Climax in Hamlet

[Eadaoin]

Just out of pure blatant curiosity, what do you all think is the climax of Hamlet and why? Defend your answer so that I can't rebuttle.......which I will......and fiercely.....;)

[Sindhu]

Hmmm- Interesting question! Ok; in my opinion, the climax of Hamet is in this particular speech in the last scene:
HAMLET :
Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is't to leave betimes?


Now I'm going to be very clever, I've given you my answer, tell me if you disagree and if so why and THEN I'll defend my opinion.
;)

[IWilKikU]

I think that the climax is the murder of Polonius. It is the first time in the play that Hamlet shares his suspicions of Claudius. The dialog before and after the murder is intense, as is the rest of the play from that point onward. It's also the first time that Hamlet tries to actually do somthing about his fathers murder, rather than just talk about it.

[AbdoRinbo]

Eadaoin, you're gonna scare everyone away talkin' like that. :P


Just out of pure blatant curiosity, what do you all think is the climax of Hamlet and why? Defend your answer so that I can't rebuttle.......which I will......and fiercely.....;)

[Eadaoin]

ok....according to Freytag's analysis of the plot interpretation, the climax is the focal point at which there is high intensity, but more importantly, the point at which the outcome is made clear to the reader.

It is also quite apparent that in Shakespeare's work everything is all about parallelism....he devotes approximately the same amount of his pieces to the inciting incident and rising action as he does to falling action and resolution...Ergo, we know that the climax will be found in the third act (by the by, I'm so proud that noone answered when Hamlet dies)

and as for IWilKikU.....Hamlet's entire character does create a complete reversal, but it's before he even enters his mother's chamber

[AbdoRinbo]

Stephen Greenblatt would disagree. ;)

[IWilKikU]

Hamlet seems to make reversals before, he promises his father's ghost that he will avenge his death, and so on and so on, but even after he verbally reverses he is presented with an oppertunity to kill Claudius. Rather than jumping at it, he makes an excuse of why he can't. I'ts just another example of his indecision and inability to act. Until he physically tries to actually do somthing about it, I don't think that he has made a reversal of character.

[Sindhu]

(by the by, I'm so proud that noone answered when Hamlet dies)


I'll post later to "defend" my choice ;) But for now, Did you REALLY imagine that anyone was going to say "when Hamlet dies"? :rolleyes:

[AbdoRinbo]

Now, now. I might have said that.

[Sindhu]

Sure! Of course you would- I'm only surprised you managed to resist the impulse! ;)

[Eadaoin]

well, the only reason that I had the incling that people might reply "when Hamlet dies" is that so many guidance sources (Cliffsnotes, Sparknotes, and even teachers) believe that that is the climax.....sad really....

"but even after he verbally reverses he is presented with an oppertunity to kill Claudius. Rather than jumping at it, he makes an excuse of why he can't."
well Iwilkiku......he's not really making an excuse...it's the truth...if Claudius would have been repenting, as Hamlet assumed he was, then Claudius would have gone to Heaven, which would not have avenged Old Hamlet's murder......Argal (haha sry, I love the clowns in V.i) Hamlet's not making an excuse, he's trying to stay true to his mission....it's just bitterly ironic that Caludius wasn't really repenting....but Hamlet didn't know that...

and Sindhu, I look forward to hearing your rational.....I've never heard someone defend something from act five......I'm much intrigued ;)

[Sindhu]

and Sindhu, I look forward to hearing your rational.....I've never heard someone defend something from act five......I'm much intrigued ;)
Just to say that I haven't forgotten- it's only that I want to post in detail and I don't have the required time right now. But will be back. ;)

[IWilKikU]

Of course Hamlet explains to the audience that that's why he doesn't do it. But, if he really was intending to kill Claudius right than and there, why not simply disturb him from his prayers, or wait until they were finished and challenge him like a man instead of lurking in the shadows like a coward?

[Eadaoin]

not to be rude, but are you at all familiar with Christian beliefs of that time period IWilKikU?....as I already explained, if Claudius would have been repenting, as Hamlet assumed he was, then Claudius would have gone to Heaven, which would not have avenged Old Hamlet's murder making Hamlet's vengeance in vain----it wouldn't have been vengeacne at all
Just because Hamlet isn't to the point of complete irrationality yet doesn't mean that his charcter hasn't already undergone it's dynamic contrast. Hamlet is just warming up to his active, rash self which fully permeates in his mother's closet.
Besides, all of that Hamlet has already shared his suspisions of Claudius, making your first point inaccurate.

