Reading Hamlet- Crystal Downing

Crystal Downing opens her essay with a strong quote, "This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind." Downing is speaking of the play Hamlet. Downing's article focuses on the difficulties of interpretation in Hamlet, and uses concrete evidence as support. The article focuses on how throughout the play both Hamlet and the other characters are continuously trying to interpret his mind. Hamlet questions on how he will take action to avenge his fathers death. Should he believe the words from a ghost? He renders a mental battle over suicide and questions the meaning of existence itself in his famous soliloquy "To be or not to be." Hamlet also questions the nature of love when his mother marries within weeks of his fathers death. What kind of role model love is that? Hamlet morns his father continuously, and Queen Gertrude struggles to interpret why he does so. 

Hamlet faces interpretation when he devises a plan which he hopes will help him interpret Claudius. Claudius also devices a less formal play which he hopes will interpret Hamlet. The interpretations continue through out the entire play. At some points, Hamlets interpretations fail. Downing points out that after Hamlet discovers he murdered Polonius instead of Claudius, he does not mention his fathers murder for the rest of the two-hundered-line scene. Through continuous examples Downing proves how problematic interpretation is because it relies on the speaker/writer, and the listener and reader. It is not completely reliable; it all just depends on how it is approached. 

Crystal Downing's essay was impeccably written. It was incredibly strong in both the writing, and the evidence. She pointed out the key topics of the story and dissected them in a creative way. One of strongest statements that caught my eye was that just as Hamlet has reason to suspect the Ghost, the readers have reason to suspect Gertrude. This is true because one scene shows Gertrude telling Claudius that her son is mad. The audience is left to interpret her duplicity of whether she is putting on an act of Hamlet or Claudius? Another strong piece of evidence was her thorough connection between Wittenberg and the Protestants. That was certainly something I would not have picked up on from just simply reading the book. At first glance the essay did not seem like it would be enjoyable, but it was creative and enjoyable to read. 

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet: With Contemporary Essays. Ed. Joseph Pearce. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2008. Print.

Flowers

If Hamlet was to send a bouquet of flowers to his mother from England, he would symbolically pick specific flowers to convey his feelings to her.

A nightshade would be the first flower in the bouquet. A nightshade symbolizes deception, anger and death. Hamlet has made it perfectly clear that he is angered by all that has occurred in Denmark. The symbol of death could be taken as the death of his father King Hamlet, or the death that he plans on his uncle King Claudius. The nightshade could symbolize a remembrance for his mother of what has happened, or a foreshadowing of the death that will occur when he seeks revenge on his father.

A violet symbolizes faithfulness. Although Hamlet is in England, that will not stop him from seeking revenge on his father. The violet would prove to his mother that he will remain faithful to Denmark, and faithful to his family. Hamlet is not going to let others push him around. He still plans to be faithful and take action.

A rue symbolizes sorrow or repentance. Hamlet may now be regretting how he has acted in the past. He may regret waiting for so long to tell his mother the truth, and instead treating her with deceit like the others. Hamlet may have created an even bigger disaster by keeping his mother in the dark. If he had told her and trusted her in the first place on what was going on, maybe he could have saved everyone from the domino effect of death.

Lastly, a pansy symbolizes loving thoughts and remembrance. It is true that through out the play, Hamlet was never kind to his mother. He hated her from the beginning for marrying so quickly after his fathers death, and to his uncle no better. Now after everything has occurred, Hamlet may want to send a flower back to his mother to remind her that he does still love her.

The scene in Act IV of Ophelia passing out flowers contributes to the garden motif as a whole. Denmark is symbolized as a garden. Each person living within Denmark can be accounted as a flower, which altogether forms a garden. In Act 1 scene iv Marcellus states "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." From there on, the garden of Denmark is referred to as decaying and rotten because of the actions of the people living within it. Ophelia herself is a pure and and innocent state. Around her forms the weeds that over take Denmark. These weeds transform the garden into something foul and unclear. Ophelia symbolizes a flower herself, her brain slowly began to wither and soon she died. The scene of Ophelia passing out flowers represents that even though she may be insane, she still knows the truth. She hands a fennel and columbine to Queen Gertrude because they symbolize adultery, and Gertrude is sleeping in a bed of incest. She hands a rue to King Claudius because it symbolizes repentance. Claudius has much to repent for because he is the source of all the destruction and death in Denmark, after he committed murder. Each flower may be beautiful, but they symbolize each for rotten things. The garden motif is parallel to the appearance vs. reality motif. Although something may be beautiful on the outside, on the inside there is cruelty and deceit. 

Dante and Shakespeare Response

The Shakespeare and Dante article by The New York Times arises the popular question if Shakespeare knew the works of Dante. Personally, I did not find the argument to be strong at all. In some aspects the writer outlined the major question, but his examples were small and hard to relate to. The article mostly repeated itself and did not supply enough substance. The examples that were given were just brief quotes, which I do not think connects the two writers at all. If this is such a popular question, I believe there is probably more connections between the two writers that the author should have stated.

The strongest aspect of the argument is the conclusion. The writer ends with stating that Shakespeare did not speak Italian, and Dante's works at Shakespeare's time were still written in Italian. This proves that unless Shakespeare spoke or could read Italian, there is not a chance that Shakespeare knew Dante's works. I believe that was the strongest aspect of the argument. The article was brief and lacked stronger research to support the argument.