Adrienne Rich

Act five of Hamlet consists of only two scenes but they are action packed. Act five, scene two is a page turner with the battle scene followed by countless deaths. 

When I finished reading act four I assumed that more murders would follow, especially since Laertes and Claudius had planned a murder for Hamlet. And the fact that Ophelia and Polonius had already been murdered. But I never imagined the mass slaying that unfolded in scene two of act five. 

The events of scene one played up the idea of yet another death. Hamlet and Horatio conversed with gravediggers and stumbled upon the funeral of Ophelia. Hamlet and Laertes threatened each other and fought over who loved Ophelia more. Hamlet claims to love Ophelia more then 40 men combined (line 282-284) and lists what he would do for her. 

“Woo’t drink up eisell? eat a crocidle?” (line 289)

“Be buried quick with her, and so will I.” (line 293)

The harsh exchange between Laertes and Hamlet foreshadows their duel in the scene following. 

In scene two the deaths come quickly. Hamlet informs Horatio that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will be seeing their last days because he has given the government in England a letter asking for their execution.

“Without debatement further, more or less, 

He should the bearers put to sudden death,” (lines 45-46)

With those two taken care of, Hamlet can turn his attention to the awaiting duel with Laertes. As the battle wages on Gertrude drinks the poison by accident ending her life. This quickly instigates a quick turn of events. Laertes gets Hamlet with the poisonness sword and Hamlet in turn stabs Laertes with his own sword, they must have gotten mixed up during battle. Out of sheer angry Hamlet forces the king Claudius to drink the last of the potion. Shortly after Hamlet himself dies. But before his death Hamlet and Laertes resolve their conflict and Hamlet informs Horatio that Fortinbras shall govern Denmark. 

The ending of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is quick and bloody. The majority of main characters are killed all because of revenge or accident. 

 

Act four of Hamlet is all about one thing, revenge.

From the beginning of the play Hamlet has been seeking revenge for his fathers death. It is not until he talks to the ghost of the deceased king that he finds out Claudius is responsible for the murder. In act three Hamlet attempts to gain his revenge but instead of killing Claudius, Polonius is slewed. 

Act four begins with yet again, more revenge. Claudius wants to get Hamlet back for his murder of Polonius and by doing so is sending him to England as soon as possible, as in that afternoon. Along his his departure, Claudius has ordered the English government to sentence Hamlet to death when he arrives. 

Another twist is added to Act four when Laertes, the son of Polonius and brother to Ophelia, comes home from France. Upon his arrival home, Laertes learns of this father’s murder and becomes volatile. Trying to calm him down, Claudius tells Laertes about the murder and encourages him to seek revenge upon the killer, Hamlet. Laertes agrees and the two of them devise a plan for the death. 

Their plan consists of Laertes, a skillful sword fighter, challenging Hamlet to duel. Using a poisonness sword, Laertes will murder Hamlet in what looks like an innocent duel. It is ironic that Hamlet’s father was murdered with poison and that it is planned that Hamlet will die in a similar fashion. 

 

The third act of Shakespeare’s dramatic play, Hamlet, is full of misleading twists and turns. The theme of characters acting within their acting is common in Hamlet and this is present within act three. 

First, Hamlet is staged to talk to Ophelia. Polonius and Claudius hide behind a curtain while Ophelia and Hamlet converse. They are eavesdropping to learn more about Hamlet and his madness. During this scene it becomes unclear to the reader if Hamlet is still truly acting or if he is putting on a show to convince to Ophelia that he has gone insane. 

Then in scene two, adding to the theme of acting, a play arises. Hamlet has written a script for a group of traveling actors to perform. The play is about a king killing his brother and marrying the widow. Sound familiar? Hamlet has asked Horatio to watch Claudius during the show and see how he reacts to the show. Hamlet also warns Horatio that he might be acting strange. This moment is intriguing because it is the first time that Hamlet addresses that fact that at times he seems to be going mad. This is evidence to believe he is aware of the behavioral switch and controlling his behavior to come across crazy rather then actually being that way. Although later scenes contradict this evidence. 

