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Hamlet

Introduction
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet depends mainly on the technique of
binary opposition where there is always such an intended opposition
between characters, theme and language
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Through Hamlet, Shakespeare depends on the technique of
opposition, aiming to overshadow the complexity of socio-cultural,
political context that surround Hamlet, a prince whose father’s murder on
the hands of both his mother and his uncle and the appearance of the
ghost with its revelation increase the hyperbolic of oppositions related to
hamlet’s environment either in characters, themes or language
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For example the
theme of meta-theatre against the actual performance
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Claudius sends polonium as a spy to make sure that Hamlet is really
mad he sends also both Rosencrtranz and Guildenstern for the same
reason, Polonius admits “Though this be madness, yet, there is method in
it” Claudius says to Polonius in Act 1, scene I :
Love? His affections do not that way tend
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In addition Guildenstern describes Hamlet’s madness as “a crafty
madness” Hamlet intends to put antic disposition to watch the contacts of
both his uncle and his mother
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In addition, he uses the play
within a play to catch his conscience if he is the murder or not
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After the performance is done, King Claudius could
not continue watching the play, which is set as an evidence for his
murder
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Claudius is set as an audience watching
the behaviours of Hamlet
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The
audience watch all there performers who watch each other:
Yet, these different roles many characters adopt through the play
create different identities Hamlet, as a son, a prince, an avenger; make of
him once an audience or an observer, and in other times, an observed, T
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Hamlet is up against the

difficulty that his disgust is occasioned by his mother, but that his
mother is not an adequate equivalent for it; his disgust envelops
and exceeds her (8)

This quotation sums up that the different identity that Hamlet adopts
through the play, make him lose his real career as an avenger, which loses
its own objective emotion he is supposed to be involved in
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There are many evidences in the play that prove that hamlet is
insane, other proofs state that he is
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Queen Gertrude comments that this is real madness
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C
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He learns that the open
grave over which he muses has been dug for the woman he loved;
and he suffers one terrible pang, from which he gains relief in
frenzied words and frenzied action
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Moreover, on killing Polonius, Hamlet proves his madness
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Yet,
other critics state this is not madness rather than an act of admitting
weakness
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Thus, any other act that Hamlet has done is not considered to be an
act of madness rather a kind of compensation to his own egoistic
aspirations of taking revenge, in other words a means of hiding his
weakness
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This opposition between madness and sanity is the main cornerstone
of the play
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Horatio, and
Polonius, Guildenstern, that there is lesson in his speeches
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This opposition increases the tone of obscurity and mystery in the
play specially towards understanding the character of hamlet
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Among these things that cause mystery is thinking of hamlet’s opposition
in relation to being mad or not
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Shakespeare like many other Elizabethan writers but not
all of them believed in the idea of the Elizabethan world picture as he
explained that there is an opposition between both macrocosm and
microcosm, or Man and the universe
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If Man commits a sin,
especially in a political context, through killing or deposing a king, he
would came disorder to the universe
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Claudius within Hamlet, is the Microcosm, who commits a sin by
killing a legitimate king, Hamlet, as a result, as a result ghost appears and
heaven is chaotic, and diseases spread all over earth
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Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,

Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
………………………………………

Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon,

Making night hideous and we fools of nature,
So horridly to shake our disposition

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls
6

Hamlet within this quotation sums up the fact that the appearance of
the ghost is some kind of heavenly reaction against what happened on
earth, Moreover, he foreshadows that there will be other incidents
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Hamlet relates this idea of disorder to the world of the Roman Empire
specially offer the murder of the Julius Caesar, in Act I scene I
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Moreover, the mentioning of sickness and disease within the play is
another mark of spreading disorder
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He also describes his love
to the queen as a “plague” act IV, scene VII
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Firstly, Hamlet’s lake madness is opposite to Ophelia’s real madness
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Jameson states in her “Shakespeare’s Heroines
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This shows that both of them are contrastive not just in madness but
in relation to the delicacy and the sensibility
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But under the stress of his melancholy, which
has been deepened by the disclosure made by the Ghost, his attitude
towards her undergoes a change
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Ophelia’s madness due to three main reasons, her father has been
killed, her lover has been sent out of the country, and her brother is
abroad
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In her madness she continues to be sweet
and lovable which draws the grave difference between her madness and
that of Hamlet’s fake one:
Thought and affliction, pain, hell itself, she turns to favor and to
prettiness (Act IV, scene VI)
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8

