fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3918 ]

[ SECRET POST #3918 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3918 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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(Dance Moms)

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03.

[Star Trek: The Next Generation]

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04.

[In Treatment]

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05.

[Life]

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06.

[glee & buffy the vampire slayer]

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07.

[Hinterlands]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 29 secrets from Secret Submission Post #561.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Why does Hamlet die? I mean, why does the play end with his death? Of course the play has to end with him dying, being a tragedy, but what's the narrative logic? For what reason does he die?

I know it's not strictly fandom but I saw a production of Hamlet recently and so I was thinking about it.

Isn't it because he's been cut with Laertes' poisoned blade during their fencing match?

I mean more like, thematically. That's the immediate fictional cause, but how does Hamlet's death make sense thematically?

How does it NOT make sense thematically? The play's a tragedy. Hamlet's father is murdered, he pretty much bullies the object of his affections to a death by drowning, his mother drinks poison that was meant for him, his opponent also dies, his friends die... you see the pattern?

I understand that the genre of the play is a tragedy. But usually in tragedies, there's something that you can point to that leads to the hero's failure and downfall. Othello's jealousy, that kind of thing. Tragedies still have a narrative logic. And I was thinking about what that would be in Hamlet, and it was more difficult than I thought it would be, and so I thought I would ask if anyone here had an opinion.

nayrt but... Hamlet plotted to kill his own uncle to avenge his father. He fakes madness and calls Ophelia (who is totally innocent in this game) she's a whore. He kills Ophelia's father via a really dumb accident. That, combined with Hamlet's spurning drives Ophelia mad for real, which in turn leads to her death, probably by suicide. Hamlet uncovers a plot by Claudius to have him killed via a letter that says "Murder Hamlet" that Hamlet was supposed to deliver and alters the letter so that his own friends get murdered instead. He then fails to save his own mother from poison that was also meant for him. So my guess is the whole tragic downfall is Hamlet's attempts to avenge his dead father by doing all sorts of stupid shit that hurts everyone but Claudius and makes Hamlet's life worse.

Hamlet plotted to kill his own uncle to avenge his father.

It seems to me that, in the context of the play, this is the right and proper thing for him to do - to seek revenge for his father, and make right the situation in Denmark. That's part of what's so confusing to me.

And Ophelia's death is a result of the death of Polonius, and the death of Polonius scene seems very strange generally.

Not necessarily. Hamlet is a prince, but since Claudius is king, Hamlet is a subject. The circumstances under which a subject had the right to resist the sovereign were a huge matter for debate all through the 16th century, because no act was ever good or righteous if it infringed the social order--which Elizabethans saw as divine. The debate is actually one of the major underpinnings modern political thought.

it's not a question of resistance, it's a question of legitimacy. And if you want to talk about a divinely ordained social order, the situation in Denmark has clearly transgressed those norms in a wide range of ways.

Hi, little late, but F!S's resident theatre historian checking in! The issue here is that Hamlet isn't just a tragedy. It's a sub-genre called Revenge Tragedy. Hamlet is technically justified for wanting revenge because his father was wrongfully murdered. But it's not "the right and proper thing for him to do" because that's against Christian ethics. And that's going against God-- God is the one who deals out punishment, not Man. The price for doing that is that the Revenger has to die as well.

Sooo, the official censors insisted revengers die too, so as to show the consequences-- you can't get away with it and come off scott free (The Revenger's Tragedy actually lampshades this trope when the Revenger character heads into his final battle). And early audiences LOVED this shit. The more deaths, the better. The Atheist's Tragedy is positively batshit!

Great comment.

He doesn't actually die in the play. In the production you saw, maybe the actor looked over and saw you?

"He doesn't actually die in the play."

Uh...

Hamlet O, I die, Horatio!
The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit.
I cannot live to hear the news from England,
But I do prophesy th' election lights
On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice.
So tell him, with th' occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited- the rest is silence. Dies.

http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=hamlet&Act=5&Scene=2&Scope=scene

LOL

LOL, whoops. Guess ayrt shouldn't have been in such a hurry to lay down some righteous snark.

He most definitely dies, anon. Maybe you're thinking of another play?

Indecision? I mean, he's the equivalent of someone in the middle of a busy road who can't decide which way to dodge an oncoming car.

But it seems like the reasons for his indecision are reasonably valid - wanting to confirm the truth of what his uncle did for himself.

No, the anon above is right. At a certain point he should have figured out the truth, or the truth is even irrelevant, he just needs to make a damn decision. His inability to act leaves him stuck in a perpetual adolence, unable to move forward or go back. His foil is Fortinbras, who's in about the same stage of life as Hamlet, but accomplishing much more through action.

RA

Thank you for this. I needed to read that. Not being sarcastic, this is genuinely helpful for my current life circumstance.

Thanks anon!

I figured it was the cost of taking revenge. Yes, he "avenged his father," but he also basically ruined his life and others' lives, using up his life for an ultimately rather fruitless vengeance. It didn't really fix anything, and certainly made him miserable before he died. If only his pop's ghost had shut up, heh.

Yeah the two fatal flaws scholars usually point to are inability to act. If Hamlet had killed Claudius when he had the chance (when Claudius is pretending to pray), Ophelia, his mother, Laertes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Polonius, and Hamlet himself wouldn't have ended up dying. He is obsessed with death, specifically, what happens after death, and that freezes him in place. He worries if he kills himself, he'll go to hell. If he kills Claudius at the wrong moment, he might go to heaven. Is the ghost real or is it a demon?

Of course, some scholars find issue with the idea of a fatal flaw, and specifically indecisiveness being Hamlet's, especially since there are also times when Hamlet acts without thinking, like the killing of Polonius. In a way, you could read his flaw as an inability to act because he gets more obsessed with the consequences of his actions, consequences which he does not want to face (going to hell, mainly), which could be exemplified in the way he brushes off the consequences of his impulsive actions (hurting Ophelia, killing Polonius, sending R&G to their deaths).

If Hamlet had killed Claudius when he had the chance (when Claudius is pretending to pray), Ophelia, his mother, Laertes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Polonius, and Hamlet himself wouldn't have ended up dying.

The only issue I have is that, if that's the case, the entire play hangs on that scene. And it seems too thin for that.

Why? Lots of stories hang on one mistake or scene that all other mistakes can be traced back too. It's related to the whole concept of hamartia.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3918 ]

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