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Playlist Shakespeare's Hamlet: Shmoopversations 16 videos
Crack open your copy of Hamlet, because it's time to discuss what happens during the course of Act I. Sadly, it has nothing to do with ham.
What is the setting of Hamlet, and how does it contribute to the overall feel of the play?
What does the line "to thine own self be true" mean in the context of the play? And why do so many people use it as their senior yearbook quote? Pe...
Shakespeare's Hamlet 13 Yorick's Skull 88 Views
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Description:
Who is Yorick, and why is Hamlet so obsessed with his skull? Seriously, if Hammy had an Instagram account, it'd be all skull pictures...
Transcript
- 00:00
Thank you We sneak Shakespeare's hamlet yorick skull Alas Who
- 00:12
is your iq and why his hamlet so obsessed with
- 00:15
his skull So yorick is this court jester that that
- 00:19
hamlet me when he was a kid and now he's
- 00:22
finding he's encountering his scroll holding him up and kind
Full Transcript
- 00:25
of like speaking to the school right about the nature
- 00:27
of death and how we're all going to end in
- 00:29
death And in some ways this is a classic clown
- 00:31
moment because the jester's air always about drawing our attention
- 00:34
toe the vanity of our contemporary concerns right They're always
- 00:38
kind of saying like you take yourself so seriously but
- 00:41
actually you're a fool just like i'm a fool or
- 00:43
like you take yourself so seriously but soon you're gonna
- 00:45
be dead and here hamlet is showing how did the
- 00:48
other side of it where he's talking to the jester
- 00:51
and thinking of it not as a comic moment but
- 00:52
as a legitimately a tragic one So we can think
- 00:54
about him kind of looking into the skull as a
- 00:57
classic conflict between these two ways of dealing with the
- 01:00
inevitability of death either by kind of like taking a
- 01:03
kind of stoic distance and like maybe even having fun
- 01:07
or like really feeling like like your whole life is
- 01:11
determined by death in some important way Why does hamlet
- 01:16
compare york tau alexander the great So he says that
- 01:19
like alexander the great and you're both going to return
- 01:22
to dust right So it's again about the vanity of
- 01:24
thinking that you have more of a name or less
- 01:27
of the names This idea that we're kind of recuperating
- 01:29
all the people who died who weren't seen as being
- 01:33
as important and actually thinking about how how their life
- 01:36
is as as important as substantial as any political leaders
- 01:43
What purpose is the grave diggers served during this scene
- 01:46
So the grave digger is There also is a kind
- 01:48
of bumbling clown figure reminding us of how different that
- 01:54
life in the castle is from life everywhere else So
- 01:56
whereas they're all kind of obsessed with this infighting there's
- 01:59
a grave digger who's actually just like earning his wade
- 02:02
So so again like like the contrast between your iq
- 02:05
and alexander the great We had this contrast between hamlet
- 02:08
and the grave digger and we're kind of challenge to
- 02:11
think about whether or not they're there stories or have
- 02:15
equal importance right Whether the comic has equal weight as
- 02:18
the tragic because the grave digger again is this comic
- 02:21
figure like yorick being contrast it with the tragic figure
- 02:24
cream ones Who is your iq and why his hamlet
- 02:31
so obsessed with his skull Why does hamlet compare york
- 02:35
tau alexander the great What purpose is the grave digger 00:02:38.648 --> [endTime] served during this scene
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