In the conclusion of act three Hamlet mistakenly murders Polonius while having a private conversation with his mother Gertrude. This comes to a shock to both himself and Gertrude but he remains to criticize her about marrying Claudius. And then the ghost of Hamlet’s father reveals himself yet Gertrude is unable to see him but watches Hamlet converse with air. My interpretation of this scene is that Gertrude now fully believes her son is mad. She just witnessed him murder an innocent man and shortly after converse with a supposed ghost. 

I, myself, am not fully confident that Hamlet is acting mad at this point in the play. Although at first he was acting crazy for attention, some clues point to the fact that he might actually be crazy. 

Act Two of Hamlet is a very pivotal point in the Shakespearian play because it is where the plot thickens and characters develope more within themselves. Throughout all of Act Two there are important quotes that foreshadow or deeper explain the essence of Hamlet. 

“And with a look so piteous in purport

As if he had been loosed out of hell

To speak of horrors–he comes before me.” (Ophelia lines 82-84)

In this quote Ophelia is speaking of Hamlet and how in a crazed state he came to her alone. The word choice Shakespeare used for these lines is so similar to the words chosen to describe Hamlets father, the ghost. “As if he had been loosed out of hell” describes a similar situation as a ghost being let out of the under world. Hamlet earlier in Act One used this language and now it is being used to describe himself. 

“Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive.” (Hamlet lines 183-184)

When talking about Ophelia it is common for talk of pregnancy to arise making the reader question whether her and Hamlet ever had an established relationship. This is whoever one of the first times Hamlet talks about the possibility of Ophelia bearing a child. He is conversing with her father, Polonius, and trying to act ‘mad’, thus the satirical undertone in his comments. 

 

 

In just Act One the reader can pick up on important thematic ideas woven through William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. One of the main thematic ideas that Shakespeare intertwines in Hamlet is the action and concept of death. The play starts out with two guards, Bernardo and Francisco, watching over the land. Soon after Horatio and Marcellus, also two guards, come to take over the shift. The four of them speak of a ghost that has been seen lurking the past two nights. Ironically out floats the mysterious ghost who resembles the late king.

Marcellus: “Peace! break thee off! Look where it comes again!”

Bernardo: “In the same figure, like the King that’s dead.” (lines 40-41)

In scene two, the play switches to a indoor setting where King Claudius, the late kings brother, and his new wife, Queen Gertrude, mother to Hamlet and widow of the late king, reside among others. Hamlet is portrayed as sulking in the dark corners of the room. The king remarks on how the “clouds still hang” on him (line 66). Hamlet is still recovering from the loss of his father and the dreadful fact that his mother married his uncle only a few months after his fathers death. This unfortunate series of events have caused Hamlet to be perceived as cynical and dark from the readers perspective.

In scene four Hamlet stands guard with the other men to try and catch a glimpse of his father. Luckily, the king’s ghost appears and speaks to Hamlet.

Ghost: “I am thy father’s spirit,” (line 9) “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder…Murder most foul, as in the best it is;

But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.” (lines 25-28)

Hamlet is shocked by the information the ghost of his father has passed along and claims he might become a ‘madman’.

It is said that the theme of death is woven throughout the whole play and just by the material discussed in Act One it is evident that death will play a large role in the plot line of Hamlet. Shakespeare has intertwined the idea, concept or action of death into the molding of every character. First off, the play begins with a ghost of a king earlier murdered. Also all of the relationships amongst people have a connection to the death of the king. Hamlet’s mother has recently married the brother of her previous husband. The guards, friends of Hamlet, have seen his dead fathers ghost around midnight circling the town.

I predict the undertone of death will continue to be prevalent in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

The time has come, the lights are on

I’m ready to begin. The Others crowd me

but I rely on them for so much. 

 

hearing the staccato beating of a drum, 

I can’t postpone this any longer

 

Twirl, twirl, spin, spin

I loop myself across the stage

The hectic spiraling causes a blur 

around me. Faces swirl together,

colors fade and blend, noise and music 

cease to exist. 

 

Suddenly, the dance is done. Alone, 

I stand on the stage. an applause thunders from the sky

The audience is proud. But, I, 

the performer, what do I have to show from it? 

