'Who's There?' Hearing Character in Hamlet

Repetitive sound has an important role in early modern dramatic character construction, which modern accounts of sonic contagion and earworms can clarify. Hamlet repeatedly shows sonic snippets passing between characters, and transforming from unvoiced potentiality into audible noise and back. Share...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inELH Vol. 90; no. 1; pp. 1 - 27
Main Author Vinter, Maggie
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.03.2023
Subjects
Austen, Jane (1775-1817)
Ballads
British & Irish literature
Dramatists
English literature
Interiority
Jonson, Ben (1573-1637)
Memory
Morality
Music
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
Sound
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Summary:Repetitive sound has an important role in early modern dramatic character construction, which modern accounts of sonic contagion and earworms can clarify. Hamlet repeatedly shows sonic snippets passing between characters, and transforming from unvoiced potentiality into audible noise and back. Shared sounds bring typified and psychological modes of character into contact. Rather than canceling out, these intensify and enrich one another. Similar sonic patterns affirm the Ghost's alien nature while validating Hamlet's interiority. Ophelia's ballads mark her at once as empty and full, and raise the possibility of a character who cannot be defined as psychological or typical.
ISSN:0013-8304
1080-6547
1080-6547
DOI:10.1353/elh.2023.0000