Wednesday, 20 October 2021

Cultural Studies in Practice : Two Characters in Hamlet: Marginalization with a Vengeance. Paper 205

 Hello everyone! 


I am Nidhi Jethava and I am a student of MK Bhavnagar University department of English. This is my assignment about Cultural Studies India English literature. 



 Name : Nidhi P. Jethava 

Paper :  Cultural Studies 

Roll No. : 13

Enrollment Number : 306920200009

Email ID : jethavanidhi8@gmail.com 

Batch : 20-22( MA SEM- 3)

Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of English, Maharaja KrishnaKumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.





Cultural Studies in Practice :  Two Characters in Hamlet:

Marginalization with a Vengeance.




What is Cultural Studies ?


Cultural studies, interdisciplinary field concerned with the role of social institutions in the shaping of culture. Cultural studies emerged in Britain in the late 1950s and subsequently spread internationally, notably to the United States and Australia. Originally identified with the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham (founded 1964) and with such scholars as Richard Hoggart, Stuart Hall, and Raymond Williams, cultural studies later became a well-established field in many academic institutions, and it has since had broad influence in sociology, anthropology, historiography, literary criticism, philosophy, and art criticism. Among its central concerns are the place of race or ethnicity, class, and gender in the production of cultural knowledge.



Two Characters in Hamlet:

Marginalization with a Vengeance


In several instances earlier in this chapter we noted the cultural

and new historical emphases on power relationships. For

example, we noted that cultural critics assume "oppositional"

roles in terms of power structures, wherever they might be

found. Veeser, we pointed out, credited the new historicists

with dealing with "questions of politics, power, indeed on allmatters that deeply affect people's practical lives" (ix). And of

course there are the large emphases on power in the matter of

fonathan Swift's Laputa, as previously noted.

Let us now approach Shakespeare's Hamlet with a view to

seeing power in its cultural context.


Shortly after the play within the play, Claudius is talking pri-

vately with Rosencranttz and Guildenstern, Hamlet's fellow


students from Wittenberg (III.iii). In response to Claudius's

plan to send Hamlet to England, Rosencrantz delivers a speech

that-if read out of context-is both an excellent set of

metaphors (almost in the shape of a sonnet) and a summation

of the Elizabethan concept of the role and power of kingship:

The singular and peculiar life is bound

With all the strength and armor of the mind

To keep itselfrom noyance, but much more

That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests

The lives of many. The cease of majesty

Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw

What's near it with it. lt is a massy wheel

Fixed on the summit of the highest mount,

To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things

Are mortised and adjoined; which, when it falls,

Each small annexment, petty consequence,

Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone

Did the King sigh but with a general troun.,,,,.,,,,


Taken alone, the passage is a thoughtful and imagistically suc-

cessful passage, worthy of a wise and accomplished statesman.


But how many readers and viewers of the play would rank

this passage among the best-known lines of the play-with

Hamlet's soliloquies, for instance, or with the king's effort to

pray, or even with the aphorisms addressed by Polonius to his

son Laertes? We venture to say that the passage, intrinsically

good if one looks at it alone, is simply not well known.

why?

Attention to the context and to the speaker gives the answer.

Guildenstern had just agreed that he and Rosencrantz would

do the king's bidding. The agreement is only a reaffirmation of

what they had told the king when he first received them at

court (II.ii). Both speeches are wholly in character, for Rosen-

crarttz and Cuildenstern are among the jellyfish of Shake-

speare's characters. Easy it is to forget which of the two speaks


which lines-indeed easy it is to forget most of their lines alto-

gether. The two are distinctly plot-driven: empty of personality,


sycophantic in a sniveling waf, eager to curry favor with

power even if it means spying on their erstwhile friend.

Weakly they admit, without much skill at denial, that they

"were sent for" . Even less successfully they try to play on

Hamlet's metaphorical"pipe," to know his "stops," when they

are forced to admit that they could not even handle the literal

musical instrument that Hamlet shows them . Still later

these nonentities meet their destined "non-beingness," as it


were, when Hamlet, who can play the pipe so much more effi-

ciently, substitutes their names in the death warrant intended


for him.


