Detailed Language Analysis- Hamlet
Warning! Please do not use the quotes from this image in your response, not all of them are from Hamlet!
SHAKESPEARE’S LANGUAGE
Students may profit most of all by learning to read Shakespeare’s language as though for performance. Becoming aware of techniques Shakespeare uses to disrupt the flow of speech at one instance or to make it inescapably regular at another can offer insights into Shakespeare’s intentions concerning characters and scenes. After all, the stage directions in Shakespeare’s plays are minimal, and the actor must turn to the language to discern the author’s intentions. Shakespeare gives hints about how to interpret a character’s state of mind and how to play a scene in the structure of the language. This can lead to reading the play more closely to discern character development and, of course, plot development. (Shakespeare borrowed most, if not all, of his plots; his primary interest is character.)
Shakespeare makes use of several poetic devices to give clues to characters and scenes: short metric lines, rhyming couplets, shared lines, prose, feminine endings, long lines, and broken lines. His plays are often described as being written in iambic pentameter verse, but approximately 28 percent of the plays’ language is prose and he often uses lines longer than ten syllables or even with more than five metric feet. One of his most effective uses of variation within the verse can be seen in Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy. "To be, or not to be, that is the question" (3.1) must be read first of all as a voice despairing of living. Hamlet has already (1.2) revealed a wish that suicide were not against divine law.
A close reading of the line reveals that it contains not the 10 syllables of iambic pentameter but 11, and final syllable is unaccented. This feminine ending is repeated in the next three lines—four irregular endings in a row. The repetition of the falling endings of the unrhymed lines provides as much of an insight into Hamlet’s state of mind as the subject of his soliloquy does. Incidental lines in the play may have the same type of ending, but they seldom appear in such sequences.
Sometimes a short line will appear in an otherwise iambic pentameter series of lines. Students read these lines as though Shakespeare has suddenly—for one line—reverted to prose, but those lines are more often intended to carry the time and weight of his 10-syllable lines. Usually the line is supposed to be read as though it has the same five beats as the other lines and forces a pause in the actor’s delivery. In Act 3 when Hamlet confronts Gertrude in her closet, he castigates her behavior in angry lines.
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope. O shame, where is thy blush?
Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as was
And melt in her own fire. (4.79-86)
Students will usually read the short line as though Shakespeare merely ran out of words to fill up the measure. But the line is much more dramatic is the actor is understood to fill the space with his acting. The pause after "Rebellious hell" makes the succeeding lines more emphatic and clear.
In Act 1, Scene 2, Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnardo bring Hamlet the news that they have seen the dead king’s ghost. Hamlet declares, "If it assume my noble father’s person / I’ll speak to it though hell itself should gape / And bid me hold my peace" (243-5). Continuing in perfect iambic pentameter, Hamlet cautions the men to remain silent about what they have seen, and as they depart he says, "Your loves, as mine to you, farewell." That line contains only eight syllables and should be followed by a pause to occupy the same space as the preceding and succeeding lines. The pause, though short, captures the tension of the moment and is followed by "My father’s spirit—in arms! All is not well, / I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come!" He concludes the scene with the next two, rhymed lines: "Till then sit still my soul. Foul deeds will rise / Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes" (254-7). The rhymed couplet serves as punctuation—it reinforces memory in the audience by emphasis. In the same fashion he closes the act and another famous soliloquy with "the play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscious of the King" (2.2.604-5). Shakespeare has provided stage directions for the actor in the metrics of his lines.
Sometimes short lines are in fact shared lines for two or more speakers. A different effect is achieved. When Hamlet first speaks to his mother in Act 1, they share the line where he says bitterly, "Ay, madam, it is common." She finishes the metric line, "If it be, / Why seems it so particular with thee?" Hamlet continues, "Seems, madam? Nay it is. I know not ‘seems’" (2.74-6). Hamlet’s play on the word "seems" is obvious, but Shakespeare has also emphasized the mother-son connection with the shared line that makes Hamlet’s words read into hers.
Theses shared lines do not always play any part other than metrical continuity, but often they indicate the scene’s intensity. Horatio swears that the ghost did appear to be Hamlet’s father, "These hands are not more like," and Hamlet responds immediately (literally, on the same line), "But where was this?" (213). Hamlet naturally asks, "Did you not speak to it?" and Horatio finishes the line, "My lord, I did" (215). The actors do not need stage directions in the margins to understand how the shared lines carry the tension of the moment, just as they do in the final scene of the act when the ghost-Hamlet-ghost line races, "Mark me." "I will." "My hour is almost come" (2).
Shakespeare uses rhyme often in his earlier plays (Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example), but he may more often write in prose. The plays’ prose is not the normal spoken language, especially when it rises to the height it does when Hamlet is addressing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Students often ask why certain scenes appear in prose rather than verse. (This does not occur to them when reading the opening scene of Hamlet. The short and abrupt lines at the changing of the guard seem appropriate; it is only after growing accustomed to the iambic pentameter that the question arises.)
A clue is found in the fact that most of the prose in Act 2, Scene 2 is in the mouth of Polonius or of Hamlet when he is speaking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hamlet always speaks in prose when addressing these three characters, as though Shakespeare is implying that the three men are not worthy of verse. In Act 5 the clowns (characters too low be worth naming) speak prose in the grave-digging scene. Polonius and the clowns are obviously being shown disrespect, but what about Hamlet’s two old friends? When Hamlet encounters them, he already knows that they are present at the command of the king and queen. They do not willingly admit this, and so are obviously present to spy upon him. They are beneath Hamlet’s—or our—respect, and this later is reflected in Hamlet’s decision to alter the letters the two men carry and send them to their deaths. Shakespeare uses prose because the action does not merit poetry. Neither do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.)
