Hamlet is often seen as indecisive, but is rather stuck between what is happening in his mind and what is going to or needs to happen in reality.
He is very powerful in many aspects of the play but struggles throughout the play in whether he will act on what he is supposed to- revenge.
He is not a confused character but rather a complex character that contemplates between right and wrong.
Performative language acts. It influences real change in the world.
People say things and often do what they say but this also leads to a chance of a person saying something but not acting on it.
There are three types of forces in performative language: locutionary force, which is the ability of language to deliver a message; illocutionary force, which is what is done in being said; and per locutionary force, which is achieved by being said ( an order being followed or refused, which applies in Hamlet).
Going to show relationship between the business of language (saying something) and the business of the real (following through).
Writers use performative utterances to show that language encourages or influences a person to do something, yet this can be proven wrong in so many cases by the millions of people who say something and never do it. This could be different when referring to the authors tho.
Characters that come from Shakespeare's plays develop through self-hearing, they over hear themselves thinking and in doing so gain self-knowledge. How so?
Self-hearing is either revelation or creation, which is it for Hamlet?
He demonstrates performative utterances. Is it because inside he hesitates whether to kill the king and in real life he sees hesitation as well. Or is it because he says that he must complete revenge and is planning to do so?
Because Shakespeare's characters had to give speeches to reveal their thoughts, they had a chance to overhear themselves and develop from that.
Locutionary to illocutionary to per locutionary = thought to language to action.
Locutionary is that Hamlet wants revenge because he is angry and misses his father. Illocutionary is that he promises his fathers ghost he will kill the king. Pre locutionary is whether he does it or not and what results from that.
Hamlet does not swear to revenge, but rather sweats only to remember his father. Horatio and Marcellus swear to secrecy. Hamlet over hears himself and has trouble following through with the revenge because he did not swear to kill klaudius.
Common motifs are drama and play acting which brings the reader to the conflict of finding what is sincere and what is not.
Performatives that fail are called infelicities or unhappy.
Hamlet has false performatives because they were meant to be pretended in a context of play acting, they were not failed.
Illocutionary can be mis understood in many ways and pre locutionary can be a variety of the illocutionary has been left open to interpretation.
Hamlet is in hollow performative act and has powerful emotional forces and can spur action that had great consequence (killing king klaudius)
When Hamlet hears the first player he realizes that revenge is not what he wants to do. He falls into language and does not follow through with action.
Hamlet is strongly influenced by the words of the first player and uses the first players emotions to decide what he shall do. Hamlet feels guilt for wanting revenge and is influenced by the first player who says he would only mourn. Will Hamlet follow his footsteps and do the same?
This example shows the power of language and how it influences people. But what if it influences them to break a promise now they are going against language again?
The legitimate of the emotional context of utterances to the power of those utterances is important in Hamlet's world.
Hamlet's intentions are misrepresented due to his play acting that requires more attention.
The central mimetic act is a play at madness designed to hide Hamlet's murderous intent, to cover his investigation of his uncles crime and to inoculate him from punishment for his various small sins, in short he acts as if he is crazy in order to distract the others from what he plans to do.
How the players act is very important because he has to be careful not to reveal himself as intelligent and only playing the madman. His advice to the players is very detailed because Hamlet cannot perform his performative utterances if the players do not follow his advice.
It is difficult to tell what one is really doing because one can be physically doing something but really covering up or setting something up for something else. Hamlet does this when he talks to Ophelia, knowing that she will go back and tell polonius.
Hamlet has made successful utterances because polonius believes his madness. He used language to create his sense of madness.
Hamlet does not say he is mad but uses language to pretend that he is mad through illocutionary forces.
Polonius is incapable of seeing the true side of Hamlet because he sees repetition. Something similar happened to him so it will happen to Hamlet. He discovers this by analyzing why Hamlet may be crazy in great detail.
Hamlet uses his act of madness to find his true identity and who he wants to be. Whether he wants to act on right or wrong, kill or not kill.
Hamlet is realizing that royalty and power is fraudulent and he must break those barriers because he cannot trust those of royalty. He shows this by the example of his father being king to now his fathers murderer being king.
Hamlet looks at how other people see him just as how he sees other people and debates within himself whether that is real or unreal.
We must infer our actions and emotions through our behavior, just as we would do so with other people.
Everyday, everyone creates an identity of themselves. This identity changes day to day, hour to hour.
Claudius has unhappy performative utterances when praying because he feels guilty yet still has power and does nothing but pray. Hamlet chooses not to kill Claudius while he is praying because he doesn't want him to go to heaven. Because Claudius acknowledges the false nature of his prayer, this can be strictly analyzed by linguistics rather than religion.
The steps of performative utterances are revealed through Claudius's actions or rather shown how he has not performed happy utterances. He thinks about praying and does so, but fails at doing so because he cannot line up his interior world. He cannot face his guilt and horrific actions which means he fails at his prayer.
Claudius's story is used to show an opposite of Hamlet. Hamlet has changed and now cares about others and decides that revenge is not the answer and he must stay within his Devine plan. This contradiction shows how Hamlet has changed.
Hamlet uses performative utterances not to follow through with action, but to self realize. He realizes who he wants to be and does this.
He was once unable to do something but now grasps himself and does it in the worst way possible. Hamlet has changed entirely over the course of the play.
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