Belyaeva N. Shakespeare

Independent work No. 13

Topic: Shakespeare "Hamlet"

Balzac "Gobseck"

Flaubert "Salammbô"

Assignment: Analysis of works.

Hamlet" - a philosophical tragedy

Hamlet is a philosophical tragedy. Not in the sense that the play contains a system of views on the world expressed in dramatic form. Shakespeare created not a treatise giving a theoretical exposition of his worldview, but a work of art. It is not without reason that he ironically portrays Polonius teaching his son how to behave. It is not for nothing that Ophelia laughs at her brother, who reads morals to her, but is far from following them. We would hardly be mistaken in supposing that Shakespeare recognized the futility of moralizing. The purpose of art is not to teach, but, as Hamlet says, “to hold up, as it were, a mirror before nature: to show virtue its own features, arrogance its own appearance, and to every age and class its likeness and imprint.” To portray people as they are - this is how Shakespeare understood the task of art. And to accomplish this task, Shakespeare actively bought discounts using coupons. What he does not say, we can add: the artistic depiction should be such that the reader and viewer himself is able to give a moral assessment to each character. This is exactly how those we see in tragedy are created. But Shakespeare is not limited to two colors - black and white. As we have seen, none of the main characters are simple. Each of them is complex in its own way, has not one, but several features, which is why they are perceived not as diagrams, but as living characters.

That no direct lesson can be derived from tragedy is best demonstrated by the difference of opinion about its meaning. The picture of life created by Shakespeare, being perceived as a “likeness and imprint” of reality, encourages everyone who thinks about the tragedy to evaluate people and events in the same way as they are evaluated in life. However, unlike reality, in the picture created by the playwright, everything is enlarged. In life, you can’t immediately find out what a person is like. In the drama, his words and actions quickly make the audience aware of this character. The opinions of others about this character also help.

Shakespeare's worldview is dissolved in the images and situations of his plays. With his tragedies, he sought to arouse the attention of the audience, bring them face to face with the most terrible phenomena of life, disturb the complacent, and respond to the sentiments of those who, like him, experienced anxiety and pain due to the imperfections of life.

The purpose of tragedy is not to frighten, but to provoke the activity of thought, to make one think about the contradictions and troubles of life, and Shakespeare achieves this goal. Achieves primarily through the image of a hero. By posing questions to himself, he encourages us to think about them and look for answers. But Hamlet not only questions life, he expresses many thoughts about it. His speeches are full of sayings, and what is remarkable is that they contain the thoughts of many generations. Research has shown that almost every saying has a long tradition behind it. Shakespeare did not read Plato, Aristotle, or medieval thinkers; their ideas came to him through various books that treated philosophical problems. It has been established that Shakespeare not only carefully read the “Essays” of the French thinker Michel Montaigne, but even borrowed something from them. Let us turn once again to the monologue “To be or not to be.” Let us remember how Hamlet compares death and sleep.

Analysis of Balzac's story "Gobsek"

Another feature of Balzac’s narrative can rather be attributed to the shortcomings of his manner: Balzac feels so at home in his creations that he without hesitation invades the world of the characters, attributing to his heroes observations, conclusions, speeches, etc. that are not characteristic of them. In the story “Gobsek” Balzac every now and then “gets used to” the characters and sees, evaluates, speaks for them or even instead of them.

This is partly due to the writer’s desire for an objective portrayal of people and events, when the author does not take the side of anyone, but simply illuminates what is happening, but mainly this is Balzac’s irrepressible desire to express his point of view, to convey it to the reader, despite minor conventions like that that the heroes cannot speak or think like that due to their upbringing, education, social role, breadth of outlook and other factors.

First of all, this applies to Gobsek, the most interesting, bright and close character to Balzac; It is not without reason that in one of the episodes of his story about him, Derville suddenly calls this mysterious and ruff old man “my Gobsek.” The old moneylender, describing his visits to Anastasi de Resto and Fanny Malvo, suddenly switches to the style of a gallant poet, a connoisseur of female beauty and the joys that knowledgeable people can extract from this gift of nature: “An artist would give a lot to spend at least a few minutes in my debtor's bedroom this morning. The folds of the curtains by the bed breathed with voluptuous bliss, the folded sheet on a blue silk down jacket, the rumpled pillow, sharply white against this azure background with its lace frills, seemed to still retain a vague imprint of wondrous forms that teased the imagination.”

In no less unexpected language, he expresses his impressions of meeting Fanny Malvo: she seems to him “a fairy of loneliness”, she emanates “something good, truly virtuous.” Balzac's moneylender admits: “It was as if I had entered an atmosphere of sincerity, spiritual purity, and it even became easier for me to breathe.” These experiences, not to mention the fact that they are discussed with a stranger, are not at all consistent with the appearance of a suspicious and unsociable moneylender who considers gold the only object worthy of attention.

A continuation of the narrator’s speech appears to be the already cited words of Gobsek, which are not entirely appropriate in the mouth of the character (he, like an image advertising specialist, comments on the impression he evokes): “Well, what do you think now... don’t burning pleasures lurk behind this cold, frozen mask , which so often surprised you with its immobility?

Count de Born, interrupting Derville’s story, gives a concise and biting portrait of the social dandy Maxime de Tray, executed in the spirit of Balzac’s “codes” and “physiology”: Count Maxim “is either a scoundrel, or nobility itself, more stained with dirt than stained with blood.” In the scene with diamonds, he is echoed in the same expressions by Gobsek, who told Maxim: “To shed your blood, you must have it, my dear, but in your veins instead of blood there is dirt.”

Such a coincidence is most similar to deliberate negligence, dictated by the author’s desire to maintain the unity of the reader’s impression of the persons and events depicted. Consistently expressing his point of view, Balzac, as we see, was ready to make some sacrifices in the field of psychological authenticity and credibility. But he won in another way: even such a relatively small story as “Gobsek” is full of excellent observations and pictures from nature, which occupy not the least place in the history of morals that Balzac wrote. Formally, these apt generalizations belong to different characters, but they are so similar to each other that they give reason to conclude that the structure of Balzac’s narrative is monological. The voices of the characters are only a convention for the author, who completely subjugates the entire image in the work.

Let us briefly recall the most significant observations of this kind. This is the already mentioned description of the Countess de Resto’s room, which turns into a portrait of the owner of this luxurious boudoir. The various signs of the material world, which Balzac so subtly noticed and understood, help him penetrate into the spiritual world of his heroes, substantiate and consolidate general conclusions about their personality and fate: “Flowers, diamonds, gloves, a bouquet, a belt and other accessories for ballroom attire. It smelled like some kind of subtle perfume. There was beauty in everything, devoid of harmony, luxury and disorder. And already the poverty that threatened this woman or her lover, lurking behind all this luxury, raised its head and showed them its sharp teeth. The countess’s tired face matched her entire bedchamber, dotted with signs of the past celebration.”

In the same way, the interior of Gobsek’s room helps to better understand the peculiarities of the psychology of the central character of the story, remember the neatness of the room, similar to a monk’s cell and the monastery of an old maid, a fireplace in which brands were slightly smoldering, never flaring up, etc.

