to be or not to be, that is a question.
This is Hamlet's problem in Hamlet. Zhu Shenghao, a translator in our country, translated it as survival or destruction, which is a question.
Under the pretext of Hamlet, Shakespeare began to ask about the world, "to endure fate" or "to stand up against the endless suffering of the world", which of these two acts is more noble? The former is survival, the latter is most likely to face destruction. This is the ultimate question.
hamlet
In the eyes of some people, Hamlet is weak by nature, and his melancholy breath is far greater than his own vengeful thoughts, before he blades the enemy, he first forced his favorite Ophelia to die, and then in a trance made his mother drink poisoned wine, so revenge, not only let many people feel the weakness of the prince. Indecisive, at both ends of the rat, indecisive, indecisive, almost all these words can describe the prince.
Why was the prince so hesitant? The following will try to give an answer from Hamlet thinking.
Renaissance, the revival of not only the ancient Greco-Roman culture, with the discovery of "man" and "world", its most authentic meaning has gradually emerged, that is, the recovery of "thinking".
People in the Middle Ages were bound by the Pope's "theory of original sin." Ever since Adam and Eve stole the forbidden fruit and were cast out of the Garden of Eden, they both carried this original sin and then had to spend their lives paying for the sins of their ancestors. People are plagued by sin, coupled with the monopoly of cultural education by the church, many people can only be a devout Christian all their lives, and they are constantly squeezed out of money by the church's various clever names.
And so it went for a thousand years. Suddenly a group of Mongols came from the east, and after a looting, there was a great outbreak of plague that spread throughout Europe, and thousands of people died every day, and before the bloody facts, people suddenly realized that "the pope could not guarantee his life." After that, the story begins vigorously.
Shakespeare
People got rid of the godless medieval paintings of Mune and the beautiful pie painted by the Church for the afterlife, and a vigorous liberation movement that began in Italy began to sweep through Europe. People knew Dante, who dared to send the pope to hell, and also knew Boccaccio, who hid in the countryside for ten days, Shakespeare, who was influenced by these new ideas, and later took over the banner of the Renaissance.
In his plays, Shakespeare would write about people who would rather spend some time in a daze about this cruel world, who were in a lonely fantasy when the crowd was angry.
As dim-witted as King Lear, he would also shout out his emotions in the wilderness; the sinister one, like Sherlock in The Merchant of Venice, would ruthlessly accuse the self-righteous people of the persecution of the Jews when he failed; and the comical People of Fostaff in Henry V would also stand on the camp before the Great War, thinking about the imperial hegemony that had finally become ashes. From the thinking of real problems to the eternal universe, the unchanging laws of nature, which were given to them by the Renaissance.
By understanding this, we can also understand the background of Hamlet's eternal proposition of "survival or destruction" above. It's not hard to understand that Hamlet, after seeing The Tomb of the Ulik, let out that classic sigh of "alas, poor yorick.i knew him well." I know him well)".
This is not the sigh a prince should have expressed to a courtier. We can also say that the recapture of thinking essentially evokes that "discovery" of man.
In Brave New World, the writer believes that humanity will eventually be destroyed by what it loves. In one of the chapters, it is said, "If there is a difference, it must be lonely."
I think this quote is apt description of Hamlet.
Hamlet studied at Wittenberg University in Germany before his fierce revenge. The aristocratic prince who was born into the royal family, went to university in Germany, the center of the new Culture of Europe at that time, and was once the main front of the Reformation. Hamlet can be said to have accepted the output of a complete set of humanistic values at that time.
In other words, it belongs to the kind of people who have betrayed their own class. Before he returned to what he saw as chaotic Denmark, contradictions had long since sown cause and effect. It was his difference, and it was also his outlier, so he was doomed to be lonely.
Another link with the author Shakespeare, who died in 1616, on the eve of The Last Glorious Feudal Rule in England. Hamlet's hardships and encounters are not a reaction to Shakespeare's self-state of mind. The humanists are calling for a new society, a new world built entirely according to their own humanism, in which there is a religion, a Christian soul and the demands of good deeds and sins, but without the supreme pope and the ubiquitous Church, with kings like Fordinbras who are full of good qualities of humanity, but do not want an authoritarian society similar to the past.
Shakespeare's entanglement of thinking directly affected Hamlet's supposed path to revenge. Hamlet did not know that he was like his lover Ophelia's brother Leotis, carrying a sword into the palace and spilling blood, Hamlet was not like this, deeply influenced by humanism, he was a prince with the ability to think rationally. He would first design the plot to observe the expression of the false king, and after determining, he would still hesitate and choose not to do it until the end of the story at the banquet where no one survived.
People who think too much tend to act very weakly, and Hamlet's lonely original sin is also thinking. Hamlet wanted answers to everything, not just the truth about his father's death. The universe and the starry sky, all things in life, he has been painstakingly asking, up and down. He would see the bones of the rigoletto and ponder the eternal meaning of life, and the meaning of life's rebellion against his beloved girl.
