William
Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon,
England. From roughly 1594 onward he was an important member of the Lord
Chamberlain’s Men company of theatrical players. Written records give
little indication of the way in which Shakespeare’s professional life
molded his artistry. All that can be deduced is that over the course of
20 years, Shakespeare wrote plays that capture the complete range of
human emotion and conflict.
Theme of the play:
1) The Impossibility ofcertainity 2)The complexity of action 3)The mystery of death
About the Play:
On a dark winter night, a
ghost walks the ramparts of Elsinore Castle in Denmark. Discovered
first by a pair of watchmen, then by the scholar Horatio, the ghost
resembles the recently deceased King Hamlet, whose brother claudius has inherited the throne and married the king’s widow, Queen Gertrude . When
Horatio and the watchmen bring Prince Hamlet, the son of Gertrude
and the dead king, to see the ghost, it speaks to him, declaring
ominously that it is indeed his father’s spirit, and that he was
murdered by none other than Claudius. Ordering Hamlet to seek revenge
on the man who usurped his throne and married his wife, the ghost
disappears with the dawn. Prince Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his father’s
death, but, because he is contemplative and thoughtful by nature,
he delays, entering into a deep melancholy and even apparent madness. Claudius
and Gertrude worry about the prince’s erratic behavior and attempt
to discover its cause. They employ a pair of Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern, to watch him. When Polonius, the pompous Lord
Chamberlain, suggests that Hamlet may be mad with love for his daughter,
Ophelia, Claudius agrees to spy on Hamlet in conversation with the
girl. But though Hamlet certainly seems mad, he does not seem to
love Ophelia: he orders her to enter a nunnery and declares that
he wishes to ban marriages. A group of traveling actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamlet
seizes upon an idea to test his uncle’s guilt. He will have the
players perform a scene closely resembling the sequence by which
Hamlet imagines his uncle to have murdered his father, so that if
Claudius is guilty, he will surely react. When the moment of the
murder arrives in the theater, Claudius leaps up and leaves the
room. Hamlet and Horatio agree that this proves his guilt. Hamlet
goes to kill Claudius but finds him praying. Since he believes that
killing Claudius while in prayer would send Claudius’s soul to heaven,
Hamlet considers that it would be an inadequate revenge and decides
to wait. Claudius, now frightened of Hamlet’s madness and fearing
for his own safety, orders that Hamlet be sent to England at once. Hamlet goes to confront his mother, in whose bedchamber
Polonius has hidden behind a tapestry. Hearing a noise from behind
the tapestry, Hamlet believes the king is hiding there. He draws
his sword and stabs through the fabric, killing Polonius. For
this crime, he is immediately dispatched to England with Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern. However, Claudius’s plan for Hamlet includes more
than banishment, as he has given Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sealed orders
for the King of England demanding that Hamlet be put to death. In the aftermath of her father’s death, Ophelia goes mad
with grief and drowns in the river. Polonius’s son, Laertes, who
has been staying in France, returns to Denmark in a rage. Claudius
convinces him that Hamlet is to blame for his father’s and sister’s
deaths. When Horatio and the king receive letters from Hamlet indicating that
the prince has returned to Denmark after pirates attacked his ship
en route to England, Claudius concocts a plan to use Laertes’ desire
for revenge to secure Hamlet’s death. Laertes will fence with Hamlet
in innocent sport, but Claudius will poison Laertes’ blade so that
if he draws blood, Hamlet will die. As a backup plan, the king decides
to poison a goblet, which he will give Hamlet to drink should Hamlet
score the first or second hits of the match. Hamlet returns to the
vicinity of Elsinore just as Ophelia’s funeral is taking place.
Stricken with grief, he attacks Laertes and declares that he had
in fact always loved Ophelia. Back at the castle, he tells Horatio that
he believes one must be prepared to die, since death can come at any
moment. A foolish courtier named Osric arrives on Claudius’s orders
to arrange the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes.
The sword-fighting begins. Hamlet scores the first hit,
but declines to drink from the king’s proffered goblet. Instead,
Gertrude takes a drink from it and is swiftly killed by the poison.
Laertes succeeds in wounding Hamlet, though Hamlet does not die
of the poison immediately. First, Laertes is cut by his own sword’s
blade, and, after revealing to Hamlet that Claudius is responsible
for the queen’s death, he dies from the blade’s poison. Hamlet then
stabs Claudius through with the poisoned sword and forces him to
drink down the rest of the poisoned wine. Claudius dies, and Hamlet
dies immediately after achieving his revenge.
At this moment, a Norwegian prince named Fortinbras, who
has led an army to Denmark and attacked Poland earlier in the play, enters
with ambassadors from England, who report that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
are dead. Fortinbras is stunned by the gruesome sight of the entire
royal family lying sprawled on the floor dead. He moves to take
power of the kingdom. Horatio, fulfilling Hamlet’s last
request, tells him Hamlet’s tragic story. Fortinbras orders that
Hamlet be carried away in a manner befitting a fallen soldier.
Were I to Choose “When Adam broke the stone and red streams reged down to gather in the womb, an angel calmed the storm”, “And I, the breath mewed in Cain, unbliniking gaze at the world without from the brink of an age”. Gabriel is immersed in folk tradition and ballad influences of tradition and culture are found in his poem. His poems are regional as well as universal. His poems are sometimes lyrical and full of music. The poem ‘Were I to choose’ is reminiscent of yeast poem called “Adam’s Curse.” The poet has tried to compare Adam’s toiling in the soil with the Negros working in the soil. They broke the stone themselves which was their very foundation. The red streams are symbolized for the multilingual diversity that reaches the womb Africa. Cain in this poem metaphorically represents the next generation. ‘I’ in Ok
Poem: Daddy You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time— Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew.
The Mystic Drum: The Mystic Drum is Okara’s love lyric. The Mystic Drum evinces a tripartite ritual pattern of imitation from innocence through intimacy to experience. By comparison to the way of zone as manifested in the experience of Zen master, Chin Yuan Wei-Asian this pattern resolves itself into an emotional and epistemic logical journey from conventional knowledge through more intimate knowledge to learn of experience empowers the lover to understand that beneath the surface attractiveness of what we know very well may lie an abyss of the unknown and unknowable belching darkness. But experience teaches us at this stage of substantial knowledge not to expose ourselves to the dangers of being beholden to this unknown and unknowable reality by keeping our passions under strict control including the prudent decision to ‘pack’ the ‘Mystic Drum’ of our innocence and evanescence making sure that it does not ‘beat so lo
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