Hamlet: a play and playwright who need no introduction. In the play Shakespeare consciously discussed many moral issues (issues of the mind if you will), including suicide, religion, adultery, and the afterlife. However there is one issue of the mind that Shakespeare discusses only subconsciously: the issue of psychology, and body language in particular.
When Hamlet finds himself unable to kill Claudius, he devises a plan to prove Claudius’s guiltiness in the murder of Hamlet’s father. Deeply moved by an excerpt from a play about the fall of Troy, Hamlet realizes that the players’ ability to evoke human emotion through acting is far greater than his own, even though his own pain is quite real. Therefore, Hamlet decides that he will write a short “speech of some dozen or sixteen lines” which will closely resemble Claudius’s murder of King Hamlet. When the play is performed the following night, Hamlet will judge his uncle’s reaction to this speech in order to determine his guiltiness. Essentially, Hamlet will read his uncle’s body language to gain the information he needs without directly asking for it.
The concept of body language is a very interesting one that we have been discussing for the past week in Psychology. Non-verbal communication, meaning communication through body language and voice tones, accounts for 93 percent of all human communication. However, the study of modern psychology began after Shakespeare’s death with thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, and Darwin, and human awareness of the importance of body language has only been existent in the past few decades. How, then, does Hamlet know his uncle’s body language will give away his guiltiness?
The answer is simple. It is because we have always had the ability to subconsciously interpret body language. It is and has always been the major form of communication between humans. So although Hamlet does not know that his plan is based off what future generations will call body language, he does know that the knowledge he can gain from observing his uncle’s reaction to a similar reenactment of the murder he committed will tell Hamlet all he needs to know to decide whether or not to murder his uncle. Although this knowledge of body language may have only been subconscious in Shakespeare’s time, it was prevalent enough for Hamlet to decide that “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.” (407)
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4 comments:
Your blog was really interesting. I never would have thought about how that time period lacked to judge expressions, so I liked how you plugged in the fact that body language was not yet studied, and Hamlet's thinking was premature. I also liked how you focused on one point and made a good argument. Great Job!
Gino, you discussed a very interesting subject of the play and did a nice job of talking about the effect of body language in the play. Your analysis of Hamlet's goals to judge Claudius's expression and your insights into the basics of body language greatly helped enhance the blog. Great job.
Nice relation to psychology there! Dum Dum would be proud!
I really liked your analysis of the Claudius's reaction to Hamlet's play in relation to body language and your blog's tie to real life! Great job!
Gino--good connection between psychology and literature. Criminal investigators (at least the ones on TV and in books) develop many non-verbal techniques for knowing when someone is lying to them. Poker players are always looking for "tells" to know if an opponent is bluffing or has a good hand. And Hamlet makes a specific reference to the idea that people can't always control their autonomic response systems when he says "if he do but blench I'll know my course."
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