Vergil in Hamlet; Act II, scene ii (Week of 3/30/09)

A significant part of Act II that we didn't have a chance to discuss in class this week is the monologue delivered by the First Player in scene ii, lines 480-530, in which Aeneas relates to his lover, Dido (the queen of Carthage), the story of the murder of Priam. Hamlet calls for this speech because (as you may have already detected) the story of the king of Troy's murder at the hands of Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, seems to point to the desire for violent revenge against Claudius that Hamlet bears. (The section that the First Player performs here comes from Vergil's epic poem, the Aeneid.)

For this blog, I'm going to pull a few lines from this longish section of the scene to present my reading of how the allusions to Greek and Roman mythology that Shakespeare includes here might relate to the action of his play.

The first thing that sticks out to me is the epic pause that Vergil creates the moment after Pyrrhus cuts Priam down. As he raises his sword above the king of Troy, the sound of the fall of the city, which has been badly burned by the Greeks when they invaded, causes him to stop in mid action:

Then senseless Ilium, | Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top | Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash | Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear. For, lo! his sword, | Which was declining on the milky head | of reverend Priam, seemed i' the air to stick (lines 486-491)

This makes me think of what I see as Hamlet's principal problem in the play: hesitation and the inability to act. Just as Pyrrhus is frozen at the moment when he seeks vengeance for his father's death, so does Hamlet at many points throughout the play seem unable to act. What I find significant here too is the fact that it is the sound of the physical fall of Troy that rings in Pyrrhus' ear and causes this hesitation. Might this not be true of Hamlet in a way? Does he 'hear' his own kingdom of Denmark falling in around him (perhaps echoing in the voice of his father's Ghost)? If Hamlet kills Claudius, does he fear the burden of ruling Denmark himself?

Immediately following this excerpt, you'll notice an epic simile from lines 495-504. Here Vergil compares Pyrrhus' pause to "A silence in the heavens" that proceeds a great storm. What a powerful way to build suspense! Pyrrhus' wrath is all the more heightened by this moment and when he does strike Priam, "never did the Cyclops' hammers fall | On Mars's armor, forged for proof eterne, | With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword | Now falls on Priam." By including this excerpt in his play, Shakespeare seems to signal the violence and the wrath with which Hamlet hopes to exact revenge on Claudius. To me, the words of Vergil convey the internal rage that Hamlet feels towards Claudius, yet we must wait three more acts before Hamlet himself takes any action. Through this monologue, I think we are meant the feel the intensity of Hamlet's imagined revenge as it is suppressed by his inability to act on these emotions.

One more section from this passage that I'd like to examine further is the depiction of Hecuba, the mythological queen of Troy, who breaks from her silent grief and erupts in a scream at the sight of her mutilated husband:

When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport | In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs, | The instant burst of clamor that she made | (Unless things mortal move them not at all) | Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven | And passion in the gods. (lines 525-530)

Here Hecuba seems to represent Queen Gertrude. What interests me most about this passage is Hecuba's silence. As we will see in Act III when Hamlet confronts his mother in her bed chamber about her marriage to Claudius, she will refuse to give any spoken indication that she knows of Claudius' treachery towards his brother. By including this section from Vergil, Shakespeare seems to indicate that it will take action on the part of Hamlet to remove this spell of silence from his mother. The madness that is represented in Hecuba's disheveled run around the ruins of Troy (lines 517-524) is also provocative in that it points towards the psychological torment that will be (or may currently be) part of Gertrude's atonement for her sins against her husband (old king Hamlet).

A shift in my approach... (Please read!)

For anyone who wasn't in class today (Friday, March 27, 2009) I thought it best to explain how I'd like to approach the weekly blog assignment from here on out. Rather than ask you to respond to a question of my creation or to write about a particularly narrow section of the texts we read, I'd like you to write approximately one page a week on a topic of your choice.

I'm trying to shift my own position in the class away from that of leader/writer/teacher to that of reader/writer/teacher. Each week I will post my own blog in response to the readings. My blog entries will be based on my own thoughts, ideas, questions, and critiques about these texts, and you are welcome to continue the conversation I begin or to go off in your own direction.

