This passage of Hamlet occurs at the emotional climax of the play; and in the only private moment we are given between Gertrude and Hamlet. The passage is, thematically a collision of the imagery that has been linked to Old Hamlet and Claudius throughout the play, and structurally a collision of Hamlet and Gertrude’s different attitudes towards the brother-kings. Hamlet is confronting his mother with the internal struggle he has been experiencing through the play, and also attempting to convince her to adopt the same mind-set he has been sharing with the audience, by couching descriptions of his father with language of divinity and language of his uncle with the language of rot.
Structurally, the passage is Hamlet’s attempt to reach a mutual …show more content…
The very mention of Claudius disrupts Hamlet’s mind to the point of disrupting the metre and regularity of his former sentences, causing enjambment and a flurry of short, semi-rhetorical questions Hamlet does not give Gertrude the chance to answer: “Have you eyes? / Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed / And batten on this moor. Ha! Have you eyes?” (66-7). He continues, with the same intellectualised reasoning we have heard from him before only with irregular metre, enjambment, and wildly varied sentence lengths. Rhetorical devices are used such as antithesis: “Sense sure you have, / Else could you not have motion. But sure that sense / Is apoplexed.” (72-3), further rhetorical questioning: “What devil was’t / That hath thus cozened you at hoodman-blind?” (77-8) and anadiplosis: “Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight” (79). The use of these is characterful of the frenetic intellectual reasoning we have become accustomed to earlier in the play, but the wild irregularities in the verse point to extreme agitation over the …show more content…
His metrically regular portrait of his father likens him to a divine amalgamation of Hyperion, Mars, Jove, and Mercury. Earlier, his idolisation had led him to other classical comparisons which also demean Claudius, calling the comparison between them “Hyperion to a satyr” (I. ii. 140) and calling Claudius “My father’s brother, but no more like my father / Than I to Hercules” (I. ii.152-3). The visual images we have of Hamlet’s father are the armoured ghost seeking vengeance, and the portrait which Hamlet presumably uses in this scene which he draws Gertrude’s attention to, which, though idealised, seem to correlate to the image of the strong, warlike statesman we are given. Claudius, by comparison, is linked to images of decay and rot. “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I. iv. 90) and Hamlet seizes on this image, earlier likening Elsinore to “an unweeded garden” (I. ii. 136). Through a kind of synecdoche, Hamlet links this rot to Claudius, calling him “a mildewed ear / Blasting his wholesome brother” (65), significant in that said wholesome brother was poisoned through the ear. A further comparison likens Old Hamlet to a “fair mountain” and Claudius to a “moor” (67-8). This vitriol for Claudius, coupled with his
Structurally, the passage is Hamlet’s attempt to reach a mutual …show more content…
The very mention of Claudius disrupts Hamlet’s mind to the point of disrupting the metre and regularity of his former sentences, causing enjambment and a flurry of short, semi-rhetorical questions Hamlet does not give Gertrude the chance to answer: “Have you eyes? / Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed / And batten on this moor. Ha! Have you eyes?” (66-7). He continues, with the same intellectualised reasoning we have heard from him before only with irregular metre, enjambment, and wildly varied sentence lengths. Rhetorical devices are used such as antithesis: “Sense sure you have, / Else could you not have motion. But sure that sense / Is apoplexed.” (72-3), further rhetorical questioning: “What devil was’t / That hath thus cozened you at hoodman-blind?” (77-8) and anadiplosis: “Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight” (79). The use of these is characterful of the frenetic intellectual reasoning we have become accustomed to earlier in the play, but the wild irregularities in the verse point to extreme agitation over the …show more content…
His metrically regular portrait of his father likens him to a divine amalgamation of Hyperion, Mars, Jove, and Mercury. Earlier, his idolisation had led him to other classical comparisons which also demean Claudius, calling the comparison between them “Hyperion to a satyr” (I. ii. 140) and calling Claudius “My father’s brother, but no more like my father / Than I to Hercules” (I. ii.152-3). The visual images we have of Hamlet’s father are the armoured ghost seeking vengeance, and the portrait which Hamlet presumably uses in this scene which he draws Gertrude’s attention to, which, though idealised, seem to correlate to the image of the strong, warlike statesman we are given. Claudius, by comparison, is linked to images of decay and rot. “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I. iv. 90) and Hamlet seizes on this image, earlier likening Elsinore to “an unweeded garden” (I. ii. 136). Through a kind of synecdoche, Hamlet links this rot to Claudius, calling him “a mildewed ear / Blasting his wholesome brother” (65), significant in that said wholesome brother was poisoned through the ear. A further comparison likens Old Hamlet to a “fair mountain” and Claudius to a “moor” (67-8). This vitriol for Claudius, coupled with his