 

This poem is written with influences from Adrienne Rich’s work. First off I decided to write the poem in free verse because that is what Rich most commonly uses. Her stanza’s are moderate in length, usually around 4-6 lines. Although my second stanza is only two lines, I tried to use Rich’s norm as my guideline. Second off, Rich uses punctuation throughout her poems. The punctuation tells you where to break up the thoughts and ideas instead of using lines. 

As for meaning within my poem, I wanted there to be an alternative way of viewing similar to Rich’s work. For example, when you read Diving into the Wreck the meaning originally seen is a person diving into a ship wreck. The poem describes how the diver prepares for the adventure and how he or she handles it. But in reality you can view Diving into the Wreck as a struggle for woman. Rich uses Diving into the Wreck as a symbol for women’s battle with equal rights. 

In The Performance, above, I wanted to capture a symbol as well. Although when you first read The Performance it sounds just like a ballet, there is more underneath. I have the ‘performance’ symbolizing someone’s (the performer) journey through life. When the narrator talks about spinning uncontrollably and watching the world around her blend into something lifeless, this is meant to show what happens to life when you are too busy to enjoy it.

Then at the end of the poem, the performer or narrator is standing on stage alone. All of her companions are gone and the crowd is applauding and cheering, proud of what they just witnessed. But the narrator has nothing to show for her work any longer. 

This is similar to the work on Adrienne Rich because The Performance serves as a caution or warning similar to many of her works. 

 

Personally I enjoyed the blog style project verses the formal written essay. Because of the more informal approach I think the assignments came across less intimidating. Each assignment was challenging and thought provoking but because they came in small pieces it was easier to focus on the task at hand. Another thing I enjoyed with the blog project was being able to see what other students were working on. So many times with large projects we all get absorbed into our own work and never take a chance to see what everyone else is spending their time on. With the blog assignment it was easy to glance through other students work and learn from each other. 

One thing I would change for the blog assignment is the requirements for research. With the fall research project we were given a criteria for the research. Personally, this helped cultivate ‘scholarly sources’. With the blog assignment it was very easy to type something into Google and find information. With the fall research project we were required to find books and other sources of information. Although that was time consuming it really helped learn about proper research and it helped us dig deeper into our topic. 

Overall I think the blog assignment was successful. It opened online doors to the literature world. 

Blog Comments: 

Comparing Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde. 

sqnet.org

“Audre Lorde was an incredible poet who fought hard for the feminism and gay rights movements. Her companionship with Adrienne Rich held both of them develop as poets and artists.
Lorde began writing poetry in an autobiographical tone. Using her life and a jumping off point for many poems. This is a tactic Rich also began to use but not until she had already established herself as a poet.
When Rich was awarded with the National Book Award she declined accepting the award alone but instead enlisted the help of Audre Lorde and Alice Walker to accept the award on behalf of all silenced woman. Lorde and Rich were actively involved in the woman’s rights movements.”

Comparing Adrienne Rich and Emily Dickinson

English 220 Blog

“Great analysis of Diving into the Wreck. I am also doing an english assignment comparing the works of Adrienne Rich and Emily Dickinson.

Dickinson influenced Rich in many ways. In some of Rich’s work she actually used Dickinson as a subject. For example, in Rich’s poem, “The Spirit of the Place’, she talks about Dickinson’s house.

The influence of Dickinson is prevalent in Rich’s poetry collection “Necessities of Life”. Rich casts a darker tone over these poems and uses many analogies to death. Dickinson also had an infatuation with death and wrote about it constantly.” 

Adrienne Rich information

Gender and Technology Spring 2009 

“I enjoyed your introduction to Adrienne Rich. She is an extraordinary poet with an incredible grasp on language and tone. I am analyzing many different poems by her for an assignment in an English class and found your information and parallels interesting and useful. Rich’s past and culture truly helped form her as a poet and person. You can feel her life experiences bleeding through her poems and that makes her work more enjoyable to the reader.”