If you have difficulty getting started, you might read some of what others have written to see what has interested them about a particular text. Another blogger might ask a question, raise an issue, or make a comment that inspires you to write. You might consider commenting on that person's writing to let them (and us) know that they inspired you to write. That way, we can keep track of the conversations we're having about our readings.

Vision, Perception, and Belief in Act I, scenes i and ii of Hamlet (Week of 3/23/09)

As a teacher, I've always had an interest in the role that sight, vision, and perspective seem to play as themes in Hamlet especially where issues of truth and validity are concerned. In the first two scenes of the play alone, a number of characters make reference to sight, to eyes, to perception and perspective. When he introduces the ghost of old King Hamlet, Shakespeare seems to call into question the limits even of our own beliefs about what is able to be seen or in what what we think is probable for others to see.

Horatio, for instance, is brought to the battlements in scene one to verify the appearance of the king's apparition. (Note that the very position of these men is as 'watchers'. This in itself seems to establish a theme of perception!) Marcellus explains that Horatio has attributed the sighting of the Ghost to mere "fantasy" (line 23), and Marcellus has called him to the watch post to judge the verity of it's existence. Horatio's perspective is valued based on his position as a "scholar" (line 42). This is interesting, I think, because in doing so, these watchers (and Marcellus, in particular) have drawn a correlation between perceptual judgment and scholarly intelligence. What does it mean, then, when Horatio confirms the truth of the appearance of the Ghost? (On lines 56-58 he exclaims, "Before my God, I might not believe | Without sensible and true avouch | Of mine own eyes.") To what limits can his (or any human's) perception be trusted? How does this affect the ways that we as readers/watchers of the play will judge what is 'true' in the rest of the play? How do we (or can we) determine whose perception of truth we can/should trust? What might it mean for Shakespeare to evoke these questions from his audience at the opening of his play?

Some other lines in scenes i and ii that might support a discussion about sight, perception, truth, and validity that resonate with me as re-read this play that stick out to me include:

"As it doth well appear unto our state" (line 101)

Horatio explains how the Danish court perceives the actions of young Fortinbras who has raised an army to reclaim the lands his father lost. How might Fortinbras perceive his own actions?

"A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye" (line 112)

Horatio comments on the auspicious nature of the Ghost's appearance. What is the mind's eye? Reason? Intelligence? The sane mind? What kind of a mind frame must one possess in order to view the supernatural or to interpret auspicious occurrences?

"Good Hamlet, cast they nighted color off, | And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. | Do not for ever with thy vailed lids | Seek for they noble father in the dust." (lines 68-71)

Gertrude directs Hamlet to lift his gaze from the ground where he seems to search for some semblance of the father he has lost. She urges him to "look like a friend on Denmark." I read her comment in at least two ways:

1) This might be an attempt to change Hamlet's perception of the death of his father rather than as encouragement to find a way to cope with his grief. We will soon find out through the Ghost's testimony to Hamlet that his father was murdered by Claudius, his brother. When I read these lines this way, Gertrude's words seem to foreshadow her own complicity in the death of his father. She wants to force a change of perspective in her son, to convince him that any suspicions he might have are invalid and that his perception of his uncle is skewed.

2) I might also read the words "And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark" as cautionary words to Hamlet. If Gertrude knows or suspects that Claudius murdered her husband but was not an accomplice to the crime, she might fear Claudius. (For this reading to work, she would have had to have married him as a function of the norms of Danish society during this period. This is probable, since often the brother of a dead king might take the widowed queen as his wife along with the abdicated throne.) If this is the case here, then asking Hamlet to "look like a friend" might be a call for him to 'put on' the appearance of friend so as not to arouse suspicion in Claudius that he (Hamlet) suspects foul play.

Both these readings call to mind just how heavily my own perception as a reader affects how I understand the perspectives and motives of the play's characters and of Shakespeare as it's author.

