Presented by University of Virginia professor Paul Cantor, Shakespeare and Politics features two sets of lectures and a seminar: 1) A series of 25 lectures given in 2012 on “Ancient vs. Modern Regimes” 2) A series of 23 lectures given in 2015 on “The Politics of Genre” 3) A seminar on “Shakespeare’s Rome” given in 2013 as part of the Hertog Political Studies Program in Washington, D.C.
This site forms part of the Foundation for Constitutional Government's Great Thinkers series on Shakespeare. Visit thegreatthinkers.org/shakespeare-and-politics/ for more and sites on other great political thinkers.
That is so insightful! The idea that Hamlet entering the fencing match, he expected to be killed and therefore it was a legal suicide, in contrast to the gravedigger's speech, so the water now comes to him. I never thought of that before!
That's a very interesting poem. How does it account for the fact that Hamlet died too? I've also heard opinion that Gertrude actually did see the ghost (why would it make sense that Horatio and the guards could see him but she couldn't?) but pretended not to in order to make Hamlet seem crazy. She was maybe in on the entire murder and wanted Hamlet gone just as much as Claudius did.
The claim that Claudius would have gone to hell if Hamlet had killed him because Claudius was lamenting the vanity, pointlessness and lack of his ability to materially support his protestations to heaven of his desire for redemption, is actually what would have sent him to heaven. ''Thoughts without deeds never to heaven go'' and yet to acknowledge one's own unworthiness in thought to the purity of the righteousness of the metaphysical divine providence as but a mockery of the absolute wisdom of God's virtue is also to make complete the humbleness needed to reach heaven. Like the Priest in the film Léon Morin says; all prayer is a mockery. Claudius is unworthy of it - yes, but he is cognizing his own unworthiness and understanding that fact, so Hamlet was right and Hamlet did see into his soul a bit in that moment. ''When thou liest howling, a ministering angel in heaven will my sister be'' Laertes tells the Priest, when upon proper doctrine of who is to be buried when and how this ought to affect the inward passage of the soul, bars his sister from ceremonies meant to commence her soul's journey onward to God. Shakespeare here, is speaking about the transitoriness and arbitrary, contractual nature of religious instition of Christianity in how, mere contingencies of a non-permament, unprofitable and useless world - - a simple breach in one stipulation of the mortal contract of the right and wrong type of way to behave - to not breach transitoriness of social custom, habitude and proper assimilation into cultural mores - no matter how transitory in nature the incidents of breaching the contract may be - affects one's eternal destiny. Therefore, it does not matter what the inward state of the soul is to the ''churlish priest'' who buried Ophelia, since in being institionalized, a religion loses that part of its individual quality that would have the actual condition of the soul rated more highly than outward decorum and rules of how to enter into heaven that must be standardized to reach a common normality and religious social and moral political contract with the ethereal. It is not the soul of religion, but its outward contract that ends up becoming more real, even in its empty casual accidence, chance based on the misjudgement of knowledge. It is the political social basis of this contract, the consideration of other people's souls that prevents Ophelia's soul from being properly buried, according to the priest - to give an unsanctified death a burial, destabilizes the metaphysical paradise of those who would follow the rules of sanctity for reaching heaven's door. So true, Hamlet saw Claudius' soul, and true he saw that he repented his evil, in spite of his inability to eventually change that from his repetency in that moment on the chapel when his soul for a brief moment was inflected inwardly by its own guilty conscience - - even though it be a remorse of being unable to properly express repentance ethically. Evil, bad people, are not weighed down upon their consciences by worries of not being able to repent successfully their deed. Religion is an outward form and appearance, that relies on external arbitrary rituals to prove its existence. And yet in her soul, Ophelia was truly gracious and kind, just because of the brute fortune and chance, of some machinations of Denmark, in the backwater of Europe, in the blink of time in which she is born to tragedy outside her grasp, Ophelia's soul is cast into purgatory without permanent rest for the rest of eternity - in spite of its protestations of metaphysical eternity, theologians are again and again, thrown back upon doctrinal questions that are defined by the limits and bounds, random chances and encounters, of our basic material existence. When in the first act, Hamlet says ''there is more in heaven and hell than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio'' there is a key in that line to the mysterious, hidden, inversion of values in the afterlife beyond this mortal coil that Laertes' true conviction - since his mourning at Ophelia's funeral is not a contradiction to Hamlet's, but rather what spurs it on, and this anger in fact, just a passing fact of the shock to them of Ophelia's death, but we can surmise, part of what causes Hamlet to eventually smile and look on Laertes as a brother, even though we may be sure that Hamlet actually understands and is aware of saying so even when he knows Laertes must