Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness - David Weeks. Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet: A Study of Shakespeare's Method - Leon Harold Craig - Google Books. Hamlet: Edited by Horace Howard Furness - William Shakespeare, Horace Howard Furness - Google Books. The Philosopher Hamlet -- Death. The Philosopher Hamlet (Related to Unit 1: Death) Hamlet is considered to be one of if not THE most complex characters ever created. “Hamlet” is Shakespeare's longest play and Hamlet the character has more lines than any other character in any of Shakespeare's plays. The fact that this play is so long and that Hamlet is given so much to say leads me to think Shakespeare was trying to say something very important.
In particular, two important and related issues he addresses are the problem of death, and the problem of change. The French Existentialist writer, Albert Camus, directly addresses the topic of death in the context of suicide in his interpretation of "The Myth of Sisyphus. " Hamlet is surrounded by death, but he is the only character in the play who confronts it philosophically (Claudius laments murdering his brother, but only because he feels guilt; Ophelia avoids dealing with her father’s death through insanity; and Laertes only reacts to his father’s death by seeking revenge). Hamlet’s Negativity: Toward a Performance History of His Conceptual Character | Shakespeare Quarterly Open Review. Andrew Cutrofello And all for nothing: For Hecuba! —Hamlet, 2.2.514-15 Suppose Shakespeare had written for Hamlet the line “I think, therefore I am,” or a fiction is written in which a character named Descartes says this, or suppose a character in a dream of mine says this; does it follow that they exist?
[1] ¶ 4 What’s philosophy to Hamlet, or Hamlet to philosophy? ¶ 5 In What Is Philosophy? ¶ 6 Philosophers, like actors, bring out different aspects of Hamlet’s character, but the role itself has certain constants. . ¶ 7 Descartes’ world is a plenum – one version of the “great chain of being”[7] – in which the gaps between immaterial substances are filled by material substances between which there are no gaps. . ¶ 9 In Plato’s Sophist, the Eleatic Stranger directs Theaetetus to five or six definitions of this essentially elusive figure.
. ¶ 10 Like the sophist, Hamlet is an essentially elusive character who reproves those who would pluck out the heart of his mystery. Notes [3] Ibid., pp. 61-2, 66. 12 Green Bag 1900 Argument for Hamlet, An. Reflections On Determining Competency - Silver - 2002 - Bioethics.