Hamlet Motif Analysis Assignment

Appearance or Reality

“Horatio says ‘tis but our fantasy,/ And will not let belief take hold of him” (I,1,23-24)

“In the same figure, like the king that’s dead.” (I,1,41)

“Seems, madam! Nay, is is; I know not “seems.”[…] Nor the dejected haviour of the visage, / Together with all forms, modes, shapes of grief, / That can denote me truly: these indeed seem, /But I have that within which passeth show; / These, but the trappings and suits of woe. (1,1,76 and 81-86)

“The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen;” (I,5,47)

“That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;” (I,5,109)

“for there is nothing / either good or bad but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison” (II,2,249-251)

“The spirit that I have seen / May be the devil: and the devil hath power / To assume a pleasing shape” (II,2,596-598)

“’Tis too much proved that, with devotion’s visage, And pious action, we do sugar o’er/The devil himself” (III,1,47-49)

“he weeps for what is done”(IV,1,27)

“Why, even in that was heaven ordinant. / I had my father’s signet in my purse, / Which was the model of that Danish seal: / Folded the writ up in form of the other; / Subscribed it; gave’t the impression; placed it safely, / The changeling never known.” (V, 2, 48-53)

Clothing
“Such was the very armour he had on / When he the ambitious Norway combated;” (I, 1, 60-61)

“Good Hamlet, cast thy knighted colour off, / And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.” (I, 2, 68-69)

“Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, / But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy: / For the apparel oft proclaims the man; / And they in France of the best rank and station / Are most select and generous chief in that.” (I, 3, 70-74)

“Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced, / No hat upon his head, his stockings foul’d, / Ungarter’d, and down-gyved to his ancle: / Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other…”
(II, 1, 79-82)

“The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms, / Black as his purpose, did the night resemble…”
(II, 2, 449-450)

“Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for / I’ll have a suit of sables.” (III, 2, 126-127)

“By his cockle hat and staff, / And his sandal shoon.” (IV, 5, 25-26)

“A very riband in the cap of youth, / Yet needful too, for youth no less becomes / The light and careless livery that it wears / Than settled age his sables and his weeds, / Importing health and graveness.” (IV, 7, 78-82)

“Her clothes spread wide, / And mermaid-like a while they bore her up: […] Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, / Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay”
(IV, 7, 177-178 and 182-183)

“This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head.” (V, 2, 180)

Corruption

“The chariest maid is prodigal enough, / If she unmask her beauty to the moon: / Virtue itself ‘scapes not calumnious strokes: / The canker galls the infants of the spring / Too oft before their buttons be disclosed, / And in the morn and liquid dew of youth / Contagious blastments are most imminent. / Be wary then; best safety lies in fear; / Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.” (I, 3, 36-44)

“The form plausive manners, that these men— / Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, / Being nature’s livery, or fortune’s star, / Their virtues else—be they as pure as grace, / As infinite as man may undergo— / Shall in the general censure take corruption / From that particular fault: the dram of evil / Doth all the noble substance of a doubt / To his own scandal—” (I, 4, 30-38)

“That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel, / Revisit’st 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?” (I, 4, 52-56)

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” (I, 4, 90)

“This is the very ecstasy of love; / Whose violent property fordoes itself / And leads the will to desperate undertakings / As oft as any passion under heaven / That does afflict our natures.” (II, 1, 103-107)

“Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner / transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the / force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness:” (III, 1, 111-114)

“The violence of either grief or joy / Their own enactures with themselves destroy:” (III, 2, 192-193)

“It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, / While rank corruption, mining all within, / Infects unseen.” (III, 4, 149-151)

“The body is with the king, but the king is not with / the body. The king is a thing–“ (IV, 2, 28-29)

“It was the very day that young Hamlet was born; he / that was mad, and sent into England.”
(V, 1, 143-144)

Gardens

tis an unweeded garden, / That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature (I,2,135-136)

“the canker galls the infants of the spring/Too oft before their buttons be disclosed” – ( I,3,39-40)

Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, - (I,5,34)

“old men have grey beards, that their faces are/ wrinkld, their eyes purging thick amber and plumtree”(II,2,197)

“Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,/ But fall unshaken when they mellow be” (III,2,186-187)

“Ay, sir but “While the grass grows,” – the proberv/is something musty.” (III,2,334-335)

“ Larded with sweet flowers;/Which bewept to the grave did go/With true-love showers.” (IV,5,37-39)

“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance, pray/, love, remember: and there is pansies, that’s for/thoughts. (IV,5,173-175)

“There’s a daisy:I would give you/some violets, but they withered all when my father died:/they say he made a good end,-- (IV,5,181-183)

“There, with fantastic garlands did she come/ Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples” (IV,7,170-171) “Yet here she is allow’d her virgin crants,/Her maiden strewments and the bringing home” (V,1,226-227)

Theatre and Music

“The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,” (I, 1, 150)

“He that plays the king shall be welcome; his majesty / shall have tribute of me: the adventurous knight shall / use his foil and target: the lover shall not sigh gratis; / the humorous man shall end his part in peace: the clown / shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickled o’ the / sere; and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank / verse shall halt for’t.” (II, 2, 319-325)

“The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, / comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical- / pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical- / pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited: Seneca / cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the / law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men.” (II, 2, 394-399)

“He would drown the stage with tears / And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, / Make mad the guilty and appal the free, / Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed / The very faculties of eyes and ears.” (II, 2, 557-561)

“the censure of the which one must in your allowance / o’erweigh a whole theatre of others.”
(III, 2, 27-28)