Feminine endings can be a poetic tool to illustrate a character’s state of mind. The normal iambic pentameter line contains ten syllables, but certain lines end with an extra unaccented syllable. Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy opens with four lines with feminine endings:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
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. To die, to sleep—
No more, and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. (3.2.55-63)
Hamlet’s contemplation of suicide is evident enough from the words alone, but Shakespeare has keyed this with the opening feminine endings. Lacking the prototypical upbeat rhythm of the 10-syllable line, the feminine endings in the first four lines here signify Hamlet’s uncertainty. Should he struggle, or should he escape?
Getting even more technical- refer to the glossary
Sometimes Shakespeare employs long lines—12-syllable iambic lines or Alexandrines. The longer line usually is broken in the middle by a caesura. The rhythmical break provides a balance to the line, three metrical feet in each half-line. The symmetry can show, perhaps unexpectedly, great emotional stress. Three of these lines appear in the first act’s second scene, one in a soliloquy, two in the Hamlet-Horatio dialogue. Hamlet, after expressing regret that suicide is against religious law, speaks bitterly of his mother’s newest marriage and says (famously)—"Let me not think on’t! Frailty, thy name is woman!" (146). A few moments later, he encounters Horatio and greets his friend with a promise to teach him how to drink. Horatio responds with a long line that shows his awareness of the seriousness of the moment: "My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral" (176). When Horatio a few lines later admits that the wedding followed the funeral very closely, Hamlet angrily says, "Thrift, thrift, Horatio, the funeral bak’d meats" went quickly to the wedding tables (180). The tension here is supplied by the situation, the identities of the characters, and the language Shakespeare uses.
A second scene where Shakespeare strategically places long lines is the fifth scene of the first act. When the ghost exits on the line "Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me," Hamlet explodes into language: "O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?" His next line is an ideal example of an Alexandrine: "And shall I couple hell? O fie, hold, hold, my heart" (91-93).
A scene that is dramatically as charged is Act 3, Scene 3, where Hamlet encounters Claudius praying and debates whether to kill him. Hamlet’s first line in the scene is "Now might I do it [pat], now ’a is a praying" (73). The 12-syllable line reveals Hamlet’s emotions and psychological state. He is supercharged with exultation—this is the moment to get revenge! Without awareness of Shakespeare’s prosody, it would be easy to play this line as showing some diffidence—gee, I could kill him now, but if I did. . . . That conclusion comes to Hamlet in the scene, but it is not present at the beginning of his speech. The first excitement gives way to his reasoning about possible actions and consequences.
The same scene shows Shakespeare using another metric tool—broken lines. Feminine endings can show uncertainty, ambiguity, internal conflict, but broken lines symbolize even greater stress. When Claudius attempts to pray in Act 3, Scene 3, the irregularity in line length suggests his state of mind:
O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven,
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
A brother’s murther. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will. (36-39)
Claudius’s first two lines have feminine endings, the fourth the traditional 10 syllables, but the third only nine. Ten lines later he speaks another nine-syllable line: "To be forestalled ere we come to fall" (49). The soliloquy is filled with feminine endings, too, and ends with Claudius falling to his knees and closing with a short line, "All may be well" (72). This mix of feminine endings, broken lines, and the final short line metrically capture the confusion of the play’s Cain figure. The player whose attends to the rhythm of the lines alone should sense how to play Claudius in the scene.
A second scene where Shakespeare strategically places long lines is the fifth scene of the first act. When the ghost exits on the line "Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me," Hamlet explodes into language: "O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?" His next line is an ideal example of an Alexandrine: "And shall I couple hell? O fie, hold, hold, my heart" (91-93).
A scene that is dramatically as charged is Act 3, Scene 3, where Hamlet encounters Claudius praying and debates whether to kill him. Hamlet’s first line in the scene is "Now might I do it [pat], now ’a is a praying" (73). The 12-syllable line reveals Hamlet’s emotions and psychological state. He is supercharged with exultation—this is the moment to get revenge! Without awareness of Shakespeare’s prosody, it would be easy to play this line as showing some diffidence—gee, I could kill him now, but if I did. . . . That conclusion comes to Hamlet in the scene, but it is not present at the beginning of his speech. The first excitement gives way to his reasoning about possible actions and consequences.
The same scene shows Shakespeare using another metric tool—broken lines. Feminine endings can show uncertainty, ambiguity, internal conflict, but broken lines symbolize even greater stress. When Claudius attempts to pray in Act 3, Scene 3, the irregularity in line length suggests his state of mind:
O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven,
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
A brother’s murther. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will. (36-39)
Claudius’s first two lines have feminine endings, the fourth the traditional 10 syllables, but the third only nine. Ten lines later he speaks another nine-syllable line: "To be forestalled ere we come to fall" (49). The soliloquy is filled with feminine endings, too, and ends with Claudius falling to his knees and closing with a short line, "All may be well" (72). This mix of feminine endings, broken lines, and the final short line metrically capture the confusion of the play’s Cain figure. The player whose attends to the rhythm of the lines alone should sense how to play Claudius in the scene.