Junior Varsity English (Prep for AP, Humanities, and Big Time University)

This a blog for Mr. James Cook's eleventh grade honors English class at Gloucester (MA) High School. Remember what Northrup Frye writes in _Fearful Symmetry_, "No one can begin to think straight unless [she or] he has a passionate desire to think and an intense joy in thinking."

Friday, April 13, 2007

fertility and sterility


fertility and sterility: 2.2.197-203, 2.2. 250-252, 2.2.322 & 332
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3 comments:

emily nicastro said...

HAMLET: For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion - Have you a daughter?
POLONIUS: I have, my lord.
HAMLET: Let her not walk i' th' sun. Conception is a blessing, but, as your daughter may conceive, friend, look to 't.
(2.2.197-203)

HAMLET: ...the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory... and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?...
(2.2.322+332)

In the first quote, Hamlet is speaking to Polonius. He is pretending to be crazy, and he is acting as though he does not know who Polonius is. Hamlet is telling Polonius to keep Ophelia out of the sun because she may conceive a child just as maggots spontaneously generate from a dog carcass in the sun. Hamlet is speaking of Ophelia while pretending to be unaware of the fact that he is speaking to Ophelia's father.
The second quote is Hamlet speaking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He says that the earth is, to him, a sterile rock. He goes on to describe the beauty of nature and the greatness of man. He then says that, to him, man it is all essentially dust. He does not care for the present beauty and greatness of the world, for, in the end, the earth is just a rock and man is dust and all is sterile.

Hamlet mocks fertility and sees only sterility. It seems as though he does not trust life, only death. Life is unpredictable, death is definite. This seems to be Hamlet's outlook anyway.

Is Hamlet the only character who uses the motif of fertility and sterility?

April 24, 2007 at 7:55 PM
Kelsey said...

HAMLET: For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion - Have you a daughter?
POLONIUS: I have, my lord.
HAMLET: Let her not walk i' th' sun. Conception is a blessing, but, as your daughter may conceive, friend, look to 't.
(2.2.197-203)

HAMLET: ...the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory...
(2.2.322)...and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?...
(2.2.332)

In the first quote, Hamlet is speaking with Polonius, pretending to be crazy and at the same time mocking Polonius. Here he speaks of maggots appearing in dead flesh, a reference to spontaneous generation, a common theory of the time. Then he asks if Polonius has a daughter, even though Hamlet knows Polonius does. Polonius still answers yes, and Hamlet proceeds to tell him to be wary of letting her outside, for she will become pregnant, a reference towards normal pregnancy rather than spontaneous generation. This stament about Polonius' daughter also seems to be trying to insult Polonius and Ophelia. The fact that a woman could conceive in the sun not because of some type of spontaneous generation, but because she is being a loose woman with people, implying that Ophelia is of questionable actions.

In the second quote, Hamlet is stating how bleak he finds the earth, even though others find it full of life. He sees the earth as a "sterile promentory", bleak and infertile. This may not be a literal reference, but more of a reference towards society by Hamlet. He speaks of nature first, and its beauty, but then he moves to picking apart man and his greatness. Though others around him find joy in life and society to work for, Hamlet sees nothing that he finds motivating, except to avenge his father's death, a miserable event. The world is just dirty, dusty for him, full of things with no meaning to him, only others. He finds man to be bleak, hopless, made of dust just like everything else around him.

Hamlet is stuck in the concept of sterility, seeing ony that around him. He speaks of fertility but only to mock it, how women become pregnant so easily, and how people think that maggots just appear in dead flesh, bread by the sun. that the sun will in turn cause pregnancy in a female, possibly because of loose behavior on the woman's part.

Why is Hamlet so obsesed with sterility? His situation is a depresing one, but he seems to have gone to an extreme, even if he claims he is only acting?

April 25, 2007 at 3:27 AM
emily nicastro said...

I honestly could not find this motif in the last three acts. I do not think that it is actually a motif. At least not in Acts 3-5.

May 16, 2007 at 4:55 PM

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