/lit/ - Literature

>>12382891
Because Hamlet would die. Also, Claudius is Hamlets uncle.

>>12382891
Because he’s gay.

>>12382902
Why would he die?

>>12382891
Hamlet is afraid for his soul; he needs to confirm that the ghost is not a demon sent to damn him which is why he sets up the mousetrap.

>>12382917
Claudius is king. The punishment for killing the king is death.

It's quite clear and simple, he wasn't sure that Claudius did it: so he devised a way of becoming sure: having the members of the troupe perform a scene which mimics the suggested brother kill brother act of his father, to see if he can catch a sense of guilt on Claudius' face.

>Murder has no tongue, but miraculously it still finds a way to speak. I’ll have these actors perform something like my father’s murder in front of my uncle. I’ll watch my uncle. I’ll probe his conscience and see if he flinches. If he becomes pale, I know what to do. The ghost I saw may be the devil, and the devil has the power to assume a pleasing disguise, and so he may be taking advantage of my weakness and sadness to bring about my damnation. I need better evidence than the ghost to work with. The play’s the thing to uncover the conscience of the king.

>>12382891
Because he had an oedipal desire for his mother and the subsequent guilt is preventing him from murdering Claudius who has done what he unconsciously wanted to do. This is also why he acts so weirdly and aggressively around Ophelia.

TLDR: ur mom lol!

>>12382940
GTFO Freud

>>12382891
He thinks he should take revenge, but he doesn’t actually love his father enough to do so.

>>12383014
What's that based on?

Because Horatio was right:
>What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
>Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
>That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
>And there assume some other horrible form,
>Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
>And draw you into madness?

Hamlet was crazy from the time he saw the ghost onward.

Because he's an indecisive coward who constantly makes excuses to avoid action

>>12382940
The only correct reading, desu.

>>12383055
my diary desu

>>12383023
Hamlet identifies more with his mother, his outward professions of mourning are actually expressions of his depression and guilt over not caring enough about his father’s death.

>>12383029
HOW DOES HE SQUEEZE SO MUCH MEANING AND ELOQUENCE INTO SO FEW WORDS :(

>>12383152
EVERY WORD IS PERFECTLY PLACED :(

>>12383152
He doesn’t lol. You just think that because your peon brain sees something written in verse, and all your life you’ve been indoctrinated that verse is constructed in such a way that every word holds meaning(s).

>>12383029
Why did English go to shit

>>12382891
revenge play
why didn’t the Fugitive wrestle the one-armed man in Episode 1

>>12382891
Hamlet didn't flat out kill Claudius the first chance he got because it lacked evidence. Even when the Ghost explicitly told him that Claudius killed the king, Hamlet suspects that the Ghost is merely the devil trying to seduce him into murder. The regicide committed for killing the king, one of the most high sins possible, could be the reason for his hesitance; If he was wrong, he'd go to Hell without a doubt

>>12384040
Amerimutts

>>12384023
It does brainlet this is Shakespeare

Pleb fucks in this thread. Hamlet didn't kill claudius when he had the chance because at that moment he turned away from gods plan. The whole point was to provide evidence and then kill him when it was confirmed as his father and god wanted him to. But at that moment, Claudius was on his knees begging for gods forgiveness. Hamlet knew if he killed him then and there claudius would be forgiven and join his father and heaven. That wasn't enough for hamlet anymore, Claudius had to suffer and burn in hell. It wasn't the path to retake his rightful place any more, it became a path of retribution fueled on suffering.
Hamlet chose to become God and was rightfully punished for it in the end

>>12384443
wasn't this explicitly stated in the play?

>>12382891
>So anon, why doesn't Hamlet just kill Claudius at the start?
Because then the play would be over.

>>12384574
But killing the king would open up a whole new can of worms

>>12384574
i just want you to know that i hate you

>>12384443
I love these types of photos - any more of these anon or anyone else lurking?

Talking about the wizard/sage studying and attaining wisdom

>>12385034
>wizard
They're Christian monks you retarded zoomer.

Hamlet is insane.

He doesn't care about Claudius, he cares about Gertrude, his own mother, being a whore. It disgusts him that she is giggling in bed with some new man not a month after his father died.

It's like when mommy brings in a new step dad, and the child can tell he is of low character, and on some level senses that this man is his mother's sexual toy, and that his mother does not even have the self respect necessary to protect her own child from his transient presence and questionable influence.

But what can the child do? He is stuck in this humiliating position, and he is forced to contend with certain awful truths about human charater..

>>12384074
>hed go to hell

There is not a sliver which suggests Hamlet is even vaguely Christian/religious you moron.

>>12382924
This.
Hence staging the play to watch Claudius’s reaction.

