UVM Theses and Dissertations
Format:
Print
Author:
Sargent, Sarah
Title:
Dept./Program:
English
Year:
2009
Degree:
MA
Abstract:
This thesis aims to read Hamlet as a play that serves, through the many ambiguities of plot and character, to emphasize the agency of the unknown. I argue that Hamlet shows us that choices, whether made passively or actively, are the threads of lived reality. By shifting our understanding of choice and action as an entirely active realm to one that encompasses passivity, Shakespeare opens wide the door for human agency testifying that human beings are ultimately entirely free -- a fact that brings with it the burden of responsibility.
This thesis further attempts to free the women of Hamlet from the critical yoke of victimization and villainy and recognize the integral, if silent, role they play in its meaning. I argue that Gertrude and Ophelia, seen through a critical lens that privileges passivity as an active state are the characters who most exemplify the spirit of the play, which works to emphasize the silences and negatives spaces that drive action.
I also argue that it is only through conscious, reflective thought that human beings can create meaningful and progressive action. Conscious, reflective thought comes most often in the form of fictionalized realities. The same emphasis Shakespeare puts on the potential of choices in morality and identity are implicated in the choices made in artistic representation. Shakespearean adaptation, particularly with its enormous cultural capital, is an opportunity to bridge the past and the present in a progressive manner, to make explicit the connections between then and now, and how one is both found and liberated by the other.
Finally, I offer a treatment and scenes of a screenplay for a film meant to exemplify the goals I have outlined and the themes I identify as central to the original play. My intent is not to create a "corrective" text, as though somehow Shakespeare got it wrong, but rather a "conversational" text: an adaptation with the potential to become a part of the world of Hamlet part of the ongoing artistic dialogue about what it means to be human in the complex and continuous web of time.
This thesis further attempts to free the women of Hamlet from the critical yoke of victimization and villainy and recognize the integral, if silent, role they play in its meaning. I argue that Gertrude and Ophelia, seen through a critical lens that privileges passivity as an active state are the characters who most exemplify the spirit of the play, which works to emphasize the silences and negatives spaces that drive action.
I also argue that it is only through conscious, reflective thought that human beings can create meaningful and progressive action. Conscious, reflective thought comes most often in the form of fictionalized realities. The same emphasis Shakespeare puts on the potential of choices in morality and identity are implicated in the choices made in artistic representation. Shakespearean adaptation, particularly with its enormous cultural capital, is an opportunity to bridge the past and the present in a progressive manner, to make explicit the connections between then and now, and how one is both found and liberated by the other.
Finally, I offer a treatment and scenes of a screenplay for a film meant to exemplify the goals I have outlined and the themes I identify as central to the original play. My intent is not to create a "corrective" text, as though somehow Shakespeare got it wrong, but rather a "conversational" text: an adaptation with the potential to become a part of the world of Hamlet part of the ongoing artistic dialogue about what it means to be human in the complex and continuous web of time.