[IWilKikU]

The religeous point we will have to agree to disagree on. I understand the whole bit about
and so he goes to heaven; and so am I reveng'd. What I'm saying is I dont think Hamlet was really that concerned about what happens to anyone beyond the grave. If he was, would he have gone on to murder, without remorse I might add, Ros-and-Gil. None of his behavior in the play suggests any religeous concern except for that one scene. I still say he uses it as an excuse.

When does Hamlet share his suspicions with anyone else? That could have just been my oversight.

But honestly, is his little soliliquey before all this goes down really more emotional or intense than the closet? When he kills Polonius, Everyone is totally shocked and taken by surprise. Hamlet acts out of character and does somthing rash. It's the real changing point in who he is. So there :evil:

[Sindhu]

What I'm saying is I dont think Hamlet was really that concerned about what happens to anyone beyond the grave. If he was, would he have gone on to murder, without remorse I might add, Ros-and-Gil. I don't quite get the connection- What exactly does Hamlet not being concerned about what happens beyond the grave ( assuming that was the case ) have to do with the Ros& Gil bit? Am I missing out on something here? Dosen't the "not shriving time allowed" indcate rather that he expressly wants them damned and the same to a greater degree for Claudius?

[IWilKikU]

<sigh>, Somtimes I say things that only make sense to me (and I can usually convince my girlfriend that they make sense to her to). I will try once more to explain my thought process very clearly. If I still fail, my advice to you is to leave me to my own happy little world were I am always right. But just incase I can bring one other mislead soul into that realm, here goes:
;)

Hamlet sent Ros-and-Gil to their deaths, right?
Right.
On purpose, right?
Right.
They were innocent of the knowlege that thier letter bore, right?
Right.
So Hamlet effectively murdered them, right?
Right.
So Hamlet is a murderer, right?
Right.
Murderers are baaaaaad people and will spend eternity in hell having pineapples shoved up thier rectums, right?
Right.
OK.

Claudius is a murderer, right?
Right.
If Hamlet kills him, Claudius spends eternity in said eternal torture, Right?
Right.
HOWEVER,
Hamlet thinks Claudius is praying, right?
Right.

OK here's where it gets hard to say what I'm thinking. If Hamlet is willing to murder Ros-and-Gil, and become a damned murderer himlesf, does he really believe in whats going to happen after death? If he does, than why murder innocent people? This shows that either he A) doesn't believe the standard Christian practices of the time, or B) just doesn't care about them. I may be reading ALOT into it, but come on, I wouldn't be the first person to overread Shakespeare. Anyways, If A, or B is true, than his hesitation, would have mearly been an excuse to continue his delay. Ok, my brain hurts now.

[Sindhu]

OK here's where it gets hard to say what I'm thinking. If Hamlet is willing to murder Ros-and-Gil, and become a damned murderer himlesf, does he really believe in whats going to happen after death? If he does, than why murder innocent people? This shows that either he A) doesn't believe the standard Christian practices of the time, or B) just doesn't care about them.
Oh, OK- i get what you are trying to say now- where I disagree is 1. Hamlet is so fed up he wouldn't care about being damned, that doesn't necessarily mean he wants Claudius to escape that fate.
2. He doesn't think Roz&Gil really count- royalty didn't think so ofordinarypeople in those days and anyway, they were not "innocent"- carrying the letter they were and he clearly says they are not on his conscience- not important enough or innocent enough to ensurethat he will be damned for killing them- while Claudius killed the GREAT FATHER HAMLET and is as uninnocent as heck and will surely e damned- and Ha,let wants himto get it all right! Now amI making sense? :rolleyes:

[Isagel]

If Hamlet is willing to murder Ros-and-Gil, and become a damned murderer himlesf, does he really believe in whats going to happen after death? If he does, than why murder innocent people? This shows that either he A) doesn't believe the standard Christian practices of the time, or B) just doesn't care about them.