>>12385034

>>12385282
are you joking? What about when he spares Claudius because he doesn't want him to go to heaven?

>>12385322
This is amazing! Thanks anon!!!

He secretly wants to fuck Claudius

>>12382891
Because then there wouldn't be a play

>>12385452
No I'm not joking, are you? What in Hamlets great monologue (to die to sleep, perchance to dream... the unknown country from whose born, no traveler returns... and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others we know not of) suggests he is a believing Christian? How stupid of you, I'm shocked. Did you read Hamlet?

Coz he identifies far more with Claudius than with his own father, who was absent throughout his upbringing and who represents a heroic lifestyle and philosophy far removed from our little university boy's experiences. Hamlet wants to kill Claudius because he sleeps with his mother, he couldn't give a fuck about the Ghost.

>expecting a confirmed hamlet to go ham at the first opportunity

>>12386125
Christians can have doubts like that too.

>>12386134
What.... the fuck?

What the fuck are you trying to say? Did you even try to think? My God I want to smash my head against my refrigerator so hard it might kill me, thereby depriving me of the most unhappy chance of ever having to read anything you have ever written again, for the aggregate of life's pleasures, fleeting as they are, and all the luck in this life would not be worth the knowledge that persons as stupid as you exist. Good lord, what the fuck is this post? It's time for another flood, I hope there is no Ark this time lest some poor descendant of its passengers have to endure something as stupid as this post.

Because then the play would only be one act.

>>12384443
>But at that moment, Claudius was on his knees begging for gods forgiveness. Hamlet knew if he killed him then and there claudius would be forgiven and join his father and heaven.
1. There is no reason to believe King Hamlet is in heaven - if the ghost is telling the truth he is either in hell or purgatory.
2. If Hamlet killed Claudius, Claudius would be damned despite his prayer, since his prayer was not sincere.
>My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go

>>12386125
>tripfag
k makes sense

>>12386140
underrated

>>12386187
Hamlet didn't know that though, he just saw him praying

>>12386195
>Hamlet didn't know that though
Of course not, that's the problem with the post I quoted. It said Hamlet "knew" something when he only "thought" it.

>>12386188
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, anon.

>>12386160
He laments to God multiple times throughout the play. At that's not like the modern colloquialism but a genuine call to God.

>>12386248
Its a completely Godless play.

>>12386254
Except for lamentations to God, right?

>>12386383
Such as?

>>12382924
I mean, that is *a* reason he gives us, but do we actually believe him?
Does he ever actually seem overly concerned with his soul over the course of the whole play? Or even fully convinced that there is some such a thing? Consider his musings in the graveyard.

>>12386386
>Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
>His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!

>>12383029
but the ghost does not assume any horrible form, nor deprive hamlet of the sovereignty of his reason. as we see, he is still very capable of thinking through all kinds of complex conceptual and practical problems after his encounter with the ghost.
point to the actual madness in the text.

>>12386125
>from whose born, no traveler returns
weird that Hamlet seems to have completely forgotten in this moment that he has, indeed, encountered a traveler returned from that country, namely, his father.

>>12386386
The ghost saying he is in purgatory and was killed unhouseled unanaled

>>12386396
Grear example, thank you. I'll need to think about this some more. My immediate reaction is that it is rhetorical but Shakespeare is never careless. The play has always felt so secular and Godless to me, as if nobody's emotions or actions were guided by anything like religious faith.

I want to """argue""" (insist Im right despite everything ad nauseum) about this monologue but here I am reading it with fresh eyes and it beckons.

Be back in a bit.

>>12386407
Good catch!
>>12386408
Good observation!

Perhaps I am less smart and you all less stupid than at first it seemed to me.

>>12386422
>>12386429

It is pretty obvious that God does take a back seat in Hamlet, though. Especially as the play goes on.

>>12386429
Yikes and cringepilled

What is the metaphorical significance of the cock crowing at the start?

To answer the OP: there is no answer. No satisfactory one, at least. The only person who can gives us the true reason is Hamlet himself, and he simply doesn't know. He poses this quandary to himself--that he has the means and the motive, but not the will--repeatedly throughout the play. But he never settles on the reason why this is so. All he can offer are conjectures and musings. The solution, such as it is, is, as he says--to let be, be.

>>12386437
Yes there is nothing to suggest Hamlet prays or takes refuge in any religious ideas whatever, so the reference to the Everlasting is mysterious indeed and I would hope to know its meaning.
>>12386447
Good! I always liked being a fool. The only man the prince reveres is Yorick.

>>12386160
you seem mad, go have some gay sex friend

>>12386475
I'd say Horatio too

>>12386478
I'm not angry, I'm drunk. It's fun to squeeze out all your cynicism into hyperbolic words.