Allison Palm’s Blog

“I really enjoyed your introduction to Wakoski. I can relate to your analysis because my poet, Adrienne Rich, wrote during the same time period. Wakoski and Rich seem to have similar characteristics in their writing and lifestyles. Wakoski’s search for liberation of the mind during the 60’s seems very similar to Rich’s search for freedom in language. Your explanation of the “Beat Generation” helped me grasp more of the culture during the 60’s and the influences that controlled our poets at the time.” 

 

 

Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde had many things in common, their political beliefs, roles in activism for both woman’s rights and civil rights, getting a divorce after having a family but most importantly their creative approach to language and poetry. 

Audre Lorde was an african american feminist who used her words to captivate an audience and bring out a social conscience. Lorde was first impacted by Rich when her collection of poems titled Coal was published by the large company W.W Norton, who also published Rich’s work at the time. Being under the same name as Rich gave Lorde a larger white audience. Once Coal was published Rich was very impressed with Lorde’s work. 

 ”Refusing to be circumscribed by any simple identity, Audre Lorde writes as a Black woman, a mother, a daughter, a Lesbian, a feminist, a visionary.” (University of Illinois) 

Rich and Lorde remained in touch throughout the years, enlisting each other for various projects. In 1974 Rich was fortunate enough to receive the National Book Award for Poetry for her poem Diving into the Wreck. Instead of accepting the award solo Rich was joined by Lorde and Alice Walker to accept the award in the name of all silenced woman. 

Rich and Lorde both had strong views and were social activists. This influenced their poetry tremendously. Lorde fought passionately for gay and lesbian rights. In fact, in her poem Martha claims her homosexuality in the line, 

we shall love each other here is ever at all” (University of Illinois) 

Lourde began writing her poetry with an autobiographical twist. From the start she drew herself into the lines and stanzas. This is something Rich practices as well though it came later in her work. Both woman have similar writing techniques and styles. Their ideas are similar and expressed in parallel ways. 

Adrienne Rich draws from many outside sources when in comes to her poetry. History, political conflicts, and activism, are just a few. Rich is also influenced by those that came before her. During the sixties while Rich was writing poems such as, Necessities of Life and Leaflets, she was also studying and examining the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Dickinson became a influential leader in the work of Rich. During this time Rich became more experimental with her poetry. Leaving the structure and opening the doors of free verse.

“Dickinson is the American poet whose work consisted in exploring states of psychic extremity” (Brooklyn College Department of English)  

Also she played around with longer lines and not such harsh divides from one stanza to another. This is an idea that Emily Dickinson toyed with as well.

The influence of Dickinson is prevalent in Rich’s published work, Necessities of Life. The idea of death is woven throughout the collection of poems. Dickinson fantasized about death and commonly talked about it in her poetry. In the poem, Necessities of Life, which starts of the collection, Rich mentions death in the second half. 

Piece by piece I seem

to re-enter the world: I first began

 

a small, fixed dot, still see

that old myself, a dark-blue thumbtack

 

pushed into the scene, 

a hard little head protruding

 

from the pointillist’s buzz and bloom.

After a time the dot

 

begins to ooze. Certain heats

melt it. 

          Now I was hurriedly

Here we see Rich experimenting with lines and their design on the paper. This experimentation was common of her poetry at this time. 

 

blurring into ranges

of burnt red, burning green, 

 

whole biographies swam up and 

swallowed me like Jonah.

In the Bible story, Jonah and the Whale, Jonah does not literally die but is consumed by the whale. He is perceived as dead by others. Here is where Rich introduces the idea of death in ‘Necessities of Life’. 

 

Jonah! I was Wittgenstein (a philosopher specializing in humanities and social sciences, died in 1951) 

Mary Wollstonecraft, the soul (a influential feminist from the 18th century, during the women’s right movement in the 20′s Wollstonecraft’s ideas were prominently known) 

 

of Louis Jouvet, dead (a French actor and director, Jouvet also died in 1951) 

in a blown-up photograph. 

 

Till, wolfed almost to shreds, 

I learned to make myself

 

unappetizing. Scaly as a dry bulb

thrown into a cellar 

 

I used myself, let nothing use me. 

Like being on a private dole, 

 

sometimes more like kneading bricks in Egypt. 

