Hammy ham/Porklet is gerrin all depressed

I must say, Hamlet does seem terribly disheartened in his first soliloquy? soliligllisfdefquy? yeah the second's one probably right. The poor lad is afflicted in some way, calling his flesh 'sallied' and wanting it to 'melt'. He wants his body to melt? Now that doesn't sound like an everyday thing to say. Y'alright? Yeah, not too bad, would quite like my body to melt though. Doesn't sound like generic pleasant chit chat. Hamlet shows his witty/intelligent/downright clevaa side when he does a play on words, 'a dew' sound like adieu, as in, he wants to die. GET IT GET IT. To be honest I didn't get it first time but that's okay because, well, it's just okay. I enjoy how Hamlet makes a dig at Claudius, well he doesn't exactly make a dig but he says 'that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon', this shows that Hamlet luurves God which makes Claudius seem even worse for accusing Hamlet of being ungodly for mourning his father.

Let's be honest now, Hamlet isn't in the cheeriest of moods in this SOLILOQUY? He calls the world 'an unweeded garden' and 'rank', not sure God would be too impressed with him dissing his ultimately amazing creation. Anywaaaay, this shows Hammy doesn't like this world and thinks it's a horrible place, quite sad actually, brings a tear to my eye. Hamlet is torn between loving his mother and being angry with her for marrying his evil kanevil? uncle. He first rants about her.. 'A little month, or e'er those shoes were old' and 'O most wicked speed!' but then concludes that 'break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue' what a lovely lad, holding back his feelings for his ma, aaaaaaaw!

who for art thou claudius?

So, what are my impressions of claudius so far? NOT GOOD. He starts off with an excuse for his behaviour, 'though' which shows he's done something wrong and he goes on to say 'with remembrance of ourselves' which shows he's selfish as he's like 'ohh but let's not forget about ourselves even though my brother's just DIED'. We can tell already he isn't a good character as he talks about 'mirth in funeral', being happy at a funeral? That's just wrong. And he talks about eyes in a very odd way, ' an auspicious and a dropping eye' not only does this make him sound worryingly disfigured, it also symbolises one eye being happy and one eye being sad, which is evidently not a good thing, and your eyes going in opposite directions cannot be comfortable, can it? Claudius manipulates people with his words, with his long speech blabbing on for ages, with the underlying meaning that he actually doesn't care about his brothers death and he just proves he's self-interested by marrying his only recently dead brothers wife, who does that? Claudius is SO patronising it is unreal, 'that father lost his...filial obligation for some term', he's like, 'mate, everyone loses their dad, get over it', which is VERY patronising. But wait, it gets worse, he then starts to tell Hamlet his grief is 'unmanly', saying Hamlet is behaving like a woman for being sad that his father died. He says his mourning is 'incorrect to heaven' and 'a fault to heaven', he's saying Hamlet's grief is against God's will. This is ironic as he has just killed his brother so actually HE has gone against God's will, hypocrite. He then does something beautiful and kind, he says, oh Hamlet don't worry that your father has died, for I WILL BE YOUR NEW FATHER. Yeah, don't think Hamlet's going to like that. So basically Claudius is a hypocritical, patronising, generic villain who I dislike very much.

TRAGIC FLAW,

So a tragic flaw is.. the character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall.

Key words etc to do with tragic flaws :
 
Aristotle - classical tragedy must have: plot, character, diction, reasoning, spectacle and lyric poetry.

Catharsis - to do with the idea of experiencing, normally a negative emotion, with the characters. Aristotle believed this worked by the purging of emotions by the audience, and learning from the tragedy for your own life. Brecht said catharsis encouraged you to go out and alter the world. I keep forgetting what catharsis means so to put it another way it's like the emotions we experience with the actors, in fact, that's exactly how i put it before. oh well.

Aristotle's 3 unities Action, time and place.
Action: one intention running all the way through.
Place: You stay in one place.
Time: real life time is same as stage time.

Shakespeare's writings often had lots of little sub-plots, e.g. Othello starts in Venice and then goes to Cyprus, Macbeth is similar. Shakespeare didn't follow Aristotle's 3 unities. Just because e.g. Hamlet doesn't follow it, it doesn't mean it's not a tragedy.

Just to clarify, and mainly to remind myself as I seem to be the only one who forgets these odd words....
 The hubris is a characters tragic flaw, normally excessive pride which leads to their downfall.
And the hamartia is the mistake - the thing that the character does wrong.

Karen Newman came up with the idea that tragedy is created by things 'contrary to nature' or things that go against what it's supposed to be. For example in Othello, Newman would say it is the fact that a white woman had married a black man. In Macbeth it could be that at the beginning someone has gone against the King, this would be seen as 'contrary to nature'.

TRAGEDY or should i say tragic structure

Tragic structure often goes through five stages. 1. Introduction - find out what's going on. 2. A complication - where something goes wrong. 3. A climax - the big 'thing' or event. 4. Understanding. 6. The resolution - the chaos element is restored back to order.

Example: In Othello, the complication is Ijargo in general. The climax is Desdimona's death/murder which has a big build up. The understanding is the realisation by Othello that it was a mistake to kill her. And the resolution is that ijargo is taken off to prison and Othello doesn't go to prison for his wrong.

TRAGEDY when the feelings gone and you can't go on.. etc. etc.

So we learnt about tragedy, (this blog is going to be nowhere near as witty as Louis', I haven't actually read it but i saw that he has a picture of walleee so that's mine put to shame already). Tragedy is the idea of death, normally at the end of the play. It has three main themes. 1. the idea of suffering: this is normally around the central character. 2. the element of chaos: which is the 'breaking down' of something. In a classical tragedy, society itself disintegrates, for example in Hamlet, Denmark no longer has a King or Queen at the end of the story. And thirdly, and most importantly, the idea of death, normally at the end of the play.

Then we did heroes, villains, and victims. The hero tends to be the main protagonist, for example in macbeth it is...macbeth. They tend to have ambitious qualities and be things like 'a good soldier'. The villains in macbeth are the witches. The villain in a story always tend to make us fear them and have some sort of insanity. There are various victims in macbeth, Macduff, Duncan and the Kind (i'm loling at that spelling mistake and therefore i'm not going to correct it) and all of them are innocentttt.      k cheers byee