G. Thompson
Sept. 21 Hamlet, acts IV and V
Race, "The Word Καιρός in Greek Drama" (Canvas) (kairos more often pertains to propriety than to timing)
Baumlin and Baumlin, "Chronos, Kairos, Aion: Failures of Decorum, Right-Timing, and Revenge in Shakespeare's Hamlet." 165-86
Consigny, "Rhetoric and its Situations" (Canvas) (suggests a third position between Bitzer's and Vatz's)
Tonight--discuss readings about kairos; apply to Hamlet, last two acts but also throughout; discuss plans for the first essay with people individually.
I would suggest that we do this as follows:
essays by Race and Consigny
Baumlins re Hamlet; add our own observations based on passages, in brief, exploratory fashion
Race, "The Word Καιρος in Greek Drama"
I'm a believer in definitions being based on usage by native speakers. Unfortunately we don't have any ancient Greeks around to check about usage, and we have surprisingly little textual evidence. What we do have are writings, in this case plays, and what Race does is to categorize uses of kairos in plays and other texts in order to create a more nuanced definition.
Key conclusion is that between its earliest uses (Homer, other places) and the fourth century B.C.E., the dominant sense was normative, that is, not temporal. The focus rather is on propriety. This ties in with the article by Baumlin and Baumlin on Hamlet, interestingly.
"In general, I have found that translators and commentators have overemphasized the temporal aspect" of kairos. (198) The timeliness aspect comes in later.
Hesiod--the word is a warning against putting too many goods into a ship or onto a wagon--fitting the proper amount to circumstances.
Examples from tragedy
Aeschylus, Prometheus (199)
"there is a considerable number of passages in drama (and elsewhere) where a form of Καιρος applies to things said and where the point is that they are apposite, to the point, ultimately correct and worthwhile." (201)
Hamlet to Horatio, 3.2.55-73; also, his speech to the players--don't overdo it.
1.4.8-38--Danish are becoming known as drunkards. (This point is made in the article as well.)
"silence is preferable unless what one says is appropriate and worthwhile."
How much is decorous?
One instance--simply advantageous, w/out ethical significance.(205)
Need, advantage, success
fitting, proper, right
Finally, appropriate time / circumstances (211)
Opportunity, chance (212)
"in the majority of cases in fifth-century drama the normative connotations are dominant." (213)
Note that Race is talking here about the fourth-fifth century B.C.E. Later the sense of time comes in more forcefully.
Consigny, "Rhetoric and Its Situations."
Consigny is trying to find a way to moderate between Bitzer's and Vatz's positions.
Bitzer: "the rhetorical situation is empirically determinate"--there's an "objectively recognizable 'exigence' or urgent problem potentially modifiable through persuasive discourse" (175)
"The rhetorical situation is a determining situation"--rhetor's response is controlled.
Vatz: emphasis is on "the creative role of the rhetor"--the situation is not determinate. "'No situation can have a nature independent of the perception of its interpreter or independent of the rhetoric with which he choose to characterize it." The rhetor does the determining.
"Rather than encountering a well-posed problem which demands a proper solution, the rhetor creates and formulates the problem at will." (176)
This presents an "antinomy" between free will and determinism. How much as an agent can we shape the outcome of events? Taken together, Consigny says, Bitzer and Vatz give only a partial view of rhetoric: he argues that there is a third factor, rhetoric as an art of "topics" or commonplaces--if a rhetor has command of topics, s/he can adapt to most rhetorical situations by drawing on those.
I'm skeptical.
Bitzer's exigence is like the solution to a problem--but it's more the case that the rhetorical situation is "an indeterminate existential situation" and the rhetor has to make the best of it.
"The rhetor's task is not to answer questions and solve well-formulated problems, but rather to be able to ask good questions and to formulate or discover relevant problems in an indeterminate situation. Problems do not formulate themselves . . ." (177)
Hamlet cannot confirm the ghost's assertions directly, so he translates the problem into seeing how Claudius will react if presented publicly with a simulation of his murder.
How does this work out? Hamlet doesn't allow the situation to be appropriately dramatized, but gets into the staging area and interprets it. "If he do but blench, I know my course." But he makes Claudius blench.
Because the rhetor must in part structure the problem, it cannot be determinate in the way Bitzer argues.
"IF the rhetor is to function effectively in novel rhetorical situations, disclosing relevant issues in each, he requires a capacity which allows him to be receptive and responsive to the particularities of novel contexts." (180) The solution, for Consigny, is through the "art of rhetoric"--heuristics which allow responses in unanticipated circumstances.
Conditions: integrity and receptivity: The first (supposedly) prepares the rhetor to function in "all kinds of indeterminate and particular situations as they arise." Really? You can't just be creative and invent the problems you are prepared to solve, but must be receptive to circumstances.
Topics (181)--these are for Aristotle the entirety of rhetoric--to discover the available means of persuasion in all cases. Opposition of terms: possible / impossible, future / past, amplification / diminution. (183)
"The rhetor has a repertoire of available topics derived from previous engagements, and in a novel situation he may try several topics before finding those which are fruitful." (183)
Example--freedom vs. order (184)
How is it kairos if you have a prepared set of topics and can try to wedge them into what you are ready to discuss? "Within his range, he cannot be surprised." (Nemerov)
Baumlin and Baumlin, "Chronos, Kairos, Aion: Failures of Decorum, Right-Timing, and Revenge in Shakespeare's Hamlet"
Hamlet as "complete gentleman": signaled by Ophelia's soliloquy:
O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword,
Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mold of form,
Th' observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
They discuss Hamlet as "a study in the failure of prudentia and, thus, . . . a critical test of Humanist educational, ethical, political, rhetorical theory" Hamlet fails the test. (165)
How do we reconcile decorum with "blood revenge"?
