Historical and biographical approach in Hamlet

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Assignment  Topic-
Historical & Biographical approaches in Hamlet  

Name: Khasatiya  Reena K.
Roll No.: 36
Enrollment No. : 2069108420180032
Semester : M.A. 1
Year :2017-18
Email Id: khasatiyamili21@gmail.com
Submitted to. : Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Paper No. 1 The Renaissance literature

• introduction of Hamlet
The tragedy of Hamlet ,Prince of Denmark often shortened to hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare at an Uncertain date between 1599and 1602. Set in Denmark, the play dramatist the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to wreck upon his uncle, Claudius, by the Ghost of Hamlet ‘s father King Hamlet. It is a story concerned with murder,  sudden violence and the slower but more deadly reaction to the violence. 

Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play is considered among the most powerful and influential works of world literature. Renaissance spirit of humanism and Philosophical and meta-physical Question pertaining to life and death, life after death… these two elements make Hamlet as a universally appealing tragedy.

  

This is the world in which Shakespeare places his characters. Hamlet is faced with the difficult task of correcting an injustice that he can never have sufficient knowledge of a dilemma that is by no means unique or even uncommon. 

 
• Historical and biographical Approaches.
Although the historical-biographical approach has been evolving over many years, its basic tenets are perhaps most clearly articulated in the writings of the nineteenth-century French critic Hippolyta A. Thine, whose phrase race, milieu, et moment, elaborated in his History of English Literature, bespeaks a hereditary and environmental determinism. Put simply, this approach sees a literary work chiefly, if not exclusively, as a reflection of its author's life and times or the life and times of the characters in the work.

 
• Historical approach in Novels
A historical novel is likely to be more meaningful when either its milieu or that of its author is understood. fames Fenimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans, Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, Charles Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, and John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath are certainly better understood by readers familiar with, respectively, the French and Indian War (and the American frontier experience generally), Anglo-Norman Britain, the French Revolution, and the American Depression. And, of course, there is a very real sense in which these books are about these great historical matters, so that the author is interested in the characters only to the extent that they are molded by these events.

 
• Historical approach in Poetry.
It is mistake, however, to think that poets do not concern themselves with social themes or that good poetry cannot be written about such themes. Actually, poets have from earliest times been the historians, the interpreters of contemporary culture, and  the prophets of their people. Take, for example, a poet as mystical and esoteric as William Blake. Many of his best poems can be read meaningfully only in terms of Blake's England. His "London" is an outcry against the oppression of human beings by society: he lashes out against child labor in his day and the church's indifference to it, against the government's indifference to the indigent soldier who has served his country faithfully, and against the horrible and unnatural consequences of a social code that represses sexuality. 

 
In short, even topical poetry can be worthwhile when not limited by presuppositions that make poetry a precious, exclusively personal, even esoteric thing.

 
• Approaches in Hamlet 
Few literary works have received the amount and degree of textual study that Shakespeare's Hamlet has. There are some obvious reasons for this. To begin with, even the earliest crude printings, shot through with the grossest errors, revealed a story and a mind that excited and challenged viewers, producers, readers, critics, and scholars-so much so that the scholars decided to do everything possible to ascertain what Shakespeare actually wrote. 

One can read Hamlet with the various approaches like… formalist approach,  feminist approach,  autobiographical approach, mythological and Archetypal approach and psychological approach etc., s

 
Historical and biographical  Approaches in Practice in Hamlet .

It will doubtless surprise many students to know that Hamlet is considered by some commentators to be topical and autobiographical in certain places. In view of Queen Elizabeth's advanced age and poor health-hence the precarious state of the succession to the British crown-Shakespeare's decision to mount a production of Hamlet, with its usurped throne and internally disordered state, comes as no surprise. (Edward Hubler has argued that Hamlet was probably written in 1600 1912,n.21.)

 
There is some ground for thinking that Ophelia's famous characterization of Hamlet may be intended to suggest the Earl of Essex, formerly Elizabeth's favorite, who had incurred her severe displeasure and been tried for treason and executed:  Also, something of Essex may be seen in Claudius's observation on Hamlet's madness and his popularity with the masses :How dangerous it is that this man goes loose! Yet must we not put the strong law on him: 

Yet another contemporary historical figure, the Lord Treasurer, Burghley, has been seen by some in the character of Polonius. Shakespeare may have heard his patron, the young Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, express contempt for Elizabeth's old Lord Tieasurer; indeed, this was the way many of the gallants of Southampton's generation felt. Burghley possessed most of the shortcomings Shakespeare gave to Polonius; he was boring, meddling, and given to wise old adages and truisms. (He left a famous set of pious yet shrewd precepts for his son, Robert Cecil.) Moreover, he had an elaborate spy system that kept him informed about both friend and foe. 

