Hamlet-Going Beyond Fillial Bonds

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' and seeks to explore the 'beyonds' of filial bonds. In the play it is very obvious that Hamlet holds very negative emotions regarding his mother. As such, this paper also examines if these strong feelings can be responsible for the eight deaths in 'Hamlet'.

From the Paper:

"Gertrude's betrayal of his idealized Hyperion father, not the actual death, has given rise to Hamlet's melancholy state at the start of the play. A.C. Bradley's analysis of the cause of Hamlet's sickness of life and longing for death is vividly corroborative: 'It was not his father's death; that doubtless brought deep grief, but mere grief for someone loved and lost does not make a noble spirit loathe the world as a place full only of things rank and gross. It was not the vague suspicion that we know Hamlet felt. Still less was it the loss of the crown...It was the moral shock of the sudden ghastly disclosure of his mother's true nature, falling on him when his heart was aching with love, and his body doubtless was weakened by sorrow... He had seen her not merely devoted to his father, but hanging on him like a newly-wedded bride...He had seen her following his body 'like Niobe, all tears'. And then within a month- 'O God! a beast would have mourned longer'- she married again, and married Hamlet's uncle, a man utterly contemptible and loathsome in his eyes; married him in what to Hamlet was incestuous wedlock; married him not for any reason of state, nor even out of old family affection, but in such a way that her son was forced to see in her action not only an astounding shallowness of feeling but an eruption of coarse sensuality, 'rank and gross', speeding post-haste to its horrible delight. Is it possible to conceive an experience more desolating to a man such as we have seen Hamlet to be...?"

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bradley, A.C. 'What Actually Happens in the Play'. Shakespearean Tragedy . London, 1903.
• Freud, Sigmund . 'Infantile Sexuality'; 'The Transformation of Puberty'. The Pelican Freud Library . Volume 7- On Sexuality. Penguin Books, 1986
• Jones, Ernest . 'Tragedy and the Mind of the Infant'. Hamlet and Oedipus . W.W. Norton and Co. Inc. and Merwyn Jones. Copyright 1949 by Ernest Jones. Copyright renewed 1982 by Merwyn Jones.
• Knight, G. Wilson . 'The Embassy of Death: an Essay on Hamlet'. The Wheel of Fire. Routledge, 1993.

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