"The Performative Utterance in William Shakespeare's Hamlet" Notes

• "a play about a man who could not make real what was found in his mind"
• he knew from the start what his task was, Hamlet waivers in committing the physical action of his duty
• "Hamlet, a character of almost unique vocal power--aesthetic power, descriptive power, artistic power, dramatic power-- " always has the ability to speak but not do
• performative language acts > "How to Do Things with Words (1962) [J. L. Austin], how certain language does not merely describe action but acts in being spoken."
• three main forces: locutionary force: deliver a message, the force of mutual intelligibility the illocutionary force: what is done in being said and the perlocutionary force, what is achieved by being said, the consequences of one's utterance, such as an order being followed (or refused).
• Technically, Hamlet only swore to remember his father, not to seek his revenge
• connection between "performative" and "performance" >> "simple connection of physical demonstrations of emotion to belief in the presence of that emotion to belief in the authenticity of the speaker's words."
• to over-do a self-performance is to risk all further opportunities for performative utterances (Hamlet's advice to the first player, as well as his own act of lunacy, emphasizes the need to act natural and real "hold a mirror up to nature")
• "Hamlet's antic disposition is not merely a tool to confuse and evade those around him, but an opportunity to cast off the constricting dictates of a preformed identity." > as well as an opportunity to explore himself
• "all of us create "utterly different yet self-consistent" visages of ourselves every day." > "creating utterly different yet self-consistent voices for his more than one hundred major characters"
• "Contrast this again to Claudius, who sees in his powerlessness to properly repent only the despair that comes from such a lack of agency, saying "What then? What rest?" (3.3.64). For Hamlet, the admission of his own inability to determine his fate is instead a moment of peace, a falling into faith, with the credo of acceptance, "Let be""
• "a man who uses that performative power in the unending task of the realization of the self."