Hamlet and Othello Essay

The 2 plays by William Shakespeare, settlement and Othello, reflect the Renaissance philosophy, with its most important schools- Platonism, Aristotelianism and Hu mankindism, especially in their treatment of benignant record and human condition. The works of the two philosophers Plato and Aristotle, which formed the basis of the two movements that took the names of their initiators, were reinterpreted by many scholars of the gothic and Renaissance period, and of the later periods.Platonism and Aristotelianism were opposed philosophies in their first articulation. The Platonists believed that there is a cosmos of abstr flakeions, the pure dry land of ideas. The characteristics of the material objects, formed an abstract world, which was to a greater extentover, the true word. For example, the Platonist school of thought implied that the material world was only a reflection factor of the perfect world of ideas, that is, a beautiful object is only the reflection of the idea of beauty.Aristotle revised these ideas that Plato had first initiated, and proposed an opposed view, which was based on an empirical way of knowing the world, and which constituted the first tone towards natural science.The two doctrines referred clearly to both(prenominal) ontological and epistemological facts about the world.On the other hand, the Renaissance humanism which was actually the most characteristic philosophy for this period, emphasized the nobility of human nature, and the powers of human intellect and spirit, while joining the two main philosophies Platonism and Aristotelianism.As Brian Copenhaver and Charles Schmitt observed in their Renaissance Philosophy, both Platonism and Aristotelianism presented many problems for the humanists and for the theologians as s considerably up, like, for instance the transmigration of souls and other beliefs which seemed incompatible with Christianitywhy should an upwardly mobile scholar or bureaucrat sympathize with Platos eliti sm? Were humanists not troubled by his scorn for poets and rhetoricians? Platos advocacy of communism and advertisement of homosexuality invited political and social complaint. Even his famed piety seemed out of tune with a philosophy that made matter eternal, the human soul antecedent and migratory, and the gods and demons many, powerful, and worthy of worship. As the Renaissance came to know Plato better, discussion of his thought could not have been other than interlacing and divided, and the controversy had been prepared by an anti-Platonic tradition long sustained by pagans and Christians alike. As early innovative thinkers developed new modes of reading unkn avow to antiquity and the Middle Ages, Platos compatibility with Christianity remained the leading question. (Copenhaver, 129)However, many of the ideas of the two philosophies were either kept or reinterpreted as the main philosophical views at the time of Renaissance, and this is truly well reflected in the plays of William Shakespeare.In village, which is one of Shakespeares plays that most approaches a metaphysical view of human nature seems to waver in its demand purport upon the edge separating Platonism from Aristotelianism. angiotensin-converting enzyme of the greatest dilemmas in Hamlet is that of individual action.Shakespeares prince of Denmark is called upon to r unconstipatedge the murder of his father. As critics have observed repeatedly, on of the most essential and telling things in the play is Hamlet hesitation when he has to narrow definite action against the murderer. One of the essential differences between the humanists who advocated Platos theory and the ones who adopted Aristotelianism, was that between the contemplative feeling that was characteristic of the Platonic movement and that of active life as presented by Aristotle. Various philosophers of the Renaissance took up one or the other of the two doctrines, and encouraged either contemplation or actionFicinos work () in addition glorified the contemplative life and professed an ascetic contempt for the material world not in belongings with the pragmatic interests of the civic humanists. But to see the Aristotelian Argyropoulos as champion of the active life and the Platonist Ficino as prophet of contemplative quietism is too simple. For one thing, Argyropoulos seems to have in escapeed no activist propaganda in his teaching, and, even more important, Ficinos theory of the contemplative life kept his philosophy attractive to the politically and economically vigorous Florentines who supported him.Always urging the ascent of the soul, Ficino presented the contemplative life as the final step in a hierarchy of human action that led people to surpass the active life without utterly denying it lived well, the active life becomes a step on the way to escaping matter and uniting with God. It was the temperament of Neoplatonism to open channels between the divine and the mundane that transcended t he world while preserving it as a program for ascent to the godhead. (Copenhaver, 144)Hamlet seems to be a contemplative character altogether, for whom the ideal world of abstract clean values constitutes the guiding principle. When he is faced with the baseness of the many crimes that occur in his own family, he postpones taking action and revenging his father. Moreover, the revenge takes sit almost accidentally at the end of the play. His hesitation in front of these material problems is relevant for his Neo- Platonic frame of thought How all occasions do state against me, And spur my dull revenge. What is a man If his chief good and market if his time Be and to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such volumed discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unusd. (Ham. IV. 4. 