fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3918 ]

[ SECRET POST #3918 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3918 ⌋

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

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(Dance Moms)

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[Star Trek: The Next Generation]

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[In Treatment]

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[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

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3918 ]

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