Our analysis took up twice as much space as the tragedy itself, and yet we have not exhausted everything that can be said about it. “Hamlet” is one of those works that are inexhaustible. We know little about how it was received in the first two centuries after it was written. But from the moment when Goethe, in his novel “The Teaching Years of Wilhelm Meister” (1795-1796), described Hamlet as a man whose spirit was contrary to the task of revenge entrusted to him, the idea of a Shakespearean hero arose, which was firmly established in the minds of people for a long time. Numerous interpretations of the tragedy have focused on the personality of the hero. A legend about Hamlet arose that did not coincide with what he is like in the play. Writers and thinkers looked for traits in Shakespeare's hero that were close to them, and used Hamlet to express their worldview and mentality inherent in their time, and not in the Renaissance.

The history of Hamlet criticism reflects the development of the spiritual life of modern times. In the works devoted to Hamlet, various philosophical, social, and aesthetic teachings of the 19th-20th centuries are clearly reflected. Despite the fact that the proposed interpretations were sometimes very subjective, and sometimes even arbitrary, they were united by the awareness of the enormous depths of thought hidden in the tragedy. “Hamlet” nourished the spiritual life of many generations, who acutely felt the discord between reality and ideals, sought a way out of the contradictions, and despaired when the social situation turned out to be hopeless. The image of the hero has become the embodiment of high humanity, the desire for truth, and hatred of everything that distorts life. Since many felt their kinship with Hamlet in periods of crisis and timelessness, the predominance of thought over action, weakness of will, suppressed by an excessive tendency to think, were emphasized in his character. Hamlet has become a symbol of a person who is always hesitant, weak-willed and passive.

Attempts by individual critics to destroy this legend were unsuccessful, because opponents of the “weak” Hamlet went to the other extreme. It is not for nothing that K. Marx wrote with irony about such an adaptation of “Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which lacks not only the melancholy of the Danish prince, but also the Danish prince himself.” The positive side of the adherents of the “strong” Hamlet was that they forced us to return to the text of the tragedy and recalled those aspects of its action that refuted the opinion that Hamlet was completely inactive.

Much of Hamlet's criticism suffered from one-sidedness. The character of the hero was considered as forever given and consistent in its inconsistency from the beginning to the end of the tragedy. It was recognized that Hamlet’s life was divided into two parts: before the death of his father and after it, but, having accepted the task of revenge, Hamlet allegedly did nothing but hesitate until he died due to his own indecision.

Belinsky's great merit as a critic of Hamlet was that he saw the character of the hero in development, as already mentioned above. At the same time, over time, critics increasingly sought to carefully analyze Hamlet’s entire behavior, looking for an explanation for every moment of his life in the tragedy. This approach helped to overcome primitive one-sided interpretations and at the same time revealed the complexity of Shakespeare’s method of depicting a person. Hamlet's variety of reactions to the reality around him, different attitudes towards the people he encounters, contradictory thoughts and assessments of himself - all this, which was first condemned by critics as the inconsistency of Shakespeare himself, over time gained recognition and was declared the highest virtue in his method of portrayal person. “Hamlet” turned out to be a work in which this method was especially fully embodied.

This versatility has given the image of Hamlet such vitality that he is no longer perceived as a literary character, but as a living person. Hence the constant desire to analyze his behavior from a psychological point of view. As has already been said, here lies the danger of forgetting that we are looking at the creation of an artist, and one who used means that differed from the techniques of modern realism. It cannot be denied that Hamlet’s experiences, behavior, and thoughts reflect the true nature of man, but much in Hamlet is misunderstood when his image is modernized, and this happened constantly, starting with Goethe.

“Hamlet” is a typical example of the complexity associated with comprehending the great works of art of ancient times. These creations would not be great if the structure of thoughts and feelings of the heroes became incomprehensible to us, if the human content of the images were inaccessible to people of other eras. But it is possible to fully understand Shakespeare’s works only by knowing the history, culture, religion, philosophy, life and theater of his time. Scientific criticism strives to help readers do this.

Of course, we cannot require everyone to read works of this kind. The good thing is that the universal meaning of Hamlet and other great works is accessible to everyone. But for those for whom the general impression is enough, Shakespeare's masterpieces are poorer than for those who, imbued with the consciousness of the importance of the meaning of the tragedy, are armed with knowledge that helps to penetrate the depths of thought embedded by the author in the work. With thoughtful and equipped reading, layers of meaning are revealed that we were not even aware of.

Familiarity with the era in which the work arose, knowledge of the laws and rules of the art that the master followed, leads to a comprehensive and deep comprehension of the masterpiece. Unfortunately, this often remained and remains accessible to a relatively narrow circle. The vast majority of common judgments about Hamlet are based on impressions, on what corresponded to the state of mind of the reader or viewer, or on what most struck their imagination. Then one’s own thought begins to work, set in motion by a separate motive or theme of the work. This is how one-sided judgments about tragedy are born. This happens not only to ordinary readers or viewers, but also to professional critics and scientists.

Even limited understanding of the tragedy demonstrates the power of its impact. “Hamlet” is an amazing work in terms of the productivity of its impact. The tragedy arouses the desire to reflect, to determine the attitude towards its hero, to think about the issues that concern him and involuntarily touch us as well. This is generally the peculiarity of masterpieces of literature and art. “Hamlet” stands out in this regard; it is not for nothing that it gave rise to such an abundance of books containing a wide variety of interpretations.

Should this be considered a disadvantage? The diversity of opinions generated by the tragedy is due, on the one hand, to the spiritual abilities of readers, as well as critics. Their judgments reveal the wealth or, conversely, the limitations of the individual. But Shakespeare is not to blame for this; each reader and viewer is responsible for himself.

On the other hand, one cannot help but wonder: is it not Shakespeare who is to blame for the discord and, worse, the confusion of opinion about the tragedy? Yes, he created a work, the very nature of which predetermined the possibility of different and contradictory assessments.

The origin of tragedy is death. Death is the subject of the hero's frequent thoughts. The shadow of the late king constantly hovers over the entire royal court. In the third act, Polonius dies, in the fourth, Ophelia. Death threatens Hamlet when he is sent to England... The theme of death is present even when it does not directly affect the fate of the heroes. In the second act, the Actor performs a monologue about the murder of old Priam by Pyrrhus; in the third, the actors perform the play “The Murder of Gonzago.” In a word, by all means of expression: events, speeches, acting - the tragedy keeps in the minds of those who watch or read it the thought of death. Even the humor in the play has a cemetery flavor.

A man in the face of death. The usual view is expressed in the speeches of the king and queen at the very beginning. “This is the fate of all,” says Gertrude (I, 2, 72). “This is how it should be,” the king echoes her (I, 2, 106). Most people think so. They do not think about death, they live as if they had eternity before them and there is no end waiting for them. Hamlet is alone among everyone, having learned about the death of his father and his mother’s second marriage, he thinks about death all the time and, as we know, more than once thinks about suicide.

The tragedy consistently and persistently poses the problem of death. With no less force, she puts forward the question of how to live. Again we see that most of those around Hamlet exist carried by the flow of life. Horatio stands aloof from everything as an observer.

