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Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries & Replies From Everyone Else 3.15.97: Top | Help
I think that Hamlet is merely being insulting.Now before you jump on me for not being politically correct, keep in mind that
Elizabethan England was not the same as twentieth-century North America. It was
not an uncommon device to employ Orientalism in poetry, art, and plays of the
time (see Anthony and Cleopatra for more of this). Orientalism is a use of the
Other in literature in which a stereotype is employed as a foil to the Western
world.The Orient (simply meaning "east" and used to apply to the lands controlled by
the Moors) was seen as the domain of decadance and debauchery. It was associated
with the pleasures of the flesh, lust, emotion (as opposed to Western reason),
and all things Bacchian in nature.By calling Claudius a Moor, Hamlet is merely saying that he is all of these
things... I do not believe that we are intended to take it literally.Now this is just the humble opinion of an English Lit student, but I ask you:
how many Danes do you know of African descent, let alone Danish usurper-kings?Posted by LunarCaustic on March 24, 1997 at 00:43:11
In Reply to "Claudius the Moor?" posted by Prince Hal on March 23, 1997 at 23:56:21
Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries & Replies From Everyone Else 3.15.97: Top | Help