Hamlet, they say, wants to "assert control over his life and circumstances" (166). Support?
"Has this fellow no feeling of his business?" Gravedigger singing as he prepares a grave, tosses skulls around, etc.
David Tennant Hamlet--
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLO5IdAl-q8
Others' violations:
Polonius--"parody of the Humanist scholar-statesman"
Hamlet's speech to the players is all about decorum (167); speakers who go overboard, violating kairos, as do Polonius and Osric, are mocked.
Osric--see 5.2.67-174 (pp. 135-37)
The court's violation of decorum:
drinking (1.4.14-16);
his father's death and "our o'er-hasty marriage"
Hamlet's suits of black are what is customary (1.2.78), suggesting that he at least will observe decorum. It's not appropriate to their marriage, however--Hamlet is caught between two sets of rules (168).
Arrival of the Ghost--who is "both outside of time" and "a disrupter of it." (168)
Hamlet's madness--"a means of improvisation, rendering his words and actions unpredictable and, thus, uncontrollable by others." See conversations with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in 4.3 and other places.
Are his improvisations successful? "To the rest of Denmark, Hamlet's subsequent words and actions become imprudent, impudent, unsettling, violent, insulting"--resulting in several deaths. Hamlet's "antic disposition" and violation of decorum "costs him no less than his prior social identity and once-precious reputation."
Following Laertes into Ophelia's grave--extremely indecorous (168)
Timing--Shakespeare's play becomes a tragedy because of Hamlet's failure to act at the right moment (169). He fails to kill Claudius, and then rashly kills Polonius out of mistaken identity.
So is the problem that Hamlet should have committed revenge, but fails out of bad timing and decorum (kairos)? Or is it that revenge itself is inappropriate? "Thus Shakespeare tests the kairotics or problematic 'right-timing' of revenge, a subject that expands into an exploration of time itself, particularly in its relation to human ethics and action." (169)
The word time occurs more often here than in any other Shakespearean play.
Significance of fortune: "she is a strumpet," says Hamlet in banter with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Counterpoised to "special Providence"--as in 5.2. 197 (98).
Cf. Plato, as quoted by Smith: "Chance [tyche] and occasion [kairos] cooperate with God in the control of all human affairs" (54)
There's a third term for time in Greek, aion, "timelessness and worldly transcendence." (176)
"Hamlet's problem is not that he cannot appreciate the paradox of rotting while ripening; rather, he divines that he will not enjoy the luxury of decay, but must pursue a course of action causing him to die 'betimes' (5.2.222)--that is, 'early'--and that he will fall into the oblivion of aion at the very moment that he finds and embraces his kairos." (178)
Yorick is the inverse of the Ghost, the "physical remnant of a departed spirit," as opposed to "the spiritual remnant of a departed body." (180)
"Readiness" or "ripeness"--"a state of being, not an action in time." (180)
What have been some of the traditional theories about Hamlet? Overview?
Propriety--cf. the Doctor's comment--Ophelia has been mourned with "maimed rites" because she was a suicide; the gravediggers continue this discussion as well.
Laertes would be happy to violate decorum--
what would you undertake
To show yourself in deed your father's son
More than in words?
To cut his throat i' th' church!
(4.7.122-25, p. 119)
Violation of decorum much?
Just before this, Claudius has spoken to the importance of timeliness:
That we would do
We should do when we would, for this "would" changes,
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents,
And then this "should" is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing. (4.7.116-20, p. 119)
What does an awareness of kairos do for our reading of Hamlet?
The shorthand judgment, appended to the start of Olivier's Hamlet (I think) is that this is "the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind." That's always felt insufficient to me.
This might be appropriate for group discussion, which passages connect to what we've learned about kairos and what if anything this adds to our interpretation of the play.
If we follow the Freudian reading, elaborated by Ernest Jones, then Hamlet is paralyzed at guilt because Claudius has done what he himself unconsciously would want to do--kill his father and marry (sleep with) his mother.
Eliot's observation is that the feeling in the play does not find an "objective correlative" to release it. I don't know what to do with that.
Perhaps Hamlet simply wants a perfect revenge--his arrangement of the Mousetrap play would confirm that, along with his rationalization for not stabbing Claudius at prayer (he looks like he would be saved, and that's not revenge).
"The ripeness is all." Be prepared for whatever comes, Hamlet says, but Claudius and Laertes started the plot before he was ready.
Cf. Hamlet's account of the preparation + improvisation that saved him from being beheaded in England.
Rashly,
And praised be rashness for it--let us know,
Our indiscretion sometime serves us well
When our deep plots do pall, and that should learn us
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will. (5.2.7-11, p. 133)
Staging of fencing scene is important--"Have at you now"--usually played with Laertes striking Hamlet while his back was turned. Where Gertrude is when she drinks the poisoned cup, and whether she is aware of what she is doing, is significant.
Osric and hat--whether it's hot or cold (5.2.78-88, p. 136)
In order to save on players, Osric is sometimes closely involved in the plot against Hamlet. However, I think that conflicts with his general silliness.
Don't forget about Fortinbras--Hamlet sees in Fortinbras' situation the image of his own, for good reason. How is Fortinbras a foil for Hamlet? He walks in and takes advantage (Trump-like, perhaps).
Is Hamlet's situation rhetorical? How does rhetoric come into the play?
Is his situation at various points more Bitzerian--that is, the situation compels his action?--or Vatzian, he creates it?
Consider the play within a play; the description of how he escaped from being sent to England; the scene at Ophelia's grave; the fencing scene;
Does the play support the contention that "there is a divinity that shapes our ends"?
How do we think of the character of Hamlet? As someone articulate and intelligent who has to carry out something crude? As someone too smart for his own good? as unfortunately subject to bad luck (strumpet Fortune)?