Two characters are different from the others. This is Claudius, who rebelled against the existing order of things and committed a crime to satisfy his ambition and lust for power. And this is Hamlet, outraged by the way life is. Hamlet cannot be just an observer, but he will not act for himself either. He is guided by a consciousness of duty, in which there is nothing selfish.

The main thing in Hamlet’s personality is a high concept of man and his purpose in life, and not melancholy, not lack of will, not a tendency to doubt and hesitation. They are not innate properties of his personality, but states determined by the situation in which he finds himself. A man with rich spiritual potential, Hamlet deeply experiences everything that happens. The tragedy begins with his awareness of the discrepancy between his ideals and life. Hence the different moods that possess him.

Here, however, we are faced with a convention inherent in Shakespeare's tragedies. Did the moral corruption that corrodes the world in which Hamlet lives arise in the short period that has passed since the death of the old king? From the point of view of simple plausibility this is impossible. The world should have been like this in the last reign.

In this case, Hamlet was a completely blind person, ignorant of life. From the point of view of the same plausibility, this is impossible.

How to explain this contradiction?

Any Shakespearean tragedy must be viewed as a complete picture of life. Although Shakespeare usually communicates or makes it clear in one way or another what the hero of the tragedy was like before the events began, one should not draw far-reaching conclusions from this and indulge in detailed discussions about the hero’s past. The life of each character begins simultaneously with the action of the tragedy. With the emergence of conflict and a tragic situation, the character of the hero is revealed.

Love of truth, a sense of justice, hatred of evil, of all types of servility - these are the original traits of Hamlet. It is this, combined with a sense of duty, that leads him to tragic experiences. It is not innate melancholy, but a collision with the horrors of life that confronts Hamlet with fatal questions: is it worth living, is it worth fighting, is it not better to leave the world, and if you fight, then how?

The depth of Hamlet's suffering is great. He lost his father and mother, and considers himself obliged to part with his beloved, and, moreover, having insulted her in the most cruel way. Only in friendship does he find some consolation.

The value of human life is crumbling before Hamlet's eyes. A wonderful man, his father dies, and the scoundrel and criminal triumphs. The woman discovers her weakness and turns out to be a traitor. Circumstances develop in such a way that he, a champion of humanity, becomes the cause of the death of several people.

The contradictions to the ideal in the outside world are complemented by the struggle of conflicting feelings in Hamlet’s soul. Good and evil, truth and lies, humanity and cruelty are revealed in his own behavior.

It is tragic that Hamlet dies in the end, but the essence of the tragedy is not that the hero is overtaken by death, but in the way life is and especially in the powerlessness of the best intentions to correct the world. The so-called weakness, Hamlet's tendency to think, is perhaps Hamlet's main advantage. He's a thinker. He strives to understand every significant phenomenon in life, but, perhaps, Hamlet’s especially important feature is the desire to understand himself.

There was no such hero in world art before Shakespeare, and rarely has anyone since Shakespeare managed to create the image of a thinker with the same artistic power and insight.

Hamlet is a philosophical tragedy. Not in the sense that the play contains a system of views on the world expressed in dramatic form. Shakespeare created not a treatise giving a theoretical exposition of his worldview, but a work of art. It is not without reason that he ironically portrays Polonius teaching his son how to behave. It is not for nothing that Ophelia laughs at her brother, who reads morals to her, but is far from following them. We would hardly be mistaken in supposing that Shakespeare recognized the futility of moralizing. The purpose of art is not to teach, but, as Hamlet says, “to hold up, as it were, a mirror before nature: to show virtue its own features, arrogance its own appearance, and to every age and class its likeness and imprint” (III, 2, 23-27 ). To portray people as they are - this is how Shakespeare understood the task of art. What he does not say, we can add: the artistic depiction should be such that the reader and viewer himself is able to give a moral assessment to each character. This is exactly how those we see in tragedy are created. But Shakespeare is not limited to two colors - black and white. As we have seen, none of the main characters are simple. Each of them is complex in its own way, has not one, but several features, which is why they are perceived not as diagrams, but as living characters.

The purpose of tragedy is not to frighten, but to provoke the activity of thought, to make one think about the contradictions and troubles of life, and Shakespeare achieves this goal. Achieves primarily through the image of a hero. By posing questions to himself, he encourages us to think about them and look for answers. But Hamlet not only questions life, he expresses many thoughts about it. His speeches are full of sayings, and what is remarkable is that they contain the thoughts of many generations. Research has shown that almost every saying has a long tradition behind it. Shakespeare did not read Plato, Aristotle, or medieval thinkers; their ideas came to him through various books that treated philosophical problems. It has been established that Shakespeare not only carefully read the “Essays” of the French thinker Michel Montaigne (1533-1592), but even borrowed something from them. Let us turn once again to the monologue “To be or not to be.” Let us remember how Hamlet compares death and sleep:

Die, sleep, -
And that's all; h to say that you end up sleeping
Melancholy and a thousand natural torments,
The legacy of the flesh - how is such a denouement
Don't thirst.
III, 1, 64-68

This is what Plato says in “The Apology of Socrates” about the dying thoughts of the Athenian sage: “Death is one of two things: either to die means to become nothing, so that the deceased no longer feels anything, or, if you believe the legends, this is some kind of change for souls, relocating them from these places to another place. If you don’t feel anything, then it’s the same as when you sleep so that you don’t even see anything in your sleep; then death is an amazing gain."

The similarity of thoughts is amazing!

Go to sleep!
And dream, perhaps? Here's the difficulty:
What dreams will you have in your death sleep?
When we drop this mortal noise, -
This is what throws us off; that's the reason
That disasters are so long-lasting...
III, 1, 64-69

Hamlet doubts what awaits a person in the other world: if it is the same as what happened in life, then death does not relieve torment. In this, Socrates decisively disagrees with Hamlet. He says: “In my opinion, if someone were to choose that night on which he slept so soundly that he did not even dream, and compare this night with the rest of the nights and days of his life and, having thought, say how many days and he lived better and more pleasant nights in his life than that night - then I think that not only the simplest person, but even the great king would find that he had more such nights than other days and nights. Therefore, if death is such, I, as far as I am concerned, will call it gain.”

The train of thought is approximately the same in Hamlet and Socrates: death - sleep - life - sleep - death. But there are two significant differences. The Athenian philosopher only hints, speaks somewhat mutely about how painful life is. Hamlet, as we remember, lists the troubles that cause suffering: “the oppression of the strong,” “the slowness of judges,” etc. Socrates has no doubt that death is preferable to a hard life, but Hamlet is not entirely sure of this. He does not know “what dreams will be dreamed in this mortal sleep,” because not a single traveler has returned from this country. Socrates says the same thing: “I can say that I am not familiar with death, that I know nothing about it and that I have not seen a single person who has known it from his own experience and could enlighten me on this matter.”

How did Socrates' dying speeches, as recounted by Plato, reach Shakespeare? In the 15th century, they were translated into Latin by the Italian humanist Marsilio Fcino. Montaigne translated them into French in the 16th century. Finally, shortly before the appearance of Hamlet, the Italian Giovanni Florio, who lived in London, translated Montaigne into English.

