudius.
v Study Of Hamlet:-
In cultural studies examines
power relationship also. It new Historical emphasis on it. For example, we
noted that cultural critics assume “oppositional “roles in terms of power structure,
wherever they might be found. we all are know about that the novel of Jonathan
swift’s Gulliver Travel in the third voyage Laputa, as previously noted there
are the large emphasis on power in this novel. Let’s us now approach
Shakespeare’s Hamlet with a view to power in its cultural contex.Hamlet is the
play within the play. we all know about that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern both
are minor character in the play ‘Hamlet’. Claudius talking privately with
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet’s fellow students from Wittenberg. In
response to Claudius’s plan to send hamlet to England, Rosencrantz delivers a
speech that-if read out of context-is both an excellent set of metaphors and a
summation of the Elizabethan concept of the role and power of kingmenship:
The singular and peculiar life is bond with all the
strength and armor of the mind to keep itself from noyance, but much more that
spirit upon whose weal depends and rests the lives of many. The cease of
majesty Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw what’s near it with it. it is
a massy wheel Fixed on the summit of the highest mount, To whose huge spokes
ten thousand lesser things are mortised and adjoined; which, when it falls,
each small annexment, petty consequence, attends the boisterous ruin. Never
alone did the king sigh but with a general groan.
Taken alone, the passage is a
thoughtful and imagistically successful passage, worthy of a wise and
accomplished statesmen. But how many readers and viewers of the play would rank
this passage among the best-known lines of the play-with Hamlet’s soliloquies,
for instance, or with the king’s effort to pray, or even with the aphorisms
addressed by Polonius to his son Learters? We venture to say that the passage,
intrinsically good if one looks at it alone, is simply not well known.
Attention to the
context and to the speaker gives the answer. Guildenstern had just agreed that
he and Rosencrantz would do the king’s bidding. The agreement is only a
reaffirmation of what they had told the king when he first received them at
court. Both speeches are wholly in character, for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
are among the jellyfish of Shakespeare’s characters. Easy it is to forget which
of the two speaks which lines-indeed easy it is to forget most of their lines
altogether. The two are distinctly plo-driven: empty of personality sycophantic
in a sniveling way, eager to curry favor with power even if it means spying on
their erstwhile friend. Weakly they admit, without much skill at denial, that
they “were sent for”. Even less successfully they try to play on Hamlet’s
metaphorical “pipe,” to know his “stops,” when they are forced to admit that
they could not even handle the literal
musical instrument that Hamlet shows them. Still later these nonentities
meet their destined “non-beingness,” at it were, when Hamlet, who can play the
pipe so much more efficiently, substitutes
their names in the death warrant intended for him.
If
ever we wished to study two characters who are marginalized, then let us look
upon Rosencrantz Guildenstern.
The meanings of their names hardly match what seems to be the essence of
their characters. Murray J.Levith, for example, has written that “Rosencrantz
Guildenstern are from the dutch-german: literary, ‘garland of roses’ and
‘golden star’. Although of religious origin, both names together sound singsong
and odd to English ears. Their jingling gives them lightness, and blurs
individuality of the characters they label.
This details do not
seen to fit the personality and general vacuity of Shakespeare’s to
incompetents. So it becomes necessary to know and have a look at what they do
and what is done to them. They were students at Wittenberg. They return to
Denmark, apparently at the direct request of Claudius. They try to pry from
hamlet some of his inner thoughts, especially of ambition and frustration about
the crown. Hamlet foils them. They crumble before his own questioning. As noted
above, Claudius later sends them on an embassy with Hamlet, carrying a
later to the king of England that would have Hamlet summarily executed. Thought
they may not have known the contents of that “grand commission”, Hamlet’s
suspicion of them is enough for him to contemplate their future-and to “trust
them as adders fanged’’.
Hamlet may well see himself as
righting the moral order, not as a murderer, and much has been said on that
matter. But let us take note of another dimension: the implications for power.
Clearly Hamlet makes reference in the lines just noted to the “mighty
opposites” represented by himself and Claudius. Clearly, too, the ones of
“baser nature” who “love to this employment” do not matter much in this
struggle between powerful antagonists. They are pawns for Claudius first, for
Hamlet second. It is almost as if hamlet had tried before the sea voyage to
warn them of their insignificant state, he calls Rosencrantz a sponge,
provoking this exchange:
Hamlet: …..
Besides, to be demanded of a sponge! What replication should be made by
the son of ta king?
ROSANCRANTZ: Take you me for a sponge, my lord?
Hamlet: Aye, sir, that soaks up the king’s
countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the king best
service in the end. He keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw, first
mouthed, to be last swallowed. When he needs what you have gleaned, it is but
squeezing you and, sponge, you shall be dry again.
We all know about that princes and king always stands of power position.
In Hamlet the character of Hamlet is also stand power position and second
Polonius and Claudius both they have on motives to exercise. The king Claudius
always wanted to be a king and so that is Hamlet’s hidden wanted also there is.
Claudius was aware of power, clearly, when he observed of Hamlet’s apparent
madness that “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go”. With equal truth
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern might have observed that power in great ones also
must not unwatched go.
It is instructive to note that the reality
of power reflective of Shakespeare’s time might in another time and in another
culture reflect a radically different worldview. In stoppard’s version, they
are even more obviously two ineffectual pawns, seeking constantly to know who
they are, why they are here, where they are going. Whether they “are” at all
may be the ultimate question of this modern play. In Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead, Stoppard has given the contemporary audience a play that
examines existential questions in the context of a whole world that may have no
meaning at all. Although it is not our intention to examine that play in great
detail, suffice it to note that the essence of marginalization is here: in this
view, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are archetypal human beings caught up on a
ship-spaceship Earth for the twentieth or the twenty-first century that leads
nowhere, except to death, a death for person who are already dead. If these two
characters were marginalize in hamlet, they are even more so in Stoppard’s
handling. If Shakespeare marginalized the powerless in his own version of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Stoppard has marginalize us all in an era when in
the eyes of some all of us are caught up in forces beyond our control. In other
words, a cultural and historical view that was Shakespeare’s is radically
reworked to reflect a cultural and philosophical view of another time-our own.
Conclusion:
In cultural study two characters in Hamlet is Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern both are marginalized characters. They were innocent but they
wanted to help both hamlet and Claudius but they had to sacrifice their lives
too. Hamlet does not think of his two best friends with whom he has spent a
lovely time and decide to put and end to their deaths. Whether in Shakespear’s
version of stoppard’s , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are know more than what
Rosencrantz called a “small annexment,” a “petty consequence ,” mere nothings
for the “massy wheel” of kings.
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