The Performative Utterance in Hamlet Notes

• Not a play about a man who couldn’t make up his mind, but rather about a man that couldn’t find the things in his mind to be real
• mental/emotional distress is turned into a tangible, physical act
• Hamlet is trapped from the transition of understanding his duty to the actual use of that understanding as a form of action
• Hamlet throughout the play is described as “all bark with no bite” → as he is seen throughout the play as able, but unwilling
• A division between what is done and what is said → certain languages don’t just describe action, but also acts that are being spoken
• performative action → acts that enable change in the world
• locutionary force: ability of language to deliver a message (mutual intelligibility)
• illocutionary force: what’s done in being said
• perlocutionary force: what is being achieved by being changed
• Bloom asserts that through self-overhearing, characters achieve self-reliance
• act of self-revelation or self-creation?
• a man that doesn’t realize the power of his agency, but is capable of using the spoken word could learn that his speech has actual powers to cause change in the world
• language both describes and does
• Performative utterances in Hamlet:
• meeting between Hamlet and ghost of his father → two oaths contained through Hamlet, and then Horatio & Marcellus
• there’s a problem in that Hamlