SHAKESPEARE's King Lear & Hamlet

i.976). juncture's familial situation that firm roots his destiny is a forgetful more complex. His acquire, tycoon village, "by a brother's hand / ?at once despatch'd" appears to Ham allow as a ghost doomed to purgatory unless his son avenges his " withdraw most foul" (Shakespeare I.v.1079; 1078). Not only has Hamlet's uncle murdered his grow but he has also married his mother, Gertrude.

Both Hamlet and Lear have been unduly usurped. Hamlet's right to the throne and Denmark have been usurped by his murderous uncle, Claudius. In King Lear, Lear is usurped by his possess actions. He stubbornly refuses to accept Cordelia's love and retaliates by giving her trine of his kingdom two his daughters who already possess a tierce each. His other two daughters, Goneril and Regan, humiliate their father by refusing him his conventionalism retinue, putting the loyal Kent in stocks, and eventually they will plume Gloucester of his eyes. King Lear is loved by Cordelia, Gloucester, Kent, Edgar and his Fool. However, the Fool understands Lear's pride and imbecility have stripped him of his kingdom and his wits. As he tells the efflorescence King:

Fool. ?Nuncle, give me an egg, and I'll give thee two crowns.

Lear. What two crowns shall they be?

Fool. Why, after I have cut the egg I' the middle, and occupy up the meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou clovest they crown I' the middle, and gavest away both

Lear will descend into aberration because, as the Fool tells him, "thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides, and left field nothing I' the middle" (Shakespeare I.iv.980). Hamlet, on the other hand, has an excess of wits. He is self-reflection to the nth degree. He curses that he was ever born to mickle things right in a world so discover of joint and so rotten as is the state of things in Denmark. Hamlet is a reflecting pool of thought, thoughts that threaten to overwhelm him with their onerous complexity. Unlike Lear, if anything Hamlet is a itsy-bitsy too certain of things, especially the difference between appearances and reality.

His step-father uncle, the King, is a liquidator. His mother, the baron, has married her husband's murderer before her previous marriage bed was cold. His dead father lives as a ghost. Polonius is a meddling spy for Claudius. It is little wonder that Hamlet feigns madness in order to slough people off to his own intentions and knowledge. As Polonius says to the King and Queen "Lord Hamlet is a prince out of thy sphere?" and "though this be madness, yet there is method in't" (Shakespeare II.ii.1083; 1084). Hamlet himself admits "I am but mad north-north-west when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw" (Shakespeare II.ii.1085). Hamlet's tragedy is that he knows what he must do, and, even if it means his own death, which it does, he slowly marches inexorably toward his destiny.

parts, thou borest thine ass on they back o'er the dirt: thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gavest thy gold one away. If I speak like myself in this, let him be whipped first finds it so.

That flesh is heir to,--?tis a consummation

Nietzsche, F. The possess of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals. New York, Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1956.

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