Coleridge and Shelley - Imagination and Narrative Voice (Due: Monday, March 23, 2009)

Before you begin this week's blog entry, re-read Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" (pp. 759-760) and Shelley's "Ozymandias" (p. 803).

Hopefully over the past week you've developed a feel for the social and political climate in which the Romantic poets were writing and for the ways these poets used their writing as calls for change. With this in mind, I'd like you to respond to the following for this week's post:

1) The power of the imagination is often exalted in Romantic poetry. In your opinion, does “Kubla Khan” celebrate the imagination or caution against its indulgence? To whom might Coleridge be writing and for what purpose(s)?

2) Even in the brief space of a sonnet, Shelley suggests a number of narrative frames. How many speakers do you hear in "Ozymandias"? What does each of these voices seem to say to you (or to others) as listeners?

William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" - Poetry and Social Change (Due: Monday, March 16, 2009)

For this week's blog posting I'd like you to read a) two versions of "The Chimney Sweeper" published by William Blake in his Songs of Innocence and of Experience (pp. 725-727) and b) an excerpt from testimony given before Parliament in 1831 regarding child labor laws in England (pp. 728-729). You may access these via your online textbook.

After you've finished reading, consider the following perspective on the goals of the Romantic poets and respond to the questions that follow:

The editors of your textbook claim that the Romantic poets hoped to bring about social and political change through their poetry guided by the notion that "imagination, rather than mere reason, was the best response to the forces of change." Additionally, they assert, "The romance genre also allowed writers to explore new, more psychological and mysterious aspects of human experience" (p. 713).

1) Do you agree with the editors of your textbook that Blake's poetry had the power to enact social change by appealing to the imagination of the reader?

2) Why might the editors have included the Parliament transcript as a primary source document? How did it affect your reading of Blake's work?

Jonathan Swift Teacher Prep Work (Due: Monday, March 9, 2009)

This week I asked you to take on the roll of a teacher to plan a class discussion on the excerpt from Swift's Gulliver' Travels, Part 1: A Voyage to Lilliput (pp. 653-659 in your textbook).

As you read the Swift passage independently, I asked you to perform the following steps as though you were working in preparation to teach this section of the text to a class of students:

1) Generate at least four questions about the selection that you have and that you anticipate other readers might have as they examine this text

2) Point to moments in the selection that you have identified as significant and that you would present to a class for discussion

3) Make predictions about what you think students might find difficult as they read this text and make suggestions for possible ways to help clarify these difficulties
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For this week's blog, I'd like you to complete the following:

a) Post a version of the questions you asked, the excerpts you chose (with an explanation of why you selected these), and predictions that you made when you completed your individual prep work for teaching. (You might reference the online textbook at go.hrw.com if you want to quote sections of the text.)

b) Write a short reflective journal entry about the small teacher group work that you started this week. (What was the good, the bad, the ugly about this work? What would you change? What did you learn?)

c) On Monday, you will have more time to work with these small teacher groups. Will you approach this work differently in any way during that planning period? Has your group developed a vision for a way to teach this excerpt? If not, how will you work to do so?

Nineteen Eighty-Four Final Writing Assignment (Due: Friday, February 27, 2009)

DUE: Friday, February 27, 2008, 7 a.m. (Note: Late posts will incur a 5-point per day decrease in score.)

TOTAL POINTS: 60

FORMAT: Responses should be between 1-2 pages in length when single-spaced in Times New Roman, 12 point font

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Papers should be posted to your blog. I recommend using a word processing program (like Word) to compose and save your writing.
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“You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same things as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. What-ever the Party holds to be the truth is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane” (pp. 205-206).

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PROMPT:

Discuss the role that the doctrine O’Brien proclaims to Winston in this passage plays a) in maintaining the system of oligarchical collectivism upon which INGSOC is based and b) in Winston’s ultimate fate at the close of the novel.

You may draw upon any sections of the novel in support of your argument, but you must support your assertions with textual evidence. Do not summarize the plot of the novel in your response.