Echoes of Montaigne's reading are found in various works of Shakespeare, but especially often in Hamlet. Already at the beginning of the Essays, Shakespeare could have come across the saying: “A wonderfully vain, truly fickle and ever-wavering creature is man.” In the second chapter of the book it is said: “...Excessively strong grief completely suppresses our soul, constraining the freedom of its manifestations...”. Let’s say right away: the idea of the tragedy was not suggested to Shakespeare by reading Montaigne, but some of the philosopher’s thoughts surprisingly coincide with what Shakespeare portrayed in Hamlet.

It is also noticeable that Shakespeare’s hero sometimes thinks about the same thing that Montaigne wrote about. Montaigne: “...What we call evil and torment is in itself neither evil nor torment, and only our imagination endows it with such qualities...”. Hamlet: “...there is nothing either good or bad; this reflection makes everything so...” (II, 2, 255-256).

Montaigne: “The readiness to die frees us from all subordination and coercion... You need to always have your boots on, you need, since it depends on us, to be constantly ready for a hike...”. Hamlet, casting aside his misgivings and accepting Laertes’ challenge, says: “...readiness is everything” 2, 235).

Socrates, we read from Montaigne, was accused of portraying himself as “a man who knows more than all others, knowing what is hidden from us in heaven and in hell.” How not to remember the words spoken by the prince to his friend: “And in the sky and in the earth there is more hidden // Than your wisdom dreams, Horatio” (I, 5, 165-166). Let us add that in the original the word “wisdom” corresponds to “philosophy”.

Whether these are borrowings or coincidences does not matter. It is not a disadvantage, but a virtue of Shakespeare that he absorbed into his consciousness the wisdom that had accumulated over the centuries. For an independent mind, someone else's thought helps sharpen its own. The thoughts Shakespeare puts into the mouths of the characters are not irrelevant, nor is it a display of beautiful phrases. They are organically connected with the general concept of the tragedy, with the characters of the characters, with the given situation.

Discussions about life and death, about the purpose of man, about duty, courage in the face of adversity, about honor, loyalty, betrayal, the relationship between reason and feeling, about the destructiveness of passions and much more that is discussed in the tragedy are not new at all. People have thought and had opinions about this since the earliest times of civilization. And weren’t the same problems occupying the minds of subsequent generations right up to ours? Shakespeare's use of thoughts that had ancient origins testifies not to a lack of originality, but to the wisdom of Shakespeare the artist, who skillfully and appropriately used the treasury of human thought.

Bernard Shaw, who was very critical of Shakespeare, expressed the following judgment: Shakespeare “treated all the sensational horrors he borrowed as purely external accessories, as an occasion for dramatizing the character as he appears in the normal world. While we enjoy and discuss his plays, we unconsciously neglect all the battles and murders depicted there.” Let's be honest, for those who know Hamlet, all external events are of much less interest than the characters in the play, and first of all its hero. There is something else that attracts people in “Hamlet” - the thoughts heard in the speeches of the characters. True, in a theatrical performance we are most captivated by the characters, the images of people who find themselves in a tangle of tragic events. In reading, since we are less able to visually imagine what is given in the text, our attention is occupied by the ideas that fill the tragedy.

One after another, different themes arise in the characters' speeches. Without repeating what was said earlier, let us only recall that the range of issues raised in Hamlet covers almost everything essential in life - human nature, family, society, state. As already said, the tragedy does not provide an answer to all the questions posed in it. Shakespeare had no such intention. Confident answers to problems are easily given in the normal state of social and personal life. But when a critical situation arises, the possibilities of different solutions appear and confidence gives way to doubts about which one should be chosen. “Hamlet” is the artistic embodiment of precisely such critical moments in life. Therefore, it is useless to ask: “What did Shakespeare want to say with his work?” “Hamlet” cannot be reduced to one all-encompassing formula. Shakespeare created a complex picture of life, giving rise to various conclusions. The content of Hamlet is broader than the events taking place in it. In addition, we ourselves expand the meaning of the work, transferring what is said in it to situations in life that are closer and more understandable to us, no longer similar to those portrayed by Shakespeare.

Tragedy is not only rich in thoughts in itself, but it encourages thoughts that are not directly expressed in it. This is one of those works that amazingly stimulate thinking and awaken creativity in us. Few people remain unaffected by the tragedy. For the majority, it becomes that personal property that everyone feels entitled to judge. This is good. Having understood Hamlet, imbued with the spirit of the great tragedy, we not only comprehend the thoughts of one of the best minds; “Hamlet” is one of those works in which the self-awareness of humanity is expressed, its awareness of contradictions, the desire to overcome them, the desire for improvement, and irreconcilability towards everything that is hostile to humanity.

Notes

Montaigne Michel. Experiments. 2nd ed. - M., 1979. - T. II. - P. 253.

Right there. - T. I. - P. 13.

Right there. - T. I. - P. 15.

Right there. - T. I. - P. 48.

Right there. - T. I. - pp. 82-83.

Right there. - T. II. - P. 253.

Shaw Bernard. About drama and theater. - M., 1963. - P. 72.

Shakespeare created Hamlet at a turning point in his work. Researchers have long noticed that after 1600, Shakespeare’s previous optimism was replaced by harsh criticism and an in-depth analysis of the tragic contradictions in the soul and life of man. For ten years, the playwright creates the greatest tragedies, in which he solves the most burning questions of human existence and gives deep and formidable answers to them. The tragedy of the Prince of Denmark is especially significant in this regard.

The tragedy "Hamlet" is Shakespeare's attempt to capture with a single glance the entire picture of human life, to answer the sacramental question about its meaning, to approach man from the position of God. No wonder G.V.F. Hegel believed that Shakespeare, through the means of artistic creativity, provided unsurpassed examples of analysis of fundamental philosophical problems: a person’s free choice of actions and goals in life, his independence in making decisions.

Shakespeare in his plays masterfully exposed human souls, forcing his heroes to confess to the audience. The brilliant reader of Shakespeare and one of the first researchers of the figure of Hamlet - Goethe - once said this: “There is no pleasure more sublime and pure than, closing your eyes, listening to a natural and true voice not recite, but read Shakespeare. So it is best to follow the harsh threads from which he weaves events. Everything that blows in the air when great world events take place, everything that fearfully withdraws and hides in the soul, here comes to light freely and naturally; we learn the truth of life without knowing how.”

Let us follow the example of the great German and read the text of the immortal tragedy, for the most accurate judgment about the character of Hamlet and the other heroes of the play can only be deduced from what they say, and from what others say about them. Shakespeare sometimes remains silent about certain circumstances, but in this case we will not allow ourselves to guess, but will rely on the text. It seems that Shakespeare, in one way or another, said everything that was needed by both his contemporaries and future generations of researchers.

How have the researchers of the brilliant play interpreted the image of the Danish Prince! Gilbert Keith Chesterton, not without irony, noted the following about the efforts of various scientists: “Shakespeare, without a doubt, believed in the struggle between duty and feeling. But if you have a scientist, then for some reason things are different here. The scientist does not want to admit that this struggle tormented Hamlet, and replaces it with the struggle of consciousness with the subconscious. He gives Hamlet complexes so as not to give him a conscience. And all because he, a scientist, refuses to take seriously the simple, if you like, primitive morality on which Shakespeare’s tragedy stands. This morality includes three premises from which the modern painful subconscious runs away as from a ghost. First, we must act justly, even if we really don’t want to; secondly, justice may require that we punish a person, usually a strong one; thirdly, the punishment itself can result in a fight and even murder.”