What life was there, was mine, (the verb is in past tense, referring to a life that was once there, as in death is now) 

 

now and again to lay

one hand on a warm brick

 

and touch the sun’s ghost

with economical joy, 

 

now and again to name

over the bare necessities

 

So much for those days. Soon

practice may make me middling-perfect, I’ll 

 

dare inhabit the world

trenchant in motion as an eel, solid

 

as a cabbage-head. I have invitations:

a curl of mist steams upward

 

from a field, visible as my breath, 

houses along a road stand waiting

 

like old women knitting, breathless

to tell their tales. 

Rich also put Dickinson into her poetry as a subject. She believed they had a special connection together, a bond or a friendship.

“More than any other poet, Emily Dickinson seemed to tell me that the intense inner event, the personal and psychological, was inseparable from the universal.” (Brooklyn College Department of English)

A good example of Rich incorporating Dickinson in her poetry is section 3 of The Spirit of the Place. 

In Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherst

cocktails are served     the scholars

gather in celebration

their pious or clinical legends

festoon the walls like imitations

of period patterns

Rich imagined and elaborated about the life of Dickinson. She wrote about her often with a sense that she knew her. In fact, Rich moved to the valley of western Massachusetts, where Dickinson was born and raised. Some would question Rich about moving to the same area as her predecessor Dickinson. 

And I was occasionally asked, half jokingly, if I had moved there to be near Emily, and I acerbicly answered “no.” (http://www.emilydickinson.org/titanic/rich.html) 

Rich is an inspiring poet that influences many herself. In order to achieve such a high status she drew from great poets and world experiences. But in her eyes, Dickinson was the most captivating American poet.

 

Living in Sin

By: Adrienne Rich

 

She had thought the studio would keep itself;

no dust upon the furniture of love. 

Half hersey, to wish the taps less vocal, 

the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears, 

a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat

stalking the picturesque amusing mouse

had risen at his urging.

Not that at five each separate stair would writhe

under the milkman’s tramp; that morning light

so coldly would delineate the scraps

of last night’s cheese and three sepulchral bottles;

that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers

a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own–

envoy from some village in the moldings…

Meanwhile, he, with a yawn, 

sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard, 

declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror, 

rubbed at his beard, went out for a cigarettes;

while she, jeered by the mirror demons, 

pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found

a towel to dust the table-top, 

and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove. 

By evening she was back in love again, 

though not so wholly but throughout the night

she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming

 like a relentless milkman up the stairs. 

In Adrienne Rich’s poem Living in Sin the speaker is torn between the reality of her relationship and what her mind creates. In reality she has lost the love of her boyfriend and is confined in a dusty, dirty, old home. Her life has lost the unpredictable and exciting joys of youth. Their replacement is routine. The speakers life has transformed from something crazy and maybe ‘sinful’ to mediocre and non-thrilling. According to Carol Irwin, author of Expectations Versus Reality in Relationships: Adrienne Rich’s “Living in Sin” the speaker is aware of her confines and wants to break them.

“The narrator’s motive in the relationship was initially the romantic desire to live with the man she loves, but eventually her motive is simply to bear the routine and break the now boring nature of the actual relationship.” 

Although she tries, breaking a mold as hard as the one encasing her is hard, especially without any help. The speakers boyfriend is stuck in a daily routine as well but doesn’t seem to have the desire to break out of it. He “shrugged at the mirror, rubbed his beard, went out for cigarettes;” The speaker talks of this as a daily pattern with her, at one time lover. 

Towards the end of the poem, in line 23 the speaker says “By evening she was back in love again,”. Irwin explains this as, 

“Evening approaches, the speaker finds that she has revived only some of her love for the man–a love that had diminished during the bright light of day.” 

But even though a small portion of this love has rekindled her daily routine life takes over and takes over any sense of recovery. 

“she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming

like a relentless milkman up the stairs.” 

Irwin, Carol. “Expectations Versus Reality in Relationships: Adrienne Rich’s “Living in Sin”.” Lone Star College North Harris. Lone Star College North Haris. 19 Mar. 2009 <http://northharris.lonestar.edu/30937/>.