ellauri061.html on line 625: Critics have spent a considerable amount of time debating Hamlet's age. Hamlet here is thirty years old, as the First Clown makes clear (lines 133-151). However, "young Hamlet", as he is referred to earlier in the play is still attending university and courting Ophelia. Laertes says that Hamlet's love is like "a violet in the youth of primy nature" (1.3.6). The noted scholar Grant White was so annoyed by this dilemma that he, defying logic, concluded that Hamlet was twenty when the play started and thirty at its close. (See Studies in Shakespeare, p. 79 ff.). How important is Hamlet's age to our understanding or enjoyment of the play? Would Hamlet's age have been an issue for play-goers at Shakespeare's Globe? For more on this topic, please click here.
ellauri101.html on line 39: Battling inner and outer demons, confronting bullies, and courting your ultimate mate symbolize a passage through the often-treacherous tunnel of self-discovery and individuation to mature adulthood.
ellauri156.html on line 645: When Bathsheba's mourning is complete, David sends for her and brings her to himself as his wife. Wait, was little David born as yet, or did he start fucking her with her belly full? I do not see him bending down on his knees, proposing. I do not see him courting her, sending her roses. I see him “taking” her once again. And again. In fact, this is my favourite part. The question in my mind is, “Why?” Why does David take Bathsheba into his house as one of his wives? I do not think he is any longer trying to “cover up” his sin; it is far too late for that. She must be “showing” her pregnancy by now, and it is hard to imagine how all Israel cannot know what has been going on. It appears that at this point, David is not trying to conceal his sin, but to legitimize it. Whatever David's reasons may be, they are hardly spiritual, and they are most certainly self-serving.
ellauri197.html on line 516: The action was once available to a father against a man who was courting his daughter outside of marriage, on the grounds that the father had lost the consortium of his daughter's household services because she was spending time with her beau.
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