Tragedy begins with murder and ends with murder. Claudius kills his brother in his sleep by pouring a poisonous infusion of henbane into his ear. Hamlet imagines the terrible picture of his father’s death this way:

Father died with a swollen belly,

All swollen, like May, from sinful juices.

God knows what other demand there is for this,

But overall, probably quite a lot.

(Translation by B. Pasternak)

The ghost of Hamlet's father appeared to Marcello and Bernardo, and they called Horatio precisely as an educated person, capable of, if not explaining this phenomenon, then at least communicating with the ghost. Horatio is a friend and close associate of Prince Hamlet, which is why the heir to the Danish throne, and not King Claudius, learns from him about the visits of the ghost.

Hamlet's first monologue reveals his tendency to make the broadest generalizations based on a single fact. The shameful behavior of the mother, who threw herself on the “bed of incest,” leads Hamlet to an unfavorable assessment of the entire fair half of humanity. No wonder he says: “Frailty, you are called: woman!” In the original: frailty - frailty, weakness, instability. It is this quality for Hamlet that is now decisive for the entire female race. Hamlet's mother was the ideal woman, and it was all the more terrible for him to witness her fall. The death of his father and his mother’s betrayal of the memory of his late husband and monarch mean for Hamlet the complete collapse of the world in which he had happily existed until then. The father's house, which he remembered with longing in Wittenberg, collapsed. This family drama forces his impressionable and sensitive soul to come to such a pessimistic conclusion:

How, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on"t, ah fie! "tis an unwedded garden

That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature

Possess it merely.

Boris Pasternak perfectly conveyed the meaning of these lines:

How insignificant, flat and stupid

It seems to me that the whole world is in its aspirations!

O abomination! Like an unweeded garden

Give free rein to the grass and it will become overgrown with weeds.

With the same undividedness the whole world

Rough beginnings filled.

Hamlet is not a cold rationalist and analyst. He is a man with a big heart capable of strong feelings. His blood is hot, and his senses are heightened and cannot dull. From reflections on his own life conflicts, he extracts truly philosophical generalizations concerning human nature as a whole. His painful reaction to his surroundings is not surprising. Put yourself in his place: his father died, his mother hastily married his uncle, and this uncle, whom he once loved and respected, turns out to be his father's murderer! Brother killed brother! Cain's sin is terrible and testifies to irreversible changes in human nature itself. The ghost is absolutely right:

Murder is vile in itself; but this

The most vile and most inhuman of all.

(Translation by M. Lozinsky)

Fratricide indicates that the very foundations of humanity have rotted. Everywhere - betrayal and enmity, lust and meanness. You can’t trust anyone, not even the closest person. This torments Hamlet most of all, who is forced to stop looking at the world around him through rose-colored glasses. The terrible crime of Claudius and the lustful behavior of his mother (typical, however, of many aging women) look in his eyes only as manifestations of general corruption, evidence of the existence and triumph of world evil.

Many researchers reproached Hamlet for indecisiveness and even cowardice. In their opinion, he should have killed him as soon as he learned about his uncle’s crime. Even the term “Hamletism” appeared, which began to denote weakness of will prone to reflection. But Hamlet wants to make sure that the spirit who came from hell told the truth, that his father’s ghost is really an “honest spirit.” After all, if Claudius is innocent, then Hamlet himself will become a criminal and will be doomed to hell. That is why the prince comes up with a “mousetrap” for Claudius. Only after the performance, having seen his uncle’s reaction to the crime committed on stage, does Hamlet receive real earthly proof of the revealing news from the other world. Hamlet almost kills Claudius, but he is saved only by his state of immersion in prayer. The prince does not want to send his uncle’s soul, cleansed of sins, to heaven. That is why Claudius is spared until a more favorable moment. Sohmer S. Certificatein Speculations on "Hamlet", the Calendar, and Martin Luther. Early Modern Literary Studios 2.1 (1996):

Hamlet seeks not just to avenge his murdered father. The crimes of the uncle and mother only testify to the general deterioration of morals, the destruction of human nature. No wonder he utters the famous words:

The time is out of joint - o cursed spite.

That ever I was born to set it right!

Here is a fairly accurate translation by M. Lozinsky:

The century has been shaken - and worst of all,

That I was born to restore it!

Hamlet understands the depravity not of individual people, but of all humanity, of the entire era of which he is a contemporary. In an effort to take revenge on his father's murderer, Hamlet wants to restore the natural course of things and revives the destroyed order of the universe. Hamlet is offended by Claudius' crime not only as his father's son, but also as a man. In the eyes of Hamlet, the king and all the court brethren are by no means isolated random grains of sand on the human shore. They are representatives of the human race. Despising them, the prince is inclined to think that the entire human race is worthy of contempt, absolutizing the particular cases of Shakespeare W. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. // The Complete Works. - Oxford: Claredon Press, 1988. . Queen Gertrude and Ophelia, with all their love for the prince, are not able to understand him. Therefore, Hamlet curses love itself. Horatio, as a scientist, cannot understand the mysteries of the other world, and Hamlet pronounces a verdict on learning in general. Probably, even in the silence of his Wittenberg existence, Hamlet experienced the hopeless pangs of doubt, the drama of abstract critical thought. After returning to Denmark, things escalated. He is bitter about the consciousness of his powerlessness, he realizes all the treacherous instability of the idealization of the human mind and the unreliability of human attempts to think of the world according to abstract formulas.

Hamlet faced reality as it is. He has experienced all the bitterness of disappointment in people, and this pushes his soul to a turning point. Not for every person the comprehension of reality is accompanied by such shocks as the Shakespearean hero experienced. But it is precisely when faced with the contradictions of reality that people get rid of illusions and begin to see true life. Shakespeare chose an atypical situation for his hero, an extreme case. The hero’s once harmonious inner world collapses, and then is recreated before our eyes again. It is in the dynamism of the image of the main character, in the absence of statics in his character, that lies the reason for the diversity of such contradictory assessments of the Danish prince.

Hamlet's spiritual development can be reduced to three dialectical stages: harmony, its collapse and restoration in a new quality. V. Belinsky wrote about this when he argued that the so-called indecisiveness of the prince is “disintegration, a transition from infantile, unconscious harmony and self-pleasure of the spirit into disharmony and struggle, which are a necessary condition for the transition to courageous and conscious harmony and self-pleasure of the spirit "

The famous monologue “To be or not to be” is pronounced at the peak of Hamlet’s doubts, at the turning point of his mental and spiritual development. There is no strict logic in the monologue, because it is pronounced at the moment of the greatest discord in his consciousness. But these 33 Shakespearean lines are one of the peaks of not only world literature, but also philosophy. Fight against the forces of evil or avoid this battle? - this is the main question of the monologue. It is he who entails all of Hamlet’s other thoughts, including those about the eternal hardships of humanity:

Who would bear the lashes and mockery of the century,

The oppression of the strong, the mockery of the proud,

The pain of despised love, the slowness of judges,

The arrogance of the authorities and insults,

Performed by uncomplaining merit,

If only he could give himself a reckoning

With a simple dagger...