"Survival or destruction is a question worth considering." "Fragile, your name is Woman!" "Who would have expected the prosperity of the past to become the dirt of the present?" "The king of the infinite universe in the core."
The ancient Chinese once made a definition of this kind of thinking, "learning without thinking is reckless, thinking without learning is ruining", naïvely believing that as long as you read more books, you can solve the dilemma of thinking. Shakespeare tells us that this is wrong. The more you read, the more confused you become, which is the norm in life. Thinkers either fall into the labyrinth of Minos or sink into the ocean of Parsisos. The truth is like the sun of Icarus to them, they have approached countless times, but they have sunk into the sea countless times, and their wings have been melted by the sun.
We sneer at this kind of person as "nerds" and dismiss them as "show talent rebellion, three years of failure." We feel that these people are idle. We don't understand the role of asking about the meaning of life, and as Brave New World indicates, we are accustomed to the stimulation of entertainment products, and the ability to think is destroyed by entertainment.
Those of us who are "entertained to death" should read Hamlet with a little understanding of the renaissance's infinite universe in the core and the ultimate question of "survival or destruction", so that we will not sink into the entertaining pacifier. The Renaissance was an era of giants and produced giants, and we still need some Hamlets.
In their spiritual world, they are the masters of infinite space, and the source of their spirit is the sense of powerlessness to get rid of fate by the same disease and the spirit of ancient Greek and Roman drama. Their spirits could be the Oedipus king who had been tricked by fate, Prometheus who had bound himself to the world of life, or the poor prince who had seen the ghost of his father for the first time on the walls of the city.
Thinking is not always about getting answers, and sometimes thinking itself is the answer.
No one is unaware of Shakespeare. In every family in the West, except for the Bible, Shakespeare's plays are indispensable, and they are still being screened wildly in major theaters. Shakespeare was outstanding in the Asia-Pacific region, outstanding beyond the times, and Mu Xin said that Shakespeare was second only to God in existence. Shakespeare was accustomed to viewing humanity in terms of God's mind, and his tragedies were of universal value.
Some say Shakespeare always likes to make things bigger.
Jealousy is written and it becomes Othello, and then the pure Desdemona goes to death; the first love writes that it becomes martyrdom, and then the two lovers can't see each other reconciled (weak and weak spit a little, you guys have been reconciled for a long time, isn't there no such thing as martyrdom?). The most excessive thing is law and fairness, a small business dispute, one to dig people's hearts, one to deprive property, this is actually a drama, it is about you, "The Merchant of Venice".
None of this is in Hamlet. Because the Hamlet architecture is on the big framework of "revenge".
The recently popular Korean drama "Itaewon Class" is also about revenge, although it is not over, I guess the ending must be the success of revenge, and the family is neat. This is the worldly happiness that orientals think of, if "Hamlet" is written Chinese, as a people who have a tragic spirit very late, the favorite ending is Hamlet ascending to the throne, working hard to rule, and getting rid of a copy of Li Shimin.
Chinese up to now, I like the hilarity of joy and joy, and in a burst of laughter, I am happy to forget my worries. Even Tang Xianzu, who died in the same year as Shakespeare, could not get rid of the "Story of the Talented and Beautiful Rausch" complained about by Jia Mu in "Dream of the Red Chamber". In this regard, perhaps only Cao Xueqin's "Dream of the Red Chamber" can compete with "Hamlet". In fact, if you think about it, Hamlet and Jia Baoyu are really a bit alike. Amorous and annoying, pessimistic and like to enjoy the happiness of the world, but also like girls. The most similar thing is that the last talented lady is really not like Zhang Sheng and Miss Cui, and the red bride is matched, and the marriage under the moon is married.
Reading Shakespeare's other masterpieces talks about both human emotions and some of the social phenomena of the time, such as Jews's hatred, such as family ethical tragedies. But the great thing about Shakespeare is that no matter how realistic the topic, he can always say something natural and indescribable in the natural development of the plot. "King Lear" does not have that cry in the wilderness, and in the touch of people's hearts, he fails.
In the play, Shakespeare does not exist as a judge and judge, mu xin says that he is second only to God, Shakespeare just created the characters, and then recorded the things that the characters did in reality in a dramatic way. Shakespeare may never have wished that his story would be sung for a hundred years, nor would he have bothered to warn the world who ran to the theater every day, he just recorded it—the answer he gave through countless thoughts and questions.
As Hamlet said to his good friend Hollach's last words:
“the rest is silence.” (There is only silence.) ）
Aside from his own bloody story, he was speechless.
The study of Shakespeare's books has long since become a library, and our comments are nothing more than applause for him.
Text/Pillow Cat