betray him due to Laertes' own emotional weakness for his sister. It's shown that Hamlet grasps the fact that our philosopher's and priest's knowledge cannot go beyond their mortal foolishness and that indeed, an inversion of the values to which the priest might have judged Ophelia harshly in this world could transmute those judgements of her inward forces of character that led to her being victim of suicide from wretched, outcast madness to blessedness and her greatest boons and heroisms according to the unknowable measurements of merit taking place in the way that an extra-mortal judgement of life after death with an evaluation that can go beyond having passed the tests of moral value in this finite, imperfect world ends up contradicting its image of immortality and eternity by being reliant upon the importunity of the changing and turning twists of a fate beyond the subject's control, and a reliance upon tangible objects to represent something beyond them, but to which we end up becoming confined upon, and using the eternal beyond to return upon a fixation upon finite rituals of that eternity in the hereafter. - Hence Hamlet's bemusement when the grave diggers rather talk crudely and bastardize his conceptual and intellectual attempts to penetrate the core questions of this problem in rather vulgar and satirical terms, the grave diggers are in a way mocking Hamlet's own entire intellectual refinement on the question of death, mortality and religious symbolism by knowing for themselves what he has poured his entire mind to solving, and reducing it to the laughter of the rabble, the boredom and entertainment of the peasant who wants a gallows to make their subservient existence with a thousand woes in feudalism more bearable with the public entertainment at hanging. The genius of Hamlet, right before the ''to be or not to be'' speech, is hinted at in that Claudius' thoughts can be moved by speeches alone mainly; ''How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience! The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring art, Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it Than is my deed to my most painted word.'' There are references to art, to use of art, in two senses in the play - as use for deception and as a use for revelation of meaning and truth ''Till then sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.'' ''Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as1900 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show Virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak it profanely), that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.'' So Hamlet sees art as showing ''scorn her own image'', he is a renaissance artist, who only finds joy in the play, because it can enlighten and show ethical emancipation for the spectator when written in a way that imitates nature so as to make us consider of ourselves parts of ourselves and moral problems in life we'd not have considered before were it not for the imagination of the artist giving us a mirror to look at ourselves through. The tragic irony, is that Hamlet's weapon against Claudius - his art of the play's ability to portray a mirror of Claudius' corruption to the public and render his deed in metaphorical form with fiction to move us to cathartic identification with the wrongs happening in Denmark, the ''bad report'' of ''the brief abstract and chronicle of the time'' implies Hamlet's ambitions to sway men's opinions and moral notions is the reason for why he wishes to have special privileges given at court to his players who will insert and read his lines that will give his view points in the play. This is in fact metaphorically what Shakespeare also does with the reader of Hamlet, - Hamlet is too successful, so his play actually rises up and gives Claudius a conscience and ascends and beatifies his soul to heaven - art can raise the consciousness of morals, but Hamlet pays it at a high price - if his play had not been so convincing and well-done to Claudius, if he hadn't touched upon the human soul so closely as he had, and given fruition to unactivated guilt that Claudius in his daily life's revelry, drinking, sleeping and eating had stifled, then his play's conscience is what kept Hamlet from killing Claudius outright because he couldn't stop his beatification having occurred from the catharsis of his art. That is - Hamlet's play literally saved Claudius from going to Hell by showing him the difference between right and wrong, virtue and vice - and Hamlet was too successful at moving the king in the way he aimed to, the way he said some people had been moved to tears by watching a play.
One problem for the historical Richard II was that he had no living heir. His first wife and child died several years before the Mowbray and Hereford trial/banishment. His wife at the time was a child bride from France who was not old enough to have children.
44:50 - "...anyone could pick her out of a crowd." But Olivia is VEILED, (I.v.150) so Cesario cannot see her beauty. Surely, Viola already knows who it is through other clues (dress, veil, the fact that servant Maria brings her into room where elegantly dressed woman in black is wating etc.)
There's a lot of connections to protestant standpoint and catholic : Old age /law , repression by the law oriented system leading to outburst , the issue ourcried by protestant teaching of where law is sin abounds
Ok so now Shylock is a victim not a villain? Are we changing history, literature, and common sense because of the jewish lobby in the US and Europe? What next to blame Muslims for Antonio’s suffering and Shylock predatory behavior?
