Disclaimer:
I wrote my last blog on Gertrude as well, so this might feel a bit forced, or
like overkill. I want to develop my previous ideas about her relationship to
death.
She tells
Hamlet in her first lines to essentially "get over it", citing the
inevitability of death...
"Good
Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know'st 'tis common. All that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity."
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know'st 'tis common. All that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity."
We
discussed last class that the play goes from ghosts to skulls, from uncertainty
to certainty, from death as deniable to a forced acceptance through the
tangibility of the skulls. In saying "'tis common," Gertrude
expresses her point of view that death is inevitable and happens to everyone.
As the play progresses, I think the ghost symbol presents death as a question
that the skulls answer toward the end.. but did Gertrude know that answer all
along? What does this mean for her denial of Hamlet seeing the ghost? Is she
really protecting him from being taken seriously by portraying him as crazy, or
is she really expressing a premature view of the inevitability of death? This
would mean she is more knowledgable/wise than he is, and has more control over
herself and her situation than he does.
At the
same time, she also seems to lose certainty as the play moves forward. In describing Ophelia's death, as Ed pointed out, she personifies the inanimate objects around Ophelia, displacing the agency onto Ophelia. First of all, does this imply the weakness of the female characters, or could the displacement be a mechanism to move the blame away from Gertrude? Could it have been murder? Even if it wasn't, she was watching the whole time. Was Gertrude really helpless to stop Ophelia from drowning? What are her intentions, really? Anyway, back to the certainty idea, she seems to devolve from the "'tis common" thing to uncertainty, especially in this displacement of agency and ultimately in her last lines: "I am poisoned."I think she's an interesting juxtaposition in that way... if the play/Hamlet's view on death becomes more certain, and she becomes less certain, what does this imply?
A much simpler question, in addition: How would you guys scan "I am poisoned"? Seems to me like either a trochaic dimeter or a spondee and a trochee. What might each imply in terms of tone/meaning, and how else could you scan/interpret that line?
And how do I distinguish in her one-liners between prose and poetry that I can scan? because I definitely scanned all of her lines, and honestly don't want that to go to waste...
In
addition, I'll re-post my other questions about Gertrude from last week, in
case any of you guys have ideas.
Gertrude
seems very passive... is she a pawn or a manipulator? How does (or doesn't)
Gertrude have agency/control over herself and the other characters?
When
Hamlet equates Claudius with his mother by calling him "my mother,"
what might this imply for motherhood and feminization in the rest of the play?
What's
more important/impactful; big grand gestures, or small subtle ones, like
Gertrude's? Especially considering the advice Hamlet gives to the players to
avoid vulgar, grandiose acting?
PS: I have NO idea what's going on with the highlighting crap. my apologies!!
ReplyDeleteI honestly can't read this. =)
ReplyDeleteAck. Better?
DeleteHey Cecilia,
ReplyDeleteYou know my answers to some of your questions--I think my opinions of Gertrude are very different than yours. Anyway, you pointed out some really interesting things that I'm going to have to consider when I make my arguments. As for all the scanning you did, I don't know how to differentiate between prose and intentional breaks in meter, but I was able to find that some of her most important one liners conform to specific meters. I generally start with the assumption that its in iambic, but if I can't read it comfortably that way then I assume that Shakespeare's doing something tricky. Of course, there's a lot to be said about lines if they're written entirely out of meter. On your comments about Ophelia and how Gertrude uses syntax to take blame away from her, I think that this is probably your most compelling example of how Gertrude manipulates facts to direct an outcome. What does the scansion say there? I think it would be more important in that line (it is her longest speech, at 19 lines, I think) than any of her one liners, many of which are simple assents or responses to other characters (men). As for the scansion on "I am poisoned," I think that it can be interpreted too many ways to tell you right from wrong, but, as Ed pointed out on my post, this is the first time Gertrude actually uses an "I am" type statement. To take it another step, it only occurs after her death becomes imminent and she rejects the instructions of her husband. Also, I think its worth considering that most actresses playing the role would probably read the line traditionally (I.e: Stressed unstressed stressed unstressed). I've always thought that interpreting beyond what the actors would do on stage is reading too far in to Shakespearean texts.
Tyler makes solid points here, except I don't think we should take for granted that actors (not "actresses," since women didn't perform at the time) would have read these lines as trochees (which aren't even "traditional"... iambs are). You could certainly read this line as: pyrrhic/spondee; trochee/trochee... and you can do it without taking too much liberty with Shakespeare's meter. Actresses who have played Gertrude in film adaptations have certainly read the line both ways.
ReplyDelete