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Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 3.15.97: Top | Help


On the contrary

Sh's picture of the play's bad guys is actually more balanced than his sources' - see the exchange on Claudius a few queries down. They are none of them stock villains, but are given complexity and some awareness that they have a point-of-view different from Hamlet's. You might try to hunt down a poem, available in translation, by the modern Polish poet Z Herbert, called something like "Fortinbras' Elegy for Hamlet." Its theme, to paraphrase, is "You were far more of a tragic hero than I will ever be, but now I've got to rule Denmark and get the roads paved and the sewers dug. Could you have done that?"

Posted by Hamlet on March 22, 1997 at 12:44:30
In Reply to "Did WS misrepresent the characters of Claudius, Gertrude, and Polonius" posted by Gary Hornung on March 21, 1997 at 20:48:20


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Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 3.15.97: Top | Help