HAMLET: Corruption

Question 1

Sickness of Elsinore:
1. (Barnardo to Francisco) “Who’s there?”
+ ‘ROT’

Answer 1

1.
-> All questions, no answers
- “Nay answer me.”
- “Words, words, words”, Eric Langley
-> Sense of paranoia and threat…
(- wrong, out-of-place answers)
-> … felt even by minor characters, not just those in the court
- “I am sick at heart” -> Body Politic
- Watchmen, looking out for threat, yet feel it/corruption from within

+ eg. Marcellus: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”
- Hamlet’s madness is described by Claudius (a bit rich imo…) as “a foul disease”
- Even affects the language!

• Claudius sending Hamlet to England (“For England.” / “For England?” / “Ay Hamlet. / “Good.”) shows a collapse of language/iambic pentameter
• “The king is a thing - … of nothing”
• Over-line rhyme - riddle like, showing “words, words, words” madness
  -> Yet logic! Vacancy/superficiality of authority - all exterior? Hidden corruption
• Body Politic
• Elizabethan: The madman tells the truth!
• (Horatio) “Speak to me”
• Repeated - breaks iambic pentameter, emphasising silence/emptiness of words/thought

Question 2

Claudius
1. “Though yet of Hamlet…The memory be green”
2. “Our sometime sister, now our queen”
YET!
3. “My offence is rank, it smells to heaven…primal eldest curse upon’t”
4. “I am still possessed of those effects for which I did the murder”

Answer 2

1.
-> “Though” - moves past Old H’s death through syntax
- King of Words vs. Warrior King
- Smooths out issues (inc. insest) with a MACHIAVELLIAN, assured, polished, uninterrupted (powerful) speech
+
2. INSEST
-> Suspicion, as he doesn’t acknowledge the moral dimensions
- Body Politic - we already know Elsinore is sick
=
Claudius = superficially a good leader, but moral sickness makes the nation sick
- No sense of objective truth -> CS Lewis, emotional confusion / Negative Capability?

3.
-> “Rank” - visceral sense of rotting/corruption
-> “Heaven”/”primal eldest curse” - biblical, Cain and Able

4. Guilt, but not sorry, therefore shows of repentance all performative -> He kneels
   -> “All may be well”
   - Dramatic/inconclusive metrical break (lack of rhyming couplet)

Question 3

Gertrude
(Hamlet)
1. “To post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets”

Answer 3

1. It is the “wicked speed” with which she moves on which is intolerable to him
   -> Sibilance = disgust, he spits it out
   -> “incestuous” - articulates the immorality that the audience have been thinking (++relationship), but no one in the court has noticed
   -> Fixation on his mother’s sexuality (Oedipus? Revenger’s Madness?)
   - “increase of appetite” -> lexis of consumption, emphasises her animalistic, sinful lust

Question 4

Polonius
1. “To thine own self be true”
2. “We heard it all” / (Claudius) “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go”

Answer 4

1. -> All only pompous, contradictory cliches
   - vs. various instructions/guidance, repetitive imperatives: “TAKE each man’s censure, but REVERSE thy judgement”
   -> Even possible in Elsinore? Polonius himself has multiple ‘selves’
   - Doddery old man? (H MOCKS HIM - P: “Do you know me, my Lord?” / H: “Excellent well, y’are a fishmonger”)
   - Wise counsellor?
   - Machiavellian orchestrator of the state?

2.
* Surveillance state
-> Of particular focus in Soviet productions (vs. Olivier’s focus on the Freudian/psychological)
-> Metatheatrical - Hamlet is always watched anyway
-> IMPLICITLY drawing parallels to Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s spy master

Question 5

Poisoning
OH: “In the porches of my ears did pour the leperous distilment”

Answer 5

-> Poison - appears fine, eaten away from inside
- Represents the corruption of the state (eg. spying, listening, “ears”)
- Body Politic - the head of the head of the state, “something rotten IN the state of Denmark”
- Corruption of the blood

-> Why most die eg. the staged sword fight:
- G drinks from the poisoned cup
- C stabbed with the poisoned sword and then forced to drink from the poisoned cup
- L stabbed with the poisoned sword
- H stabbed with the poisoned sword
-> POISON used to PURGE the POISON from ELSINORE
- Tragic structure