Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Alejandro Manniello
March 2006
CONTENTS
5. References......................................................... 21
Alejandro Manniello 2
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
ABSTRACT
Alejandro Manniello 3
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET AND POE’S USHER:
PERCEPTION OF SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION
political transition from the long and firm rule of Queen Elizabeth I to
new social system, capitalism, had already been formed long before
towards the end of the Middle Ages (McNall Burns, 1973). However, it
the medieval tradition did not die altogether with the arrival of the
new system.
revenge and doubt after the assassination of his noble father, the
1
Although the play was first printed in 1603, there is evidence that the stage history of
Hamlet seems to date back to 1589 (Lott, 1968)
Alejandro Manniello 4
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
history of human letters. Numberless books and articles have been
written about the troubled prince, and it has been suggested that a
whole lifetime would not be enough for anyone to read all that has
More than two hundred years later, half a century after the birth of
the American nation, a poet of New England, whose soul was different
literary career which would not bear its fruit or achieve any success
till well after the writer died (Regan, 1967). Edgar Allan Poe, famous
of the end of his dynastic line and of his own death. The protagonist
he lives and is part of a social system whose days, like his own, are
Alejandro Manniello 5
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
The parameters of comparison will mainly be related to the
audiences were not new to the story of Hamlet (Lott, 1968). Indeed,
the story goes that an early tragedy about Prince Hamlet was written
life of a prince. Yet, there is little doubt that the subtle complexities
Alejandro Manniello 6
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
of this character were largely enriched and enhanced by
Shakespeare.
turn born into the emerging capitalist system (McNall Burns 1973).
manages to kill Claudius in the end. Challenging all feudal values and
modern man.
Alejandro Manniello 7
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
Although the real complicator of the drama points to the death of
Hamlet’s father, the prince’s conflict really starts when the imposing
figure of the ghost of Old Hamlet, standing in full armour, informs his
Hamlet’s ear with this horrendous information, in the same way that
the late king himself is poisoned to death by his own brother. From
that moment onward, the young prince’s life will change altogether:
king’s death.
Hamlet hits on the idea of putting “an antic disposition on” (I.v.172)
(Lott, 1968): while some believe that he needed to stand away from
the rest in order to corroborate the ghost’s story and plan his
revenge, others suggest that his feigned madness comes from the
need to have more time. Some authors affirm that Hamlet’s insanity
convinced that the young prince is definitely insane and assume that
Alejandro Manniello 8
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
unrequited love for Polonius’ daughter, Ophelia. Hamlet indeed acts
frightening her and, above all, unleashing his anger at her consent to
finishes with her life. On the other hand, Polonius, another future
belittle him, treating the king’s official as a stupid old man, the really
stupid old advisor affirms that “[t]hough this be madness, yet there is
be it constructed or real.
The complex issues associated with the spirit are strongly contrasted
Alejandro Manniello 9
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
(I.v.90). In direct allusion to Danish decadence, it is the Prince who
Prince cynically narrates about the likely presence of a king inside the
decadence.
enjoy worldly pleasures. The first time the audience sees Hamlet, he
is in the company of his mother, his uncle and practically the whole
Danish court. Yet, he is away from the rest and down-hearted. His
Alejandro Manniello 10
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
depression stems from the death of his father and from his mother’s
hasty marriage to his uncle, the new king. No matter how hard
father’s ghost: even if his acts of madness provide the play with acid,
climax of the play, that is, before the performance of ‘The Murder of
when, in the middle of it, Shakespeare makes Hamlet utter one of the
Alejandro Manniello 11
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
most beautiful definitions of humanism: “what a piece of work is
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher was written in 1839
rides to the mansion of his old friend Roderick Usher, whom he has
not seen for many long years, and arrives only to see a decaying
escape from.
The first element that the narrator perceives is the mental state of his
Alejandro Manniello 12
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
strong sensory stimulus. Usher simply cannot bear to stand in the
sunlight, and his hearing powers are overwhelmed by any loud sound
simple to discover the strong symbolic link between the tension of the
and the reader is told that Usher is the last of his dynastic line: his
impending death will entail the end of a solid aristocratic family line.
Indeed there is a sister, his twin: Lady Madelaine of Usher. She has
been Usher’s sole companion for long years and now she is suffering
nature had always existed” (Poe, 259) between brother and sister: a
2
His heart is a suspended lute;
Whenever one touches it, it resounds.
Alejandro Manniello 13
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
possible reference to an incestuous relationship between them.
into their lineage. This type of practice has, for example, generated
“plebeian” blood). The Ushers’ malady and their imminent deaths also
seem to stand for and symbolise the end of a social system and of a
political order.
Alejandro Manniello 14
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
direct reference to the loss of reason as a palpable reality. This vision
central theme of the interface between the end of a family line and
the small poem ‘The Haunted Palace’, inserted in the story, and
I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once fair and stately palace
Radiant palace --reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion
-- It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
[…]
VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh --but smile no more.
Alejandro Manniello 15
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
The first and the last two stanzas of this little inserted masterpiece
all the way through the poem, since this palace is indeed a human
perceived as the slow process of the end of reason, closely tied to the
Poe as the old feudal regime’s incapacity to adapt to the new system,
the stones of the house, and decayed trees standing around. These
elements, together with the small crack in the wall which will later on
gape out and destroy the house, illustrate the general decadence and
decomposition that will bring the story to its ending. However, the
Alejandro Manniello 16
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
dynasty and the objects that make up and surround his house exist in
strange character affirms that all objects have a life, and this
vegetable or mineral.
4. Concluding Words
paper.
opposition represents the passage from the old feudal system to the
Alejandro Manniello 17
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
new capitalist order. Unlike the Prince of Denmark, Poe’s Usher lives
from the murder of his father, and the marriage of his mother to the
dynastic line, which would also bring upon the complete destruction
his father and the present king constantly speak of his nostalgia for
the times gone. Hamlet tells the king’s spies Rosencrantz and
his coming death, the end of his family line, which represents the
Alejandro Manniello 18
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
As regards the characters’ depression, it should be interesting to note
that both of them feel deep nostalgia for the past. This omnipresent
his father in grim contrast with his uncle, and in the sad awareness
Usher’s situation.
constantly refer to life, death and the sad state his beloved country is
from life and death to the political present of Denmark. On the other
complex structure. The lord of the mansion perceives not only the
inevitability of his death, but also has a clear vision of the “sentient”
Alejandro Manniello 19
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
portrays nature revolting against the action of regicide in Macbeth
(Ludowyc, 1964), that is, the upsetting of the Medieval natural order,
although slightly anachronically, that is, long after the nobility ceased
Alejandro Manniello 20
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
5. References
Poe, E.A. (1839). The Fall of the House of Usher. In Van Doren Stern,
P. (Ed.) (1945).
Van Doren Stern, P. (Ed.) (1945). The Portable Poe. New York:
Penguin.
Alejandro Manniello 21
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006