Micah 3 appears to be a distinct unit of the prophecy (but see below). It begins with “And I said,” and chapter 4 begins with a disjunctive “it will come about in the last days” (4:1). Within chapter 3, there is an obvious inclusio between verses 1 and 9. Both verses begin with a shema (“hear”), both use “heads . . . of Jacob” and “rulers of the house of Israel,” as well as the word “justice.” Verse 10 is... Read more
In 1881, Edward Payson Vining wrote an innovative book that promised to unravel The Mystery of Hamlet . When Vining had weighed all the evidence, he came to the only reasonable conclusion: Hamlet was a woman. Not, mind you, that Shakespeare conceived of a female prince: “It is not even claimed that Shakespeare ever fully intended to represent Hamlet as indeed a woman. It is claimed that in the gradual evolution of the feminine element in Hamlet’s character the time... Read more
When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern play questions with Hamlet in Tom Stoppard’s inversion of Hamlet , Rosencrantz says that the score was “Twenty-seven-three.” “He murdered us,” he adds, and then says it again for good measure. As Marjorie Garber notes in her Shakespeare and Modern Culture , Stoppard wants us to remember the original play, twice. ”Twenty-seven-three” is precisely the score in the question game in Shakespeare’s play (Act 2, scene 2, when R&G first show up). Stoppard counted. Plus, that “He... Read more
Spirit, Hegel said, works inwardly, ever forward, until “grown strong in itself it bursts asunder the crust of earth which divided it from the sun . . . so that the earth crumbles away.” Apparently addressing relentless Geist , Hegel quotes Hamlet to his father’s ghost: “Well said, old mole! Canst work i’the ground so fast?” Marx knows of the mole of historical development too. Countering Hegel’s idealist use of the Aeneid , Marx claimed (in de Grazia’s summary) that... Read more
De Grazia still, summarizing Lacan’s claim that Hamlet is about mourning: “‘I know of no commentator who has ever taken the trouble to make this remark . . . from one end of Hamle t to the other, all anyone talks about is mourning.’ It is no coincidence that Hamlet’s problem is also that of ‘modern society.’ The truncated and furtive rites of mourning in the play (the death of King Hamlet without final unction, Polonius’ ‘hugger-mugger’ burial, Ophelia’s abbreviated... Read more
The OED indicates that the first known use of the word “psychological” is from 1812, but de Grazia says that “Coleridge had been using the term in his lectures since 1800.” He used it mainly to describe Shakespeare’s ability to characterize “habits of mind.” Coleridge’s interest in psychological interpretation of Shakespeare was inspired in part by his reading of Kant. Only after reading the first Critique did he come to see “Shakespeare’s deep and accurate science in mental philosophy,” his... Read more
In her ‘Hamlet’ without Hamlet , Margreta de Grazia shows that Hamlet was not always considered a harbinger of modern subjectivity. On the contrary, Restoration critics and playwrights considered Shakespeare and Hamlet to be retrograde and rude: “In the ‘refined age’ of the Restoration, Hamlet , like all Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, belonged to the cruder previous period or ‘last age’ before the great interregnal divide separating Charles I from Charles II. English letters during this period were deemed... Read more
Two members of Shylock’s household escape his house during Merchant of Venice . Lancelot Gobbo leaves in order to become a servant to Bassanio, and Jessica leaves to be with her lover Lorenzo. The parallels between the two are brought out by the juxtaposition of the plots in Act 2: Scene 1 is at Belmont, where Portia is talking with Morocco. Then we shift to scenes in Venice, the first involving Lancelot and his father Old Gobbo, and the second... Read more
Why does Shylock insist on getting his pound of flesh? He stands for law, for justice, and as a Jew his justice is the lex talionis , eye for eye. He wants flesh because flesh has been taken from him. When? ”My daughter is my flesh and blood” he laments when she escapes his house (3.1). Salarino is incredulous: “There is more difference between thy flesh and hers than between jet and ivory; more between your bloods than there is... Read more
Jim Rogers of Texas A&M writes in response to my post on the pledge of allegiance: “the Supreme Court overturned Gobitis just three years later in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, thus making it one of the most short-lived precedents ever. “That does not mean that Frankfurter’s comments aren’t illustrative of a position that is (or at least was) widely shared. But it does takes the sting out of your observation that Frankfurter wrote the “majority opinion”... Read more
Leithart
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