Hamlet Body Politic Essay

In tragedy then that which is eternally substantive is triumphantly vindicated under the mode of reconciliation. It simply removes from the contentions of personality the false one-sidedness, and exhibits instead that which is the object of its volition, namely, positive reality, no longer under an asserted mediation of opposed factors, but as the real support of consistency. (51-2)

The metaphor of the human body has been broadly exploited in western political discourse. Because of its exegetic immediacy, the traditional metaphor of the body politic, originally coined by Plato and Aristotle, spreads in Elizabethan and Jacobean political treatises, and underpins many of Shakespeare’s plays. Political pathology a set of figural dispositions that interpret the functioning of the body politic from a merely pathological perspective is a long-established rhetorical and ideological background in Shakespeare’s time, and as such it is

He possessed a gift to stretch the English language and bring out depth in each individual word and lines. As his writing is so eloquently crafted and so it is very difficult to guess what Shakespeare actually penned to begin the line when Romeo speaks about the eye. The metaphors about ‘eye’ as a target is found only in Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and is not used in Macbeth. Most of the conceptual metaphors about ‘eye’ in Romeo and Juliet is personified, it Romeo thinks that EYE CAN SPEAK, EYE CAN WONDER and EYE CAN ATTACK. While Mercutio thinks that EYE CAN STAB. All these four conceptual metaphors describe ‘ability’ of an eye to do some human actions and thus the verb ‘can’ is used in all these metaphors. The verbs ‘speak’ and ‘wonder’ are related to mental abilities rather than ‘physical’ capability which as in verbs such as ‘attack’ and ‘stab’. Romeo also thinks that EYE HAS A SWORD. The ‘arms’ are necessary for the ‘eye’ that can ‘attack’ and can