According to google it snows in Bethlehem every 3-4 years and the Romans had water clocks. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_the_Winds They probably didn't ring though.
The reason the scene is in French is that it was written for performance at court, where the aristocrats would get the joke; double entendre. Now, I'd like to hear from the professor where he thinks Shakespeare learned his French.
The argument that it is Essex and his Irish adventure who is mentioned at the beginning of Act V is sheer baloney. Shakespeare is there referencing the very much more successful episode of Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond (a blood relative of Elizabeth) who would have returned a conquering hero from Ireland in 1584. Butler had been sent to put down the rebellious Gerald Fitzgerald, 14th Earl of Desmond, who had allied himself with both the Pope and the King of Spain in 1579. Finally, in November of 1583 a detachment of Butler's troops captured Desmond and, since they were behind enemy lines they simply chopped off his head and brought it back to their camp, where they presented it to Ormond/Butler on the point of a sword. Ormond then sent the severed head back to England, along with a letter explaining what had happened. Ormond remaining in Ireland, to tie up some loose ends, until returning to England in May of 1584. Shakespeare's 'rebellion broached on the point of a sword' seems to be a paraphrase of what Ormond's letter said. So, the Greek chorus does date the play, not to 1598 and the disgrace of the Earl of Essex, but to 15 years earlier mission, and its success of Thomas Butler. All of which ought to be obvious. The reason for the ersatz history of Cantor is that the true story demolishes the Stratford legend. According to Trinity Church records, Will of Stratford was born in 1564, married in 1582, baptized his first child in 1583 and his twins Judith and Hamnet in 1585. He was not in London writing plays in 1583/84. Not even holding horses outside the theatres, nor apprenticing as a playwright, in London. Cantor is 'hoist by his own petard' here.
Of course, in the Elizabethan Age noblemen did covet honor. Is Shakespeare risking imprisonment, or having his hand chopped off (ala John Stubbs) for criticizing his betters?
Dear Shakespeare and Politics- 1st of all, these lectures imparted by PROF PAUL CANTOR are absolutely extraordinary. Thank you so very much for setting up this channel and uploading the lectures and analysis. They are an absolute LITERARY TREASURE - 2nd, in these very complex global times in which global democracies will undergo major stress tests, it would perhaps be interesting if the lectures could be subtitled with the following LANGUAGES; SPANISH, ITALIAN, FRENCH, CHINESE & RUSSIAN THANK YOU -
15:30 Whoah!!!! I never caught that before. Hamlet says "your" not "our" or "my". Sir, in thy Hamlet lecture be all my lit failings remembered. Get me to English Lit 101 for why would I be considered a Hamlet fan.
I would give my right hand to ask Paul Cantor how does he think HAMLET might help current politicians, in these post modern- post truth, cynical, corrupt world anchor their morality and their values ...?
This is an incredible analysis of the play. Thank you, professor - this lecture has been invaluable in deepening my understanding of one of my favorite works by Shakespeare
The production of Twelfth Night that Professor Cantor references with Alec Guinness is not only heavily cut but flawed in several ways. Guinness and Ralph Richardson are good as Malvolio and Toby Belch respectively, but Joan Plowright, although also a fine actress, I thought never really convinced as a boy. It is hard to imagine anyone being fooled by her Cesario for a minute. Worst of all was Feste, played by Tommy Steele. Steele was a middle-grade pop singer of the 1960s who turned to acting later in his career. He has the voice to portray Feste in his troubadour moments, but give him Shakespearian dialogue to handle and the result is an embarrassment.
Love these lectures but disagree with the good professor that the couples in the Comedies are interchangeable. The joy and tension of the comedies/romantic-comedies is whether the main characters can remove the barriers - often social, usually created by the characters themselves - so that the right people pair up in the end. Benedick-Beatrice, never Benedick-Hero.
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This is a very very interesting lecture because I never heard Lear's original plan dissected so precisely (or ever knew there was an original plan). The plan to have a backdoor way to give the kingdom to Cordelia was genius.... undone by his own idiocy a few minutes later. Here's one question I do have about the play though. Why all the fuss about who Lear lives with? I can't believe I'm the only one to bring this up, but doesn't Lear still have a palace to live in? Let him and his 100 followers live at his own residence, he doesn't need to live with his evil daughters, and if Cantor is correct, he knows Gonneril and Regan were bad news why would he change the plan to live with them?