32-39)It becomes obvious from Hamlets speech that his reflections regarding human condition and human nature are based on main principles of both Humanism and Platonic thinking man is seen alternately by Hamlet as a superior being endowed with godlike reason and a beast, whose main concerns are its primeval needs. That is, Hamlets own ideas about the world and about man, which are essentially idealistic and Platonist, march with an obvious obstacle in the material world, where he sees the baseness of character of both his uncle and his mother. An even more poignant example of how he is repelled by the idea of a purely material world in which the spiritual realities he believes in are hardly perceptible is his unjust condemnation of Ophelia, whom he blames without certainty for the frailty he sees in his own mother.Hamlet ponders himself on his own hesitation in when he is supposed to take action, and realizes that his wavering comes from what he calls thinking too precisely on the event ( Ham. IV. 4. 41), that is to say, his own contemplative nature and the need to understand first and meditate on the ev ent, as well as to judge it, prevent him from taking action. At the end of the monologue however, he determines that his thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth( Ham. IV. 4. 66), that is, he chooses action over contemplation, as he feels he is compelled by the events to mend things and do justice to his fathers death.Thus, it can be said that Hamlet has to take action and reinstate the ethical tramp in the world, which had been so terribly disturbed by the crimes which took place in his family. This structuring of the events reflects the Renaissance philosophical context, which blended Platonism with Aristotelianism and Humanism.First of all, according to the Platonists man should tend to contemplation of the ideal world, and live in the purer world of the spirit, not be limited to the material one. The protagonists in Hamlet, that is the king and the queen, have sinned against these precepts by giving in to desire of power and to lust. The fact that Hamlet feels that he needs to t ake action is in tuning with the humanist idea that man can reestablish the divine order and that, in order to do that, he must play the part that is needed of him in the material world.Thus, the two worlds- the material and transcendental are not completely separate, and the Renaissance man believed that the spiritual perfection can be reached through action as well, insofar as this would hint reestablishing the divine order.In Othello, similar ideas appear about individual action. Othello too is called upon to take action against what he believes was the betrayal of his wife Desdemona. However, the first significant difference between Hamlet and Othello is that the latter is a moor, that is a colored man, of a different race and religion.The Renaissance views on the subject of race are very significant in the context of the play, and are reflected especially in Othellos character, which appears to be the very diametric of that of Hamlet.If Hamlet is of a contemplative nature, g iven to musings about the nature of man and his place in the world, Othello is a rough, impulsive man who acts without hesitation, but also, acts when he shouldnt.He is easily deceived by Iago and therefore he believes him when he tries to inflict him with false ideas about Desdemonas love. Thus, Othello, who like Hamlet, can be said to perform an act of revenge, actually does something which is useless and, moreover, unjust. Othellos character is also evident at the end of the play, after he kills Desdemona and confesses the manner in which he loved her one that loved not wisely, but too well (V.2.340). Thus, his own statement reveals the nature of his impulsive and tempestuous character and emotions he was capable of true and unafraid love, although he did not love wisely.This proves essentially that Hamlet and Othello are two opposite characters, both acting in the name of revenge, although for different reasons, Hamlet in his attempt at reestablishing the moral order and Othell o in the name of love. However, if Hamlet hesitates to take action for most of the play, and moreover, chooses the device of the staged play to bulge out his revenge, that is, another intellectual, contemplative device, Othello takes action without judging the events for himself, but being merely influenced by what Iago was telling him. Othello is a military character in a way, who is prone to take action and fight Farewell the muted mind farewell contentFarewell the plumed troops, and the big warsThat makes ambition virtue 0, farewellThe kinglike banner, and all quality,Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious warAnd O you mortal engines, whose rude throatsTh immortal Joves dread clamors counterfeit,Farewell Othellos occupations gone. ( Othello, 3.3.347-57)It is interesting to notice that both Othello and Hamlet may be paralleled to Cervantes apply Quixote.Hamlet lives interiorly in a Platonic world, which could be likened to Don Quixotes admiration of the books of romance w ith actual reality. Don Quixote lives in the world of the stories he has read, and moreover, those stories are chivalric romances, that is stories of quest and exemplary deeds which aim at mending the world and which are always fraught with symbolic meaning. But, he needs to accomplish the deeds that fill his fantasy, and although it cant be said that he does so, he does act. In Don Quixote thus, action is itself unreal, since his chivalric deeds are not what he believes they areWere those bollix walls in thy fantasy, Sancho, quoth Don Quixote, where or thorough which thou sawest that never-enough-praised gentleness and beauty? They were not so, but galleries, walks, or goodly stone pavementsor how call ye em?of rich and royal palaces. (Cervantes II, 489)The chivalric romances which are Don Quixotes faith are also that of Othello in a way, because of the latters military character, and his inquisition for adventures. Othellos love for Desdemona also has something of the chivalric about it. Thus, all the three characters, Hamlet, Othello and Don Quixote evince the kindred Platonist and Aristotelian dilemmas of contemplation and the spiritual versus action and the material.