>>12386459
This was Oliviers reading, that his tragic flaw is indecisiveness

>>12386513
I don't know if I can agree. The peripeteia occurs only after Hamlet has ceased to waver, and settles on action. I would say, rather, that his indecision is, at least in the circumstances he finds himself, his greatest virtue. In continually deferring action, of the necessity of the situation, Hamlet enters into a domain of freedom, that of the intellect, the imagination. The tragedy is that he cannot remain in this, his only true kingdom. Ultimately, he must act. The flaw is not in Hamlet; it is in the play itself--that he is in a play.

>>12386544
based

>>12386544
>peripeteia occurs only after Hamlet has ceased to waver
But it would have too. Lear has to reconcile with Cordelia for the tragedy to work, Hamlet has to decide to act for his earlier mistakes to rebound upon him. He doesn't have to return to Denmark, but once he does he's doomed.

>>12382891
Because there were four more acts to go

>>12382891
Because he wants to expose him for the scum that he is

>>12384574
Came here to post this. Too short a play to make money, even if you killed more people in the first act than in the later ones.

God Complex. Hamlet doesn't want to punish an innocent man, but he is also reluctant to kill a penitent one. He believes that it's his responsibility to judge and dictate the punishment for the death of his father. Had he killed Claudius during the prayer, God would have judged rightly, as Claudius' couplet afterwards reveals, and there would be no tragedy. The greatest sin is pride.

>>12387889
>The greatest sin is pride.
Then why are all great man prideful anon? Why does God not smite them?

>>12387005
What I meant was that, following the classical formula, if we take the tragic turn to be a consequence of some flaw in Hamlet's character, the notion that this flaw is Hamlet's indecision contradicts itself, as the turn follows directly from a decision.
Shakespeare doesn't confine himself to the strictures of Aristotle's dramatic theory, but he does tinker with some of the elements to reproduce something unique.

>>12382891
BECAUSE THERE WOULD BE NO PLAY
there were 5 acts to go & old claudius couldn't be killed until the last act

>>12388418
The tinkering is the clever thing with Hamlet. He recognises his own tragic flaw (when he sees Fortinbras on the plain) and resolves to change it, which leads to the consequences of his earlier mistakes coming down on him. If he'd stayed indecisive he would have got away, its the trying to be a better man that fucks him

>>12382891
Because he first needs to learn how to overcome himself. Only then, after overcoming his insecurity over his poor hamstring genetics, can he kill Claudius

>>12382891
Hamlet suspects Claudius is his Father rather than his uncle, see the speed of the second marriage.

>>12388859
hamlet confirmed fruitfly

>>12382891
Because he wants to be sure.

>>12387843
By doing fuck all?

>>12382891
>A ghostly apparition that may be one's father urges you to do bad things
Yes, it would be for the best to do whatever the creepy apparition demands no though given nor investigation done whatsoever.

>>12383177
this

>>12384023
nah, other anon got it

>>12386134
While I agree with the notion of Hamlet's detachment to his dad, what I ask is how we came to know of this? Was it ever mentioned in the play, how Hamlet and his father's relationship was while the latter lived? I don't believe it was. How, then, do you and I both hold this view? And others agree with it too. I'm fascinated by the "science" of art, and how a collection of a words somehow becomes a living reality. This may sound silly, but is there something "metaphysical" to it, wherein information comes to us by means beyond the ordinary mechanics of language? Or is everything we consider about the play Hamlet traceable to a specific word, passage or other element found within it? Yet, how, then, does a playwright convey such a rich reality with only so many words found in the play? How do they create the world "behind" the words, the nuances written between the lines, so to speak? I ask any anons to please answer here, because it's a subject which greatly perplexes me and I'd love for others opinions on it.

tl;dr: How do words become worlds?

>>12389431
We know how people work. Shakespeare gives us such detailed portraits that we can extrapolate about the people he presents us with because of how true to life they are. Such is his understanding of humanity that he can 'cue' us to understand more than the text provides.

>>12389431
>Was it ever mentioned in the play, how Hamlet and his father's relationship was while the latter lived?
there is little to no description of them together as father/son, but hamlet's language is exalting. his grief appears to be genuine and deep, though it is confused by his encounter with the ghost. even so, he continues to refer to his father as 'beloved'.
as to your question: words don't become worlds; words are worlds. c.f. the entirety of literature.
the question of a mechanism i don't find particularly interesting, nor would an attempted answer yield healthful fruit. be grateful of this magic portal into an infinity of virtual realities.

>>12386459
This is the true non-pseud answer. Everyone else is a pseud

>>12382891
Because he browses /lit/

>>12389431
Great question, I wonder of it myself also.

>>12382891
Because prince Hamlet killed his father.