If ever we wished to study two characters who are marginal-

ized, then let us look upon Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.


The meanings of their names hardly match what seems to be

the essence of their characters. Murray J. Levith, for example,

has written that "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are from the

Dutch-German: literally, 'garland of roses' and 'golden star.'

Although of religious origin, both names together sound

singsong and odd to English ears. Their jingling gives them a

lightness, and blurs the individuality of the characters they

label".

Lightness to be sure. Harley Granville-Barker once wrote in

an offhand way of the reaction these two roles call up for


actors. Commenting on Solanio and Salarino fuorn The Mer-

chant of Venice, he noted that their roles are "cursed by actors as


the two worst bores in the whole Shakespearean canon; not


excepting, even those other twin brethren in nonentity, Rosen-

crantz and Guildenstern" .


Obvious too is the fact that the two would not fit the social


level or have the level of influence of those whom Harold Jen-

kins reports as historical persons bearing these names: "These


splendidly resounding names, by contrast with the unlocalized

classical ones, are evidently chosen as particularly Danish.


Both were common among the most influential Danish fami-

lies, and they are often found together" He cites various

appearances of the names among Danish nobles, and even

notes the appearance of the names as Wittenberg students

around 7590.


No, these details do not seem to fit the personalities and gen-

eral vacuity of Shakespeare's two incompetents. So let us look


elsewhere for what these two characters tell us. Let us review

what they do, and what is done to them. Simply, they have been

students at Wittenberg. They return to Denmark, apparently

at the direct request of Claudius (II.ii). They try to pry from

Hamlet some of his inner thoughts, especially of ambition and

frustration about the crowrl (ILii). Hamlet foils them. They

crumble before his own questioning. As noted above, Claudius

later sends them on an embassy with Hamlet, carrying a letter to


the King of England that would have Hamlet summarily exe-

cuted. Though they may not have known the contents of that


"grandcommission," Hamlet's suspicion of them is enough for

him to contemplate their future-and to "trust them as adders

fanged":


They must sweep my way,

And marshal me to knavery. Let it work,

For 'tis the sport to have the engineer

Hoist with his own petard. And 't shall go hard

But I will delve one yard below their mines

And blow them to the moon: Oh, 'tis most sweet

When in one line two crafts directly meet.

In a moment of utmost trickery on his own part, Hamlet

blithely substitutes a forged document bearing their names

rather than his as the ones to be "put to sudden death,/Not


shriving time allowed" . When Horatio responds laconi-

cally with "So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to't," Hamlet


is unmoved:

Why, man, they did make love to this employment.

They are not near my conscience. Their defeat

Does by their own insinuation grow.

'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes

Between the pass and fell incensdd points

Of mighty opposites. And with that Shakespeare-as well as Hamlet-is done with


these two characters. "They are not near [Hamlet's] con-

science."


Again, why? For one thing, Hamlet may well see himself as

righting the moral order, not as a murderer, and much has been

said on that matter. But let us take note of another dimension:

the implications for power. Clearly Hamlet makes reference in

the lines just noted to the "mighty opposites" represented by

himself and Claudius. Clearly, too, the ones of "baser nature"

who "[made] love to this employment" do not matter much in

this struggle between powerful antagonists. They are pawns


for Claudius first, for Hamlet second. It is almost as if Ham-

let had tried before the sea voyage to warn them of their


insignificant state; he calls Rosencrantz a sponge, provoking

this exchange:

Hervrsr: . . . Besides, to be demanded of a sponge! What

replication should be made by the son of a king?

RosErrrcru.xrz: Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

Harvrrr: Aye, siq, that soaks up the King's countenance,

his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the King

best service in the end. He keeps them, like an ape, in the

corner of his jaw, first mouthed, to be last swallowed.


\A/hen he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeez-

ing you and, sponge, you shall be dry again.