Stretching my brain till it hurts... I always thought that the tragic part is that he DOES care. (The whole to-be-or-not-to-be speech he discusses what might come after death if he kills himself) He is afraid of what comes after death. BUT - his father wants revenge. So either he fails his father , who then will walk around in torments as ghost, while his mother is in bed with his uncle (not to mention that Hamlet will live with the knowledge) - or he avenges him and get the punishment. Hamlet is doomed either way. No matter what he does he can´t win. And he knows it. He is in hell already. So he might believe and care, and still do it because he thinks the alternative is worse. And when he has begun the path of revenge, he does what he thinks it takes. Even killing innocent people.

[IWilKikU]

Both excelent replies. You certainly have shed some more sympathetic light on Hamlet. I always disliked him and thought he was a whiney coward. I see exactly where your coming from. However, I still say that the suspense and emotion run ten times thicker in the murder of Polonius scene, than they do in Hamlets soliliquy. Making the murder of Polonius the climax. But, I guess this is where Everyone else and I will have to agree to disagree. I will not budge! :x

[ayleoh nyaaba]

hello i'm interested in this discussion because i have an assignment to do on this particular topic. so i have been monitoring your argument very closely and enjoying it it for that matter.

[kelby_lake]

The climax is the swordfight between Hamlet and Laertes and the multiple deaths that follow. After that, the play winds down. The climax is not meant to be "the most exciting bit". It is the bit just before the tension drops and the mood becomes more sombre, then leading to the denouement.

If we're talking about the hamartia (tragic error), that would be Hamlet's stabbing Polonius, which turns him from an innocent man into a guilty one. In talking to his mother, he relieves his hatred towards women and so might have saved his relationship with Ophelia but after stabbing Polonius, he cannot do that.

Hamlet is obsessed with what happens after death. He hates his mother for marrying Claudius but he also wants to save her, despite what he sees as her unnatural lust. As for him killing Polonius, we could either attribute this to his hysteria or just as a plot point. Hamlet is not naturally a man of action but he needs to carry out some action otherwise he will just be a whiner. Killing Polonius neatly seals his tragic fate.

[Patrick Walker]

<sigh>,
OK here's where it gets hard to say what I'm thinking. If Hamlet is willing to murder Ros-and-Gil, and become a damned murderer himlesf, does he really believe in whats going to happen after death? If he does, than why murder innocent people? This shows that either he A) doesn't believe the standard Christian practices of the time, or B) just doesn't care about them. I may be reading ALOT into it, but come on, I wouldn't be the first person to overread Shakespeare. Anyways, If A, or B is true, than his hesitation, would have mearly been an excuse to continue his delay. Ok, my brain hurts now.

I think it's extremely important to not draw general conclusions of characters' beliefs, mindsets, etc, (particularly major characters) based on information gathered from throughout a play. The point of Hamlet the man, and the wonderful thing about him, is that he is a constantly changing, evolving character. The charming Hamlet of Act 2, who can wonder at man as being "noble in reason...infinite in faculties...like a god!" and instructs Polonius to treat the Players according to his "own honour and dignity", is not the same man that proclaims in Act 3 that he could now "drink hot blood", that contrives for Claudius's soul to be "as damn'd and black as Hell whereto it goes". The Hamlet that proclaims "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space" is not the same man that can ruthlessly send his two school friends to their unsuspecting death, coldly proclaiming "they are not near my conscience".
The tragedy of Hamlet lies in the downward trajectory of his character, a man who follows his own obsessions and twisted logic to their terrible consequences.

[jayat]

Remind me things, if you were so kind... It's been four month I read Hamlet and I learnt Romeo and Juliet's plot at school (I must read it). Don't they all end with several people merdered or dying?
I said so because Calisto and Melibea Tragedy (better known as La Celestina -the matchmaker- spanish tragedy, written about 1500, just one century before Hamlet) ends in the same way. Almost everybody dies at the end and I don't know any others references but it could be a trend/fashion in that epoque to make dye everybody on the scene like a extreme catharsis (let imagine the susceptible audience of that time...).

[Macintosh]

Well, of course, many folks confuse "climax" with "finale" but let's discuss climax, the point at which the play pivots.

I think it's a scene that's sadly omitted from many productions, to the everlasting damnation of the director. That's Act IV, scene 4, where Hamlet, being escorted by R&G to England, comes across Fortinbras' army preparing to fight a battle over a rancid plot of land on which there wouldn't be room to bury the battle dead.

This is Hamlet's great soliloquy "How all occasions do inform against me..."