(Translation by M. Lozinsky)

All these problems do not apply to Hamlet, but here he again speaks on behalf of humanity, for these problems will accompany the human race until the end of time, for the golden age will never come. All this is “human, too human,” as Friedrich Nietzsche would later say.

Hamlet reflects on the nature of the human tendency to think. The hero analyzes not only existing existence and his position in it, but also the nature of his own thoughts. In the literature of the Late Renaissance, heroes often turned to the analysis of human thought. Hamlet also carries out his own criticism of the human “power of judgment” and comes to the conclusion: excessive thinking paralyzes the will.

So thinking makes us cowards,

And so determined natural color

Withers under the pale patina of thought,

And beginnings that rose powerfully,

Turning aside your move,

Lose the action name.

(Translation by M. Lozinsky)

The entire monologue “To be or not to be” is permeated with a heavy awareness of the hardships of existence. Arthur Schopenhauer, in his thoroughly pessimistic “Aphorisms of Worldly Wisdom,” often follows the milestones that Shakespeare left in this heartfelt monologue of the prince. I don’t want to live in the world that appears in the hero’s speech. But it is necessary to live, because it is unknown what awaits a person after death - perhaps even worse horrors. “The fear of a country from which no one has ever returned” forces a person to eke out an existence on this mortal earth - sometimes the most pitiful one. Note that Hamlet is convinced of the existence of the afterlife, because the ghost of his unfortunate father came to him from hell.

Death is one of the main characters not only in the monologue “To be or not to be,” but also in the entire play. She reaps a generous harvest in Hamlet: nine people pass away in that same mysterious country that the Danish prince is thinking about. About this famous monologue of Hamlet, our great poet and translator B. Pasternak said: “These are the most trembling and insane lines ever written about the anguish of the unknown on the eve of death, rising with the power of feeling to the bitterness of the Gethsemane note.”

Shakespeare was one of the first in the world philosophy of modern times to think about suicide. After him, this topic was developed by the greatest minds: I.V. Goethe, F.M. Dostoevsky, N.A. Berdyaev, E. Durkheim. Hamlet reflects on the problem of suicide at a turning point in his life, when the “connection of times” has broken down for him. For him, struggle began to mean life, being, and leaving life becomes a symbol of defeat, physical and moral death.

Hamlet's instinct for life is stronger than the timid sprouts of thoughts about suicide, although his indignation against the injustices and hardships of life often turns on himself. Let's see what choice curses he showers on himself! “Dumb and cowardly fool”, “mouthless”, “coward”, “donkey”, “woman”, “scullery maid”. The internal energy that overwhelms Hamlet, all his anger, for the time being, falls into his own personality. While criticizing the human race, Hamlet does not forget about himself. But, reproaching himself for slowness, he does not for a moment forget about the suffering of his father, who suffered a terrible death at the hands of his brother.

Hamlet is by no means slow to take revenge. He wants Claudius, dying, to find out why he died. In his mother’s bedroom, he kills the lurking Polonius in full confidence that he has taken revenge and Claudius is already dead. The more terrible is his disappointment:

As for him,

(points to Polonius' corpse)

Then I mourn; but heaven commanded

They punished me and me him,

So that I become their scourge and servant.

(Translation by M. Lozinsky)

Hamlet sees in chance a manifestation of the highest will of heaven. It was heaven that entrusted him with the mission of being a “scorge and minister” - a servant and executor of their will. This is exactly how Hamlet views the matter of revenge.

Claudius is furious at Hamlet’s “bloody trick,” because he understands who his nephew’s sword was really aimed at. It is only by chance that the “fidgety, stupid busybody” Polonius dies. It is difficult to say what Claudius' plans were in relation to Hamlet. Whether he planned his destruction from the beginning or was forced to commit new atrocities by Hamlet’s very behavior, which hinted to the king about his awareness of his secrets, Shakespeare does not answer these questions. It has long been noted that Shakespeare’s villains, unlike the villains of ancient drama, are by no means just schemes, but living people, not without germs of goodness. But these sprouts wither with each new crime, and in the souls of these people evil blooms magnificently. Such is Claudius, losing the remnants of humanity before our eyes. In the duel scene, he does not actually prevent the death of the queen who drinks poisoned wine, although he tells her: “Don’t drink wine, Gertrude.” But his own interests come first, and he sacrifices his newly acquired wife. But it was precisely the passion for Gertrude that became one of the reasons for Cain’s sin of Claudius!

I would like to note that in the tragedy Shakespeare confronts two understandings of death: religious and realistic. The scenes in the cemetery are indicative in this regard. While preparing the grave for Ophelia, the gravediggers unfold an entire philosophy of life before the viewer.

The real, and not poetic, appearance of death is terrible and vile. No wonder Hamlet, holding in his hands the skull of his once beloved jester Yorick, reflects: “Where are your jokes? Your tomfoolery? Your singing? Nothing left to make fun of your own antics? Has your jaw completely dropped? Now go into some lady’s room and tell her that even if she puts on a whole inch of makeup, she will still end up with such a face...” (translation by M. Lozinsky). Before death, everyone is equal: “Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander turns to dust; dust is earth; clay is made from earth; and why can’t they plug up a beer barrel with this clay into which he turned?”

Yes, Hamlet is a tragedy about death. That is why it is extremely relevant for us, citizens of a dying Russia, modern Russian people, whose brains have not yet completely become dull from watching endless series that lull the mind. The once great country perished, as did the once glorious state of Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire. We, once its citizens, are left to eke out a miserable existence on the outskirts of world civilization and endure the bullying of all kinds of shylocks.

The historical triumph of Hamlet is natural - after all, it is the quintessence of Shakespearean drama. Here, as if in a gene, the bundle already contained “Troilus and Cressida,” “King Lear,” “Othello,” and “Timon of Athens.” After all, all these things show the contrast between the world and man, the clash between human life and the principle of negation.

More and more stage and film versions of the great tragedy are appearing, sometimes extremely modernized. Probably, “Hamlet” is so easily modernized because it is all-human. And although the modernization of Hamlet is a violation of historical perspective, there is no escape from it. In addition, the historical perspective, like the horizon, is unattainable and therefore fundamentally inviolable: as many eras, so many perspectives.

Hamlet, for the most part, is Shakespeare himself, the soul of the poet himself is reflected in him. Through his lips, wrote Ivan Franko, the poet expressed a lot of things that burned his own soul. It has long been noted that Shakespeare's 66th sonnet strikingly coincides with the thoughts of the Danish prince. Probably, of all Shakespeare's heroes, only Hamlet could write Shakespearean works. It is not for nothing that Bernard Shaw’s friend and biographer Frank Garrick considered Hamlet to be a spiritual portrait of Shakespeare. We find the same in Joyce: “And perhaps Hamlet is the spiritual son of Shakespeare, who lost his Hamlet.” He says: “If you want to destroy my belief that Shakespeare is Hamlet, you have a difficult task ahead of you.”

There cannot be anything in creation that was not in the creator himself. Shakespeare may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on the streets of London, but Hamlet was born from the depths of his soul, and Romeo grew from his passion. A person is least likely to be himself when he speaks for himself. Give him a mask and he will become truthful. Actor William Shakespeare knew this well.