Secondly, there is an opposite between both Claudius and old Hamlet
in the sense that Claudius is the man of words not like old Hamlet who is a
man of action
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Yet, in the case of old Hamlet, he sent troops to settle the matter
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Claudius is seen of
manipulative nature, intelligent and well
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He convinces
Gertrude to convince Hamlet to go to England
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Claudius’ sneaky and manipulative ways eventually lead to the death
at Hamlet’s hands, instead of punishing Hamlet for Polonius’ murder
himself, Claudius sent the prince to England alongside Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern with letters that would arrange Hamlet’s death, making it
look like an accident Despite his remorse shown in act 3 scene 3 when
Claudius prays for forgiveness, he still wants Hamlet dead, but it is seen as
a matter of politics
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He urges Laertes to kill Hamlet “what
would you undertake to show yourself in dead your father’s son more
than in words (Act IV, scene VII)
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9

Moreover, there is an opposition between Polonius, the spy courtlier
and the conic figure who becomes disloyal to Hamlet, and Horatio,
Hamlet’s royal friend Polonius is described by Samuel Johnson in his
“Notes On Hamlet as “a man who“ is a bred in courts, exercised in business
stored with observation, confident of his knowledge, proud of his
eloquence, and declining into dotage” (191)
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He
even spies on his son Laertes while he is in France
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Hamlet, on Killing Polonius, does not regret, calling him “wretched”
courtier whom he takes for the best that means that he is better to be dead
than alive
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He becomes very loyal to him till the end of the play
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Hamlet takes
him into confidence about the mouse-trap play and together they arrange
to watch the king’s reaction
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10

Moreover, it is Horatio who warns Hamlet against the motives
beyond the fencing match
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Horatio wants to kill himself how that his
bossom friend is dying, but Hamlet stops him “And in this harsh world
draw thy breath in pain / To tell my story” (Act V, scene II)
Finally, Both Laertes and Hamlet form some kind of opposition
Laertes is considered to be a man of action, he has neither scruples nor
doubts
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He goes
farther to accept the fencing match to sweep revenge over Hamlet
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He is devoted to them
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He grapples with Hamlet in the scene of the graveyard
striking his first blow showing his equal rivalry to Hamlet
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The play is full of many binary opposition, between Heaven and
earth, as indicating the opposition between both macrocosm, and the
microcosm, for example, Hamlet describes the appearance of the ghost as
Heaven’s expression of anger on earth due to the killing of the king
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Moreover there is
opposition between the “unwedded garden”, and hell or Denmark
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Much of the dramatic action of this tragedy is within the head of

Hamlet, and wordplay represents the amazing, contradictory,
unsettled, mocking, fecund nature of that mind, as it is torn by

disappointment and positive love, as Hamlet seeks both
acceptance and punishment, action and stillness, and wishes for

consummation and annihilation
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The narrative is a kind of mystery and chase, so that,
underneath the various guises of his wordplay,

Brown confirm the fact that every word Hamlet natters bears double
meaning which signifies a kind of binary opposition in some cases Hamlet
“To die, to sleep”, (Act 1 , scene I), “To be or not to be” (Act 1, scene I) , “The
cat will mew, and dog will have his day” (Act V, scene I)
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Conclusion
All modern critics, among them Derrida, state the fact that hamlet as
a play depends on the technique of oppositions either language characters
or themes
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Themes
either madness or sanity, met theatrical performance, microcosm and
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macrocosm offer the oppositions in the content in relation to cultural
Social and political context
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Their Behaviours and speeches are studied in relation of opposition
and contrast
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Finally, word play as a main technique of binary opposition
expresses the psychological mental state Hamlet goes through
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“Hamlet’s last Moments: A Note on John
Russel Brown” by Dieter Mehl
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Johnson, Samuel
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Vygostsky:

The tragedy of hamlet, Prince of Denmark; The
Riddle of hamlet “Subjective” and objective “
solutions”
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Structure of Tragedy Fable and Subject
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Jameson, Anna,

Shakespeare’s Heroines: characteristics of women,
moral, Poetical and Historical, London: George Bell
and sons, 1891
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Beginning
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1989
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London: George
Bell and sons, 1990
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