One is reminded of Polonius's assigning Reynaldo to spy on Laertes in Paris (II.|). This side of Burghley's character was so well known that it might have been dangerous for Shakespeare to portray it on stage while the old man was alive
Other topical references include Shakespeare's opinion (ILii) about the revival of the private theater, which would employ children and which would constitute a rival for the adult companies of the public theater, for which Shakespeare wrote. It is also reasonable to assume that...

 Hamlet's instructions to the players (III .ii) contain Shakespeare's criticisms of contemporary acting ,just as Polonius's description of the players' repertoire and abilities (II. ii) is Shakespeare's satire on dull people who profess preferences for rigidly classified genres. 

 
Scholars have also pointed out Shakespeare's treatment of other stock characters of the day: Osric, the Elizabethan dandy; Rosencrarrtz and Guildenstern, the boot-licking courtiers; Laertes and Fortinbras, the men of action; Horatio, the "true Roman friend; and Ophelia, the courtly love heroine. 

In looking at Hamlet the historical critic might be expected to ask, "What do we need to know about eleventh-century Danish court life or about Elizabethan England to understand this play?"

 
Similar questions are more or less relevant to the traditional interpretive approach to any literary work, but they are particularly germane to analysis of Hamlet. For one thing, most contemporary American students, largely unacquainted with the conventions, let alone the subtleties, of monarchical succession, wonder (unless they are aided by notes) why Hamlet does not automatically succeed to the throne after the death of his father. He is not just the oldest son; he is the only son. 

Such students need to know that in Hamlet's day the Danish throne was an elective one. The royal council, composed of the most powerful nobles in the land, named the next king. The custom of the throne's descending to the oldest son of the late monarch had not yet crystallized into law.
As true as this maybe in fact, however, j. Dover Wilson maintains that it is not necessary to know it for understanding Hamlet, because Shakespeare intended his audiences to think of theentire situation-characters, customs, and plot-as English, which he apparently did in most of his plays, even though they were set in other countries. 

Wilson's theory is based upon the assumption that an Elizabethan audience could have but little interest in the peculiarities of Danish government, whereas the problems of royal succession, usurpation, and potential revolution  in a contemporary English context would be of paramount concern. He thus asserts that Shakespeare's audience conceived Hamlet to be the lawful heir to his father and Claudius to be a usurper and the usurpation to be one of the main factors in the play, important to both Hamlet and Claudius.
Whether one accepts Wilson's theory or not, it is certain that Hamlet thought of Claudius as a usurper, for he describes him to Gertrude as…
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole
And put it in his pocket! (lll iv)
and to Horatio as one... 

that hath killed my king and whored my mother, Popped in between th'election and my hopes. . . . (V .ii) 
This last speech suggests strongly that Hamlet certainly expected to succeed his father by election if not by primogeniture. Modern students are also likely to be confused by the charge of incest against the Queen. Although her second marriage to This last speech suggests strongly that Hamlet certainly expected to succeed his father by election if not by primogeniture.

• Conclusion
to the revenge, such as identifying the criminal and hitting upon the proper time ,place, and mode of the revenge; and concluded with the death of the criminal, the avenger, and frequently all the principals in the drama. 

One additional fact about revenge may be noted. When Claudius asks Laertes to what lengths he would go to avenge his father's death, Laertes answers that he would "cut [Hamlet's] throat i' th'church" (IV. vii). It is probably no accident that ...
Laertes is so specific about the method by which he would willingly kill Hamlet. In Shakespeare's day it was popularly believed that repentance had to be vocal to be effective. 

By cutting  Hamlet's throat, presumably before he could confess his sins, Laertes would deprive Hamlet of this technical channel of grace. Thus Laertes would destroy both Hamlet's soul and his body and would risk his own soul, a horrifying illustration of the measure of his hatred. Claudius's rejoinder
No place indeed should murder sanctuarize;
Revenge should have no bounds
indicates the desperate state of the king's soul. He is condoning murder in a church traditionally a haven of refuge, protection, and legal immunity for murderers.
Elizabethan audiences were well acquainted with these conventions. They thought there was an etiquette, almost a ritual, about revenge; they believed that it was in fact a fine art and that it required a consummate artist to execute it.

 
• Reference
A handbook of critical approaches to literature