The essence of Hamlet lies in the infinity of Shakespeare’s own spiritual quest, all his “to be or not to be?”, the search for the meaning of life among its impurities, the awareness of the absurdity of existence and the thirst for overcoming it with the greatness of the spirit. With Hamlet, Shakespeare expressed his own attitude towards the world, and, judging by Hamlet, this attitude was by no means rosy. In Hamlet, for the first time, a motif characteristic of Shakespeare “after 1601” will be heard: “Not one of the people pleases me; no, not even one."

Hamlet's closeness to Shakespeare is confirmed by numerous variations on the theme of the Prince of Denmark: Romeo, Macbeth, Vincent (“Measure for Measure”), Jacques (“How Do You Like It?”), Posthumus (“Cymbeline”) are peculiar doubles of Hamlet.

The power of inspiration and the power of the brushstroke indicate that “Hamlet” became an expression of some personal tragedy of Shakespeare, some of the poet’s experiences at the time of writing the play. In addition, Hamlet expresses the tragedy of an actor who asks himself: which role is more important - the one he plays on stage, or the one he plays in life. Apparently, under the influence of his own creation, the poet began to think about which part of his life is more real and complete - the poet or the person N.N. Belozerov. Integrative poetics. - TSU Publishing House, Tyumen, 1999, - P.125.

Shakespeare in Hamlet appears as the greatest philosopher-anthropologist. The person is always at the center of his thoughts. He reflects on the essence of nature, space and time only in close connection with thoughts about human life.

Philosophical and ethical issues of Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet"

I. “Hamlet” is one of the most important “disturbed” tragedies. "Anxious" was the name given to plays that appeared on the English stage at the end of the 16th century and which reflected anxiety about the events of the time. The play most fully reproduces the crisis of the humanistic ideology of the Renaissance, since it reflects the onset of a new inhuman morality, personified by the king of Klal-actions. So, one of the main problems of Hamlet is the problem of morality both at the level of the individual and at the level of the state.)
II. The struggle between good and evil is one of the eternal themes characteristic of Hamlet. (The line of struggle between good and evil passes not only through the everyday relationships of the heroes or even considerations at the state level. This struggle occurs in each of the heroes, and good does not always win. After all, everyone chooses their own path. Polonius, for example, became a servant of evil. And his the son Laertes overcame evil in his soul, for his nature was noble. And in Hamlet’s heart there is also a struggle, the essence of which is largely reflected in the monologue “To be or not to be?”)
III. ...Is man the crown of creation or a pitiful slave?
(According to Hamlet, the highest praise for people is recognition of them as worthy of the name of humanity. The hero says that a person should be a harmonious combination of various virtues, which is why he, taking care of his intellectual development, strives for physical perfection, trying to be the first in fencing Hamlet considers his father to be an example of his best traits: “He was a man, a man in everything.” And therefore the hero does not forgive human imperfections, obvious vices, no matter to whom they appear. the right to be called a person.)
IV. The confrontation between man and the world as a philosophical and ethical problem of the play. (Bringing human nature to unprecedented heights, Hamlet does not consider the world perfect. He feels alone in front of a hostile world, where morality is devalued, where considerations of power and money come first. And even knowing that he cannot change the world, Hamlet comes out to fight with him, recognizing his responsibility for what is happening in the world, in the state. He does not treat people with contempt, but understands that he has a special mission:

The century has been shaken, and worst of all,
That I was born to restore it.

It is Hamlet, with his uncompromising desire to change the world for the better, who unequivocally says that every person must resist an unjust world in order to preserve himself and the most important values, without which life is impossible.)
V. Religiosity is an integral feature of Renaissance thinking.
(With all the freedom of Renaissance thinking, it cannot be said that religiosity did not matter to him. On the contrary. Religious thinking is inherent in a person’s upbringing and way of thinking. Thus, Hamlet refuses to kill King Claudius at the moment when he is praying, because then the king will go to heaven. Hamlet suffers from the fact that his father died, not cleansed of sins. And yet the concept of God is closely intertwined in him with the idea of the greatness of man. This is the dictate of the time.)

IIsemester

THE RISE OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT IN THE RENAISSANCE LITERATURE

LESSON No. 65

Subject. Philosophical problems of Shakespeare's tragedy"Hamlet"

Purpose: to identify the philosophical problems raised in the tragedy “Hamlet”; analyze dramatized passages; establish interdisciplinary connections; develop creative abilities; cultivate high moral qualities.

Equipment: props for staging; texts of the tragedy "Hamlet"; reproduction paintings by E. Delacroix “Hamlet” and Horatio in the cemetery."

Alas, poor Yorick!

W. Shakespeare

PROGRESS OF THE LESSON

I. Franco wrote about Shakespeare’s tragedy: “Hamlet is not only Shakespeare’s most personal, but also his most philosophical drama. The hero of the tragedy is a thinker, and the events of the tragedy prompt his opinion to examine the most important, most difficult questions about the purpose of existence, about the value of life, about the nature of moral concepts and the social system.”

Therefore, today, following Hamlet, we will try to figure out the questions posed by Shakespeare, and, perhaps, we will find answers to them.

II. Generalization and systematization of what has been studied

Excerpt one

The hand is not strained, it is always more sensitive...”

Second gravedigger (dig and poet)

In the days of young love, love,

I thought - the sweetest thing

While away the hours - oh! - with fire - wow! - in the blood,

I thought - there is nothing.

Hamlet

Or this fellow doesn’t know what he’s doing,

What is he singing while digging a grave?

Horatio

Habit turned it into him

in the simplest matter.

Hamlet

So always, the hand that labors little,

most sensitive.

First gravedigger(sings)

But old age, sneaking like a thief,

I took it with my own hand

And she took me to the country

As if I wasn't like that.

(Throws away the skull.)

Hamlet

This skull has there was a language, and it could sing once; and this guy throws him to the ground, as if it were Cain’s jaw, the one who committed the first murder!

Maybe it’s some politician’s head that this donkey has now outwitted; a man who was ready to deceive the Lord God himself - wasn’t he?

Horatio

Perhaps a prince.

Hamlet

Or a courtier who said: “Good morning, my dear sir! How are you feeling, my most gracious sir?” It is possible that my sovereign So-and-so, who praised the horse of my sovereign So-and-so, hoping to beg for it - isn’t it?

Horatio

Yes, my prince.

Hamlet

That's it; and now this is my lady Rotten, without a jaw, and she is being hit on the lid by the gravedigger’s spade; This is a remarkable transformation, if only we had the ability to see it. Was it so cheap to feed these bones that all that remains is to play ryuhi? My bones hurt at the thought.

The First Gravedigger (singing)

Shovel and pickaxe, pickaxe,

And the shroud is white as snow;

Ah, the pit is quite deep,

So that the guest has an overnight stay.

(Throws out another skull.)