So they are pawns, or sponges, or monkey food: the message of

power keeps coming through. Thus, they do not merit a pang

of conscience. True, there may be some room for believing that

at first they intended only good for their erstwhile schoolfellow

(see, for example, Bertram Joseph ). But their more constant

motive is to please the king, the power that has brought them

here. Their fate, however, is to displease mightily the prince,

who will undermine them and "hoist [them] with [their] own

petard."

For such is power in the world of kings and princes. Nor is it

merely a literary construct. England had known the effects of


such power off and on for centuries. Whether it was the depos-

ing and later execution of Richard II, or the crimes alleged of


Richard III, or the beheading of a Thomas More or of a wife or

two, or the much more recent actions in and around the court

of Elizabeth: in all these cases, power served policy. Witness

especially the fate of the second Earl of Essex, whose attempt at


rebellion led to his own execution in 1601, and even more esPe-

cially the execution of Elizabeth's telative, Mary Queen of


Scots, who had been imprisoned by Elizabeth for years before

Elizabeth signed the death warrant. A generation later, another

king, Charles I, would also be beheaded. With historical actions

such as these, we can understand why Shakespeare's work

incorporates power struggles. (For instances of power relative

to the "other" during Elizabeth's time, and for a discussion of

Elizabeth's actions relative to Essex and Mary Queen of Scots,

see the essay by Steven Mullaney, "Brothers and Others, or the

Art of Alienation," )

Claudius was aware of power, clearly, when he observed of

Hamlet's apparent madness that "Madness in great ones must

not unwatched go" (III.i). With equal truth Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern might have observed that power in great ones

also must not unwatched go.

To say, then, that the mighty struggle between powerful

antagonists is the stuff of this play is hardly original. But our

emphasis in the present reading is that one can gain a further

insight into the play, and indeed into Shakespeare's culture, by


thinking not about kings and princes but about the lesser per-

sons caught up in the massive oppositions.


It is instructive to note that the reality of power reflective of


Shakespeare's time might in another time and in another cul-

ture reflect a radically different worldview. Let us enrich our


response to Hamlet by looking at a related cultural and philo-

sophical manifestation from the twentieth century. In the twen-

tieth century the dead, or never-living, Rosencrantz and Guil-

denstern were resuscitated by Tom Stoppard in a fascinating


re-seeing of their existence, or its lack. In Stoppard's version,

they are even more obviously two ineffectual pawns, seeking

constantly to know who they are, why they are here, where

they are going. Whether they "are" at all may be the ultimate

question of this modern play. In Rosencrantz and Guildenstetn

Are Dead, Stoppard has given the contemporary audience a

play that examines existential questions in the context of a

whole world that may have no meaning at all. Although it is

not our intention to examine that play in great detail, suffice it

to note that the essence of marginalization is here: in this view,

Rosencrantz and Guildenstem are archetypal human beings

caught up on a ship-spaceship Earth for the twentieth or the

twenty-first century-that leads nowhere, except to death, a

death for persons who are already dead. If these two characters


were marginalized in Hamlet, they are even more so in Stop-

pard's handling. If Shakespeare marginalized the powerless in


his own version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Stoppard


has marginalized us all in an era when-in the eyes of some-

all of us are caught up in forces beyond our control. In other


words, a cultural and historical view that was Shakespeare's is

radically reworked to reflect a cultural and philosophical view

of another time----our own.

And if the philosophical view of Stoppard goes too far for

some, consider a much more mundane phenomenon of the

later twentieth century-and times to come, we expect. We


allude to the Rosencrantzes and Guildensterns, the little peo-

ple, who have been caught up in the corporate downsizing and


mergers in recent decades-the effects on these workers when

multinational companies move factories and offices around the

world like pawns on a chessboard. Not Louis XIV's "U6tat:

c'est moi," but "Power: it is capital."


Whether in Shakespeare's version or Stoppard's, Rosen-

ctantz and Guildenstern are no more than what Rosencrantz


called a "small annexment," a"petty consequence," mere noth-

ings for the "massy wheel" of kings.





Citation :


Abrams, M H, and Geoffrey G. Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Boston, Mass: Thomson Wadsworth, 1999.


Guerin, Wilfred L. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.



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