Why do I think this the climax? Because 1- We see clearly how Hamlet's different from the social mentality of the society around him, and that he's not beholden to the mores of the times, but is a truly "modern" protagonist. And 2- Finally Hamlet reverses this stance and swears blood revenge.

Right afterward, he sends R&G to their deaths, and upon his return to Elsinore, is a changed man, more distant, less introspective, more action oriented. And, of course, more cruel.

[Corona]

It depends on what one means by "climax".
Most critics agree on the fact the "play-within-the play" - that truly contains a fiction within itself! - is the climax of the play, but according to Fredson Bowers' accurate analysis of the play the scene in which Hamlet slaughters Polonius happens to be the actual climax of the play, meaning by that it represents the moment in which Hamlet's fate is forever sealed: indeed all the subsequent events took place because of that wrong murder, which soon turned out to be a mistake caused by Hamlet's hurring up his revenge.
From that moment on, according to F.Bowers, Hamlet's fate was doomed.
That if by climax we mean, like kelby_lake has suggested, "tragic flaw": Hamlet's tragic flaw doesn't coincide with his delay; quite the opposite, it's him killing the wrong man.
It's then he realizes he's Heaven's Scourge and according to Elizabethan view the scourge was someone whose soul was already damned so he could be God's instrument.
(Then one should also mention Hamlet in the fifth act seems a different man, seemingly having purified himself from his wrongs and ready to entrust his soul to God.)

[Patrick Walker]

I think it's a scene that's sadly omitted from many productions, to the everlasting damnation of the director. That's Act IV, scene 4, where Hamlet, being escorted by R&G to England, comes across Fortinbras' army preparing to fight a battle over a rancid plot of land on which there wouldn't be room to bury the battle dead.

This is Hamlet's great soliloquy "How all occasions do inform against me..."

Why do I think this the climax? Because 1- We see clearly how Hamlet's different from the social mentality of the society around him, and that he's not beholden to the mores of the times, but is a truly "modern" protagonist. And 2- Finally Hamlet reverses this stance and swears blood revenge.

Right afterward, he sends R&G to their deaths, and upon his return to Elsinore, is a changed man, more distant, less introspective, more action oriented. And, of course, more cruel.

I can't agree with you there. This speech was omitted from the Folio of Hamlet and neither does it exist in the, clearly bootlegged, First Quarto. I believe therefore that this speech was never performed by Shakespeare's company.
What's my point?
At this point in the play the speech is irrelevant. It seems to serve the same function and debate the same issue as "To be or not to be". We seem to be back in the opening of the third act where Hamlet has not yet decided between the warnings of conscience and the demands of "honour". He still has the "means" to effect his revenge, he is still reproaching himself for cowardly inaction. By the close of the speech he has determined to reject all thoughts but those of murder. But the Hamlet we have just seen leaving the Danish court has long since been confirmed in bloody thoughts, has long since cast of "coward conscience". We also know that Hamlet is being forcibly conveyed to England and therefore, temporarily at least, lost the means to do anything at all. It seems more than likely to me that Shakespeare originally intended this speech to appear much earlier in the play, realised it was redundant, tentatively placed it here at IV:iv and ultimately cut it for the stage version.
The bottom line is that the soliloquy doesn't really make logical or dramatic sense in the arc of the play.

The climax of Hamlet, I suppose, is the sequence of events from Hamlet's "'tis now the very witching time of night" right through to the closet scene. Throughout this portion of the play we see the terrible violence of Hamlet's passion laid bare, the thoughts of murder exciting him to a state of inhuman frenzy.

[Jack Burden]

I'm surprised no one mentioned the moment when Claudius stands and puts an abrupt end to the play-within-the-play. If the climax is the moment when the outcome is decided, then it is that moment because that is when Claudius finally knows for sure that Hamlet knows that Claudius killed King Hamlet. Once Claudius knows that Hamlet knows, Hamlet has to die.

Also, I'd say Hamlet's fatal flaw has something to do with his analytical mind and his ability to reason. In just about every speech he seems to talk about man's capacity for reasoning - which in his case also prevents him from acting. But his analytical and creative mind and his reliance upon reasoning is what enables and motivates him to write the play-within-the-play - which in turn leads to Claudius' understanding that Hamlet not only knows that Claudius killed King Hamlet, but he even knows how he did it (which must be rather disturbing to Claudius if you think about it).

So the harmatia and the climax are pretty clearly linked together. Thoughts?