Isn't the key thing that is out of joint the move from premodern feudalism (the dead feudal father) and the rise of modernity (the mother's insatiable appetite)? Hamlet is caught between the two worlds and follows Marx by seeing every solid tradition and institution melt. Moreover, Shakespeare also had to move from the old patronage system to being a theater entrepreneur.
Very astute. We read Hamlet in my AP English class senior year of high school. For a play first performed in 1600, it would be sagacious to compare the plot not to a subconscious emergence of subjectivity and humanity, but rather a cryptic warning that Shakespeare was ironically enough subliminally proffering to his audience, elite and groundling, about the succession of Queen Elizabeth. This was a fraught subject as England and its neighbors had never known such a prosperous isle than with the virgin queen atop the throne. Chaste (except perhaps with Walter Raleigh and John Dee), strategic to a fault, and admired by her people for foreign conquests against the Catholic Spanish especially and improvements in the quality of life in England, her reign was coming to an end and it was an open secret James of Scotland looked to usurp the Tudors' claim to the throne.
Just as Romeo and Juliet was a cryptic, messy and contemporary decoupage of the Catholic Church's persecution of Jews, and a love that spited that prejudice, I view Hamlet as Shakespeare's warning about James. Indeed, James had the Bible rewritten to reflect Scottish myth and symbols after he ascended in 1603. And it was uncertain whether James would reinstitute the Roman religion that Henry VIII fought so hard to banish.
Whether it was out of his own worry that James would clamp down on art and free expression, as the Scotts were known as rough and tumble warriors who abjured the type of culture that Elizabeth sponsored, or a more ecumenical concern for the future of dynastic procession in his country which had known The 100 Years War and War of the Roses in the not too distant past, Shakespeare brought to mind in his audiences that the politics of his time were dangerous.
I for one believe Hamlet was in fact insane, and as subjectivity is one of the most private things, he need not telegraph his feelings too much. His soliloquies and conversations are evidence enough that he was overwhelmed by sick feelings and tried to put words to them as best he could.
Hamlet's mother's kindheartedness and honestly does not apparently prevent her from being a brutal viking and cold political animal in the final result, reigning knee deep in adultery and regicide. If the kingdom of Denmark were to make a neo-feudal compromise with the viking past to justify the bloodsoaked new reign, must this not be decided in-itself by fatal ends during an emergence into early modernity? The false philosophical universalization Hamlet is subject, on which Gertrude relies to make the dashing King, uncovered by sovereign majesty, to be dispensed with, along with its progeny, so Denmark is state subject. Hamlet's annihilation of the throne of Denmark brings in itself a correlate 'humanist-natural' historical equalization of cold dead abstration fatally escaping into the confused and failed and brutal chaos of warm neo feudal feelings. Hamlet ends the dynasty altogether where it started, in that retardation inherent to that modern linear epoch, so that the ultimate restoration triumph comes at the level of the neo-feudal 'everyone to their proper place', brings the modern compromise to its proper place in itself, rather than an unbounded brutal assertion of the inhuman subject, which relies in itself on the feudal castes for its state power.
Isn't the key thing that is out of joint the move from premodern feudalism (the dead feudal father) and the rise of modernity (the mother's insatiable appetite)? Hamlet is caught between the two worlds and follows Marx by seeing every solid tradition and institution melt. Moreover, Shakespeare also had to move from the old patronage system to being a theater entrepreneur.
I love you Zizek.You are my goat 🐐
Zizek would appreciate your thoughts on my recent article. https://open.substack.com/pub/workingclass/p/mind-control-in-plain-sight-how-subliminal?r=8mxp8&utm_medium=ios
Very astute. We read Hamlet in my AP English class senior year of high school. For a play first performed in 1600, it would be sagacious to compare the plot not to a subconscious emergence of subjectivity and humanity, but rather a cryptic warning that Shakespeare was ironically enough subliminally proffering to his audience, elite and groundling, about the succession of Queen Elizabeth. This was a fraught subject as England and its neighbors had never known such a prosperous isle than with the virgin queen atop the throne. Chaste (except perhaps with Walter Raleigh and John Dee), strategic to a fault, and admired by her people for foreign conquests against the Catholic Spanish especially and improvements in the quality of life in England, her reign was coming to an end and it was an open secret James of Scotland looked to usurp the Tudors' claim to the throne.
Just as Romeo and Juliet was a cryptic, messy and contemporary decoupage of the Catholic Church's persecution of Jews, and a love that spited that prejudice, I view Hamlet as Shakespeare's warning about James. Indeed, James had the Bible rewritten to reflect Scottish myth and symbols after he ascended in 1603. And it was uncertain whether James would reinstitute the Roman religion that Henry VIII fought so hard to banish.
Whether it was out of his own worry that James would clamp down on art and free expression, as the Scotts were known as rough and tumble warriors who abjured the type of culture that Elizabeth sponsored, or a more ecumenical concern for the future of dynastic procession in his country which had known The 100 Years War and War of the Roses in the not too distant past, Shakespeare brought to mind in his audiences that the politics of his time were dangerous.
I for one believe Hamlet was in fact insane, and as subjectivity is one of the most private things, he need not telegraph his feelings too much. His soliloquies and conversations are evidence enough that he was overwhelmed by sick feelings and tried to put words to them as best he could.
Hamlet's mother's kindheartedness and honestly does not apparently prevent her from being a brutal viking and cold political animal in the final result, reigning knee deep in adultery and regicide. If the kingdom of Denmark were to make a neo-feudal compromise with the viking past to justify the bloodsoaked new reign, must this not be decided in-itself by fatal ends during an emergence into early modernity? The false philosophical universalization Hamlet is subject, on which Gertrude relies to make the dashing King, uncovered by sovereign majesty, to be dispensed with, along with its progeny, so Denmark is state subject. Hamlet's annihilation of the throne of Denmark brings in itself a correlate 'humanist-natural' historical equalization of cold dead abstration fatally escaping into the confused and failed and brutal chaos of warm neo feudal feelings. Hamlet ends the dynasty altogether where it started, in that retardation inherent to that modern linear epoch, so that the ultimate restoration triumph comes at the level of the neo-feudal 'everyone to their proper place', brings the modern compromise to its proper place in itself, rather than an unbounded brutal assertion of the inhuman subject, which relies in itself on the feudal castes for its state power.
nah man, you have it wrong.
I am looking for isolated intellectuals to join me at The Rhizome Times!
https://open.substack.com/pub/ragalla/p/i-love-you-but-we-are-killing-each?r=55jm5x&utm_medium=ios
Why do we, living in 21 century, always have to bring all our modern understanding to the 17c.'s works of art? Poor Shakespeare ...
So what you're saying is that Georgia Meloni is Gertrude? In which sense: Shakespearean, Updikian, or Eliotian?