“That I did, my lord, and was accounted a good / actor.” (III, 2, 98-99)

“You would play upon me; you would seem / to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of / my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note / to the top of my compass: and there is much music, / excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. ‘Sblood, do you think that I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play / upon me.” (III, 2, 355-363)

“Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?” (IV, 5, 27)

“Hath this fellow no feeling of his business, that he / sings at grave-making.” (V, 1, 65-66)

“That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once:” (V, 1, 75)

“Why does the drum come hither?” (V, 2, 353)

War/Destruction

“And why such daily cast of brazen cannon, / And foreign mart for implements of war: / Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task / Does not divide the Sunday from the week.” (I, 1, 73-76)

“Hic et ubique? then we’ll shift our ground. / Come hither, gentlemen, / And lay your hands again upon my sword: / Never to speak of this that you have heard, / Swear by my sword.” (I, 5, 157-161)

“But we both obey, / And here give up ourselves, in the full bent / To lay our service freely at your feet, / To be commanded.” (II, 2, 29-32)

“Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, / And by opposing end them.” (III, 1, 57-61)

“As level as the cannon to his blank / Transports his poisoned shot, may miss our name/ And hit the woundless air.” (IV, 1, 42-44)

“The imminent death of twenty thousand men, / That for a fantasy and trick of fame / Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot / Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, / Which is not tomb enough and continent / To hide the slain?” (IV, 4, 59-64)

“If you desire to know the certainty / Of your dear father’s death, is’t writ in your revenge / That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe, / Winner and loser?” (IV, 5, 138-141)

“That I have shot mine arrow o’er the house, / And hurt my brother.” (V, 2, 234-235)

“Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, / Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, / Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, / And, in this upshot, purposes mistook / Fall’n on the inventors’ heads:” (V, 2, 374-378)

“Let four captains / Bear Hamlet, like a solider, to the stage; […] The soldiers’ music and the rites of war / Speak loudly for him. / Take up the bodies: such a sight as this / Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. / Go, bid the soldiers shoot.” (V, 2, 388-396)

clothing
Shakespeare has chosen to evoke the images of clothing throughout the play to help create a sense of mood and setting of lifestyle back in Shakespearean times. For example, he uses armor to portray the rough times and how war was a part of daily life. It also shows a sense of darkness within the play, whenever there is a motif of clothing it has usually been something of armor, torn peasant clothing or black clothing. All these are images that do not bring feelings of happiness or of enlightenment. The motif of clothing also deepens our understanding of the play. It gives us a feel of how it was like in the realm of Hamlet. Characters would acknowledge each other and judge others based on what they were wearing. This reminds us of how blind our characters really are , that the characters were judgmental. It also brings back the fact how serious the feaudal system was back then, how people were defined on their class. Paralell to what the characters are wearing in Hamlet help define who they are. Whether its king hamlets armour, showcasing his power and bravery. Hamlets black clothing portraying his grief and emotional alterside. Through motifs of Hamlets clothing we can see his character develop from one that’s emotional and heart stricken( black clothing worn at imarriage) to one whos fierce and does not let his emotions get in the way ( armor worn against duel against Laertes? :S)

Corruption
The motif of corruption in Hamlet tends to emphasize something beautiful or virtuous and then corrupting it into something darker. This running theme is a clue to Denmark’s state after a prolonged period of it being under rule by an unjust king. Something that Claudius and Hamlet are preoccupied with is the idea of decay and rotting which may be Shakespeare’s way of getting the audience to imagine Denmark as a beautiful country that has been crumbling in on itself.

Theatre and Music
The motif of theatre in Hamlet is highly consisted of acting and the images of acting is used to show that people have the capabilitys to act and pretend to be someone they’re not. It highly works in conjuction with the motif of appearance and reality. For example throughout the play we can see many different scenearios where people act differently then they truly are. For one, Claudious kills Hamlet Sr. and acts as if he is grieving , and puts on a fake mask to be this truly good king that he isn’t. Hamlet acts insane to the many people around him when in fact its just all an act he is playing. The traveling group of actors in the play all are acting to be someone theyre not and we can make a similar comparison between these actors who are simply reannacting someone else with the protagonist and antagonist of the play respectively who are putting on an act. Theatre is a powerful way to express stories, ideas and provoke thought. The murder of Gonzago was used to extract feelings of guilt out of Claudious, while for others it may have raised no feelings at all. Hamlets legacy is left with Horatio to tell and very possibly his story would be reannected for decades to come in the context of the play. It shows us that through Theatre, we have the power to get across a message. The play of “Hamlet” itself is a theatrical thing, and Shakespeare intended to get messages across to his audience through the thematic elements in the play. The motif of music is used as a method of juxstapostion to create a comical mood within different scenes. From talking about the ‘cock’ in the appearances of the ghost , to an insane Ophelia who is singing to express her feelings, to Hamlet referring to a skull as something that could sing before. Shakespeare uses music to contrast mood , he

War/destruction

Images of war and destruction are recurring throughout the play. The plot story of war starts at the beginning where Hamlet Sr has slayed Fortinbras Sr in a war between Denmark and Norway. Fortinbras Jr of Norway seeks out revenge of his father against Denmark and has an ambition to reclaim terriotory that was once theres. It evolves to seemingly be war between Poland and Norway but in the end we can see that it was a secret attack on Denmark. The throne of Denmark has been destructed as well and Hamlet wants to recover it. What the motif of war/destruction has shown is that how powerful it can be on a person, it can cause a person to give up everything they have and change there state of mind to completely focus on one goal and nothing will stop them. War/destruction has been a highly influencing factor of revenge in Hamlet.