Hamlet And The Aristotelian Unities.docx

1. IntroductionThis paper will analyse the significance of the Aristotelian Unities in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, The most representative drama of the western civilisation and its plot takes place in the Castle ofElsinore, which may be seen as only a unity of space, as if it kind of conforms to one of threeAristotelian unities. But the aim of this paper is to analyse how Shakespeare dealt with the Unities.Firstly, it will be illustrated the origin of the three Classical Unites through a short historical excursusand secondly how Shakespeare dealt in general with this perspective criticism in general and the inthe case of Hamlet .2. The Aristotelian Unities in RenaissanceBefore looking closely how the three Aristotelian unities conform or not to the tragedy of Hamlet, itis necessary to introduce briefly, in which way this perspective criticism set in during the Englishliterary period that spans from the late fifteenth to the seventeenth century, namely the Renaissance.The first Renaissance humanists found a tie with the great classics and took them as model, by doingso they started to institute the practice of imitating Classical texts. The Renaissance humanists,especially the Italian ones, made their own theory of drama from the Greek tragedians and foremostfrom the Poetics of Aristotle 1 , a work that was unavailable before the end of the fifteenth century andthat was not widely known before the middle of the sixteenth. The impact of this text on

Renaissanceliterary criticism was unprecedented. The translations, editions and commentaries of the Poetics andits literary reception from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century is different from all those receptionswhich have preceded them. On one hand this is due to the fact that the literary interpretation of the Poetics was unhistorical in these centuries, since this type of criticism did not take into account itshistorical background and the general philosophical conceptions of Aristotle. On the other hand inthe fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the majority of work were realized in Italy, where the scholars produced more unnecessary and mistaken emendations than appropriate ones and these scholars didnot know the principle of textual criticism. 2 One of the main precursors of those scholars and authorsis Ludovico Castelvetro, who wrote The Poetics of Aristotle in the Vulgar Language , the first majorcommentary on the Poetics. Castelvetro refuses Aristotle ’ s theory and suggests his own theories 3 conceptions and assumptions of Poetry, instead that of Aristotle.

Castelvetro’s conception of Aristotle’s views are supported by his notion that the Poetics is a merely an incomplete draft on the subject [...] It is therefore not surprising to see that Castelvetro opposessome of the key ideas of the Poetics [...] Thus it is clear that while Aristotle posits only the unity of 1

Reiss page 231 2 Taran and Gutas page 36 3 Weinberg page 69

plot, not that of time and that of space, Castelvetro, however, maintains that there are three unities oftime, of place, and of plot and that in fact the latter is a consequence of the former two. 4

So Castelvetro added to the single unity of action, the unities of time and place. This type of criticism

made on Aristotle’s Poetics portrays the worst mistake of the neoclassical humanists, who turned Aristotle’ observations into arbitrary rules and even foisted on him rules for which his texts furnishno pretext at all 5 . Consequently, from this kind of misinterpretation, the theory of three unities spreadacross the continent as an established percept. Unlike Italy and France, English Renaissance ignoredthe three canonized unities and the whys are still hard to say. The Elizabethan stage practice, insteadof adopting such neoclassical norms as the Unities, conformed roughly to the broad-rangingchronology, settings and texture of the medieval biblical cycles of plays. 6 3. Shakespeare and the ClassicsAfter introducing the three unities from this short historical excursus and after shedding a light onthis exemplum of literary criticism. This paragraph will analyse how Shakespeare dealt with thesethree unities, to do so it is important to recall firstly what the three Aristotelian unities demanded. Assaid before, the three unities are represented by the Unity of Action, the Unity of Space and the Unityof Time. Regarding the precepts of the neoclassicals, a drama should respect all the three unites, inorder to be a proper drama:

Unity of Action: a play should have one single action, hence the focus should beconcentrated on one central happening 7

Unity of Time: the dramatic action could not exceed one day

Unity of Space: the action can occur only in one placeAccording to Castelvetro, if dramatic action is continuous, so that dramatic time and stage time areidentical, hence it is impossible to suppose that the setting has changed. This is due to the fact thatunities of time and place are a consequence of the verisimilitude concept, which became a controllingdoctrine of neoclassicism. Thus the unities of time and place were consequences of the belief inverisimilitude and it indeed control neoclassical thought in regard to the nature of truth in the theatre 8 . Neoclassical theorists felt that the switch of space and sudden jumps in time woul d overload theimaginary of the audience and that the breaches of those principles would threaten or destroy thedramatic illusion. But such restrictions on time and place could led also to endanger the principle of 4 Ivi 5

5 Lewis page 19 6 Preminger and Brogan page 1027 7 Hochman page 261 8 Ibid.

verisimilitude, that it has to be preserved and making the whole thing becomes implausible. 9 Bycontrast the form of Shakespeare’ s drama was not static and he dealt with diverse forms of dramas ofmultiple origins, such as the rhetorical drama in the Senecan tradition or Mar lowe’s powerful tragedies. 10

Shakespeare was child of his time, since the Classics have had great influence on hiswritings, he and his generation did read some Ovid and Seneca and imitating classical literature waswhat they usually did at school. For instance, the Latin revenge tragedy, which finds its archetype inthe Senecan Thyestes did affect the dramatic features and the main plot of Hamlet. Revenge was probably the most dominant theme of English Renaissance tragedy and it was a popular bestsellergenre. The Revenge plays did draw on Senecan plays and less directly the Greek plays, which Senecarevised. In fact early revenge dramas in England often translated or imitated plays of Seneca. 11 So theLatin Literature and Latin writers, such as Seneca, did have an influence on Shakespeare’s writings and doubtlessly on Hamlet . Seneca was considered a great master of style and a great representativeof the rhetoric, also because the Elizabethan tragedians were able to read Latin texts and studied Seneca’s tragedies, so they sort of continued the tradition of Seneca. Thus the Elizabethans playwrights did adopt the Senecan devices and his rhetorical work in their dramas, as for instance theStichomythia, which was a Greek invention, but the Elizabethan

identified it with Seneca and it isabout the speech of each speaker as one line-one verse, that was used typically in moments of conflict,since the language is used as a kind of weapon, so we can imagine this type of language during ascene of great pathos or tension. Foremost Shakespeare copies Seneca in Titus Andronicus and we dofind this type of language in Hamlet too, for instance in the first scene of the first act during thenightly change guard between Barnardo and Francisco 12 :

Barnardo: Long live the King!Francisco: Barnardo?Barnardo: He.Francisco: You come most carefully upon your hour. Where the two cannot see each other, due to the darkness of the scene, so they did not know whocould have come across in their pathway during the guard, so it is clearly a moment of tension andthe verse uttered are very brief.To put in another way Shakespeare revised and copied the Classics, and most probably he was well aware of three unities, maybe through Sidney’s The Defence of Poetry , published in 1595, because 9

Pfister page 250 10 Ibidem 11 Pollard page 12 Elam page 115, Footnote 1