Hristina Davul

M.Bakhtin :

What Michael Bakhtin believes that “the text often contain double discourses” (Hamlet,343)

 

Political ideology of the official culture        and      reflecting the popular or traditional culture

This means he does not care just about the hierarchy, the kingdom, and its politics, but also about common people and their tradition. Because if the book jus contains: the political ideology of the official culture, the book is going to be so artificial and unbelievable. In order to be more real and give us more references about that society, He is explaining us also the commoners and their traditions too. “The discourse of Carnival, as Bakhtin understood it, is infused by the down-to-earth priorities and values held by the underprivileged or plebeian “second world” of commoners, or “folk”. Because that world is concerned with basic issues of survival, with the substance and reproduction of life, the language of Carnival is substantially concerned with the body, with eating, with sex, and with death (343)

“But something in between” I like this word of Bakhtin about the discourse of carnival in the play Hamlet everything is in between. The tone is in between half dark and half joyful,half funny and half serious, half real and unreal, half aware and half mad. This makes the play grotesque: “neither simply “funny” as we might say about a situation comedy, nor “serious”As we expect a high drama like Hamlet, but something in between”(343)

“Claudius is something like Carnival’s lord of Misrule (343) Claudius by killing his brother hamlet, in a way he insults the rules of the society too. His discourse generally is carnivalistic. He is disrespectful even to the death of the king and makes celebrations on it. With this way “mingling sex and death, comedy and tragedy” (344). However, we cannot say that so much he is mocking the authority; the only aim of him is to wear the crown. According to my other research “Claudius is a bad man, but a good king” I agree to this idea because really he is maintaining everything about the society in a good way. On the other hand, he is a bad king because he killed his brother and married with his wife. Therefore being a bad man does not mean not being a food ruler. Machiavelli rules can prove this idea. 5.1.1

The same carnivalistic situation appears also in the grave-diggers speech, “who typifying underprivileged labor in their work, their language, and the [ir] social attitudes”(344). According to this gravedigger or clowns Ophelia has committed suicide and she should not be buried in the way of “Christian burial” .But because she is a gentle women, is given the right but because she is not privileged and she has money. Money and being royal can change everything. Nobody can say to her anything. What is carnivalistic about this situation is that the comic dialogue that they are on the issue of death and life. These two clowns, they are aware of everything. They are showing us the political situation and the society’s values of the period. They are reflecting the idea of justice. There is no justice in this society because they clearly know that if somebody else would do what Ophelia did, they were not let them to make the burial ceremony. But they are not sad about this, the opposite; they are enjoying the situation because they know that the only real rules of the world are “death and change”. Because they know this reality, they do not care about it and they accept it as its. Hamlet after this speech, he understands that we are running after nothing.