Cultural study in practice : "Hamlet" and "To his coy mistress".

Welcome readers !

♣️Two characters in Hamlet : marginalization with a vengeance :-

                       Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet's fellow students from Wittenberg . In response to Claudius's plan to send Hamlet to England, Rosencrantz delivers a speech that-if read out of context-is both an excellent set of metaphors and a summation of the Elizabethan concept of the role and power of kingship . Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are among the jellyfish of Shakespeare's characters. The two are distinctly plot driven : empty of personality, sycophantic in a snivelling way, eager to curry favor with power even if it means spying on their erstwhile friend .

♣️ According to Murray J. Levith : 

          " Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are from the Dutch-German : literally , 'garland of roses' and 'golden star'. Although of religious origin, both names together sound singsong and odd ti English ears. Their jingling give them a lightness, and blurs the individuality of the characters the table ".

♣️ According to Harley Granville Barker :

              Harley Granville Barker once wrote in an offhand way of the reaction these two roles call up for actors. Commenting on Solanio and Salarino from The Merchant of Venice  . He noted that their roles are " cursed by actors as the two worst bored in the whole Shakespeare's Canon; not expecting, even those other twin brethren in nonentity , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern".

                 In the  20th century the dead, or never living, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were resuscitated by Tom Stoppard in a fascinating re-seeing of their existence ,or its lack . Ine Stoppard's version they are even more obviously two inffectual pawn ,seeking constantly to know who they are , why they are here , where they are going. Whether they "are" at all may be the ultimate question of the modern play. In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead , Stoppard has given the contemporary audience a play that examines existential fashion in the context of a whole world that may have no meaning at all .

                   Whether in Shakespeare's version or Stoppard's, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are no more than what Rosencrantz called a "small annexment" a " petty consequences", mere nothing for the "massy wheel" of Kings.

🔲 "TO HIS COY MISTRESS" :-

                      Andrew Marvell's " To his Coy mistress" tell the reader a good deal about speakers of the poem, much of which is already clear from earlier comments in this volume, using traditional approaches. We know that the speaker is  knowledgeable about poem and conventions of classic Greek and Roman literature, about other conventions of love poetry, such as the courtly love convention of the mediaeval Europe and about Biblical passage. 

                      The first stanza, says Jules Brody , shows "its insistent, exaggerated literariness " and in the second stanza Brody see not only the conventional carpe diem theme from Horace but also echoes from Ovid, joined by other echoes from the book of common prayer from the Greek Anthology . In other words, the speaker is a highly educated person, one who is well read, one whose natural flow of associated images move lightly over details and illusions that reflect who he is , and he expect his hearer or reader to respond in a kind of harmonic vibration . He think in terms of precious stones, of exotic and distant places, of a milieu where eating, drinking and making merry seems to be an achievable way of life.

                        But what does he not show ? As he selects these rich and multifarious allusions, what does he ignore from his culture? now consider historical reality, a dimension that the poem ignores. Consider disease real and present disease what has been called the "chronic morbidity" of the population. Although the speaker thrusts disease and death into the future, we know that syphilis and other sexually transmitted disease where just is real phenomenon a in Marvell's day as in our era. What was the reality that the speaker chooses not to think about, as he pushes off death and the "vault" to some distant time?