Hamlet

Here's another one. Why shouldn't it be the skull of some lawyer? Where are now his hooks and tricks, ego incidents, ego slander and subtleties? Why Now he lets this rude man hit him in the back of the head with a FUCKING shovel and doesn't threaten to charge him with assault? Hm! Perhaps in At one time, this fellow was a large buyer of land, with all sorts of mortgages, obligations, bills of sale, double guarantees and foreclosures; did all the ego deeds and foreclosures only lead to the fact that his landowner’s head was full of dirty soil? Did all his guarantees, even double guarantees, only provide him of all his acquisitions with the length and width of two handwritten fortresses? Even these land acts would hardly fit in this box; and the owner himself received only this?

Horatio

Exactly so, my prince.

Excerpt two

"Oh, poor Yorick!"

Hamlet

How long will a person lie in the ground?

until it rots?

First gravedigger

Well, if he did not rot before death - after all, today there are many such rotten dead people who can barely stand a funeral - then he will last you eight, or even nine years; a tanner, he will last you nine years.

Hamlet

Why is he longer than the others?

First gravedigger

Yes, sir, his skin is so tanned that it does not let water through for a long time; and water, sir, is a great destroyer for such a dead dog. Here's another skull; this skull lay in the ground for twenty years and three years.

Hamlet

Whose is this?

First gravedigger

One crazy madman; Whose do you think this is?

Hamlet

Really, I don't know.

First gravedigger

Spread the plague, you crazy madman! He once poured a bottle of Rensky on my head. This very skull, sir, is the skull of Yorick, the royal jester.

Hamlet

This?

First gravedigger

This one is the one.

Hamlet

Show me. (Takes the skull.) Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; an infinitely witty man, a wonderful inventor; he carried me a thousand on his back; and now - how disgusting it is for me to imagine it! I get a lump in my throat just thinking about it. There were these lips that I kissed I don’t know how many times. Where are your jokes now? Your tomfoolery? Your songs? Your outbursts of merriment that made the whole table laugh every time? Nothing left to make fun of your own antics? Has your jaw completely dropped? Now go into some lady’s room and tell her that even if she puts on a whole inch of makeup, she’ll still end up with that face; make her laugh at this. - Please, Horatio, tell me one thing.

Horatio

Which one, my prince?

Hamlet

Do you think Alexander had one like this?

view in the ground?

Horatio

Exactly like this.

Hamlet

And did he smell the same? Ugh! (Puts the skull on the ground.)

Horatio

Exactly the same, my prince.

Hamlet

What base need can we indulge in, Horatio! Why should not the imagination trace the noble ashes of Alexander until it finds him plugging the barrel hole?

Horatio

To consider it this way would be to look too closely.

Hamlet

No, really, not at all; this would mean following him with due modesty and, moreover, guided by probability; for example, like this: Alexander died, Alexander is buried, Alexander turns to dust; dust is earth; They make clay from the earth, and why can’t they plug up a beer barrel with this clay into which he turned?

State Caesar, turned into decay,

Maybe he went for coating the walls.

The dust that frightened the whole world around,

Patches cracks against winter blizzards!

But be quiet! Let's move away! The king is coming.

2. Conversation on the content of the dramatized passages

Excerpt one

Striking Hamlet in the cemetery? (What the grave digger sings as he works.)

How did the prince think he should have behaved? (With respect to the dead, with restraint, without songs.)

Why is Hamlet acquitted of the grave digger? (He explains this behavior to himself by saying that the digger is accustomed to the peculiarities of his work.)

What does Hamlet think about when he sees the skull dug out of the ground? (About who this person could have been in life; expresses regret that after death a person loses everything.)

Explain the title of the dramatized passage. (Hamlet justifies the digger with the words: “The hand that is not strained is always more sensitive,” explaining that the gravedigger’s cynicism is associated with many years of work in such conditions. And calluses can appear not only on the hands, but also on the soul if a person lives among evil or grief Hamlet is sensitive to human grief and is amazed at what a person turns into after death.)

Excerpt two

Explain what grave diggers say about those dead who rotted before death.” (This is not the first time in a tragedy that there are words denoting rot - this is a manifestation of the highest degree of depravity, the inability to live a field and joyful life.)

How does Hamlet characterize Yorick, the king's jester? (The prince remembers the time spent with Yorick with sadness, remembers him as a cheerful, witty, creative person. Hamlet is amazed that he is holding his skull in his hands - all that remains of Yorick.)

Yorick is only the king's jester. Hamlet reflects on the fate of “the mighty of this world.” What conclusions does he come to? (Hamlet comes to the conclusion that both great and ordinary people have one end: after death they turn into dust, earth. And even Alexander the Great is no exception, and now part of him may be in a wine barrel.)

3. Philosophical problems in Shakespeare's tragedy

The tragedy "Hamlet" is called philosophical because it touches on problems related to the foundations of human existence.

The set of problems in a work is called problematics.

Let us determine what issues (problems) the author of the tragedy violates.

The problem of life and death is the leitmotif of the entire play. Most of the heroes of the work die, almost all of them talk about death and life. An important moment for realizing the transience of human life is the scene in the cemetery.

The problem of struggle and inaction

What is better: to reconcile or fight evil? Does good happen with fists? Doesn't it turn into evil at this time? More questions than answers.

The problem of love and betrayal

Treason is a concept that is present almost constantly in the play. Even people close to Hamlet turn into traitors and spies. Why does the queen betray the memory of Hamlet's father, Ophelia - Hamlet, Claudius - her brother, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - their friend?

One thing is clear: true love and betrayal are incompatible.

Hood. Eugene Delacroix. Hamlet and Horatio in the cemetery

III. Lesson summary

Compose a senkan on the theme “The Tragedy “Hamlet”” (I option) or “Hamlet” (II option).

smart, noble,

thinks, fights, dies,

a lonely fighter against evil,

thinker-hero.

IV. Homework

Write an essay on the topic “What is the tragedy of Hamlet?”

Material for writing an essay

An essay-reflection differs from other works in its structure and content.

In the introduction, you need to express your point of view on the issue (topic) - generally accepted or one that belongs to a famous person.

In the main part, you need to express your opinion on this issue (whether you agree or disagree) and provide evidence and arguments confirming the validity of your position. In conclusion, summarize the defense of your opinion regarding the disclosure of the question “What is the tragedy of Hamlet?”

Quotes for use in the work (at the request of students)

“Hamlet is a work of art, not a treatise; not an instructive story, but a drama about how life is revealed to a person in its most tragic manifestations.” (A. Anikst)

"The tragedy of Hamlet is the tragedy of man's knowledge of evil." (A. Anikst) “Hamlet could not resolve the issue. His greatness lies in the fact that he posed this question.” (M. Morozov)

“The greatness and tragedy of Hamlet are generated by the gap between the duty of a thinker and a fighter.” (S. Nels)

“Hamlet is sure that people need the sad story of his life - as a lesson, a warning and a call... With his fate, he testifies to the tragic contradictions of history, the difficult but increasingly persistent work of humanizing man. And it proves the special significance of the courageous individual sacrifice of tragic circumstances.” (M. Urnov)

“By nature, Hamlet is a strong man: his bilious irony, his instant outbursts, his passionate antics in a conversation with his mother, proud contempt and undisguised hatred for his uncle - all this testifies to the energy and greatness of the soul.” (V. G. Belinsky)

"Hamlet - a synthetic portrait of the humanists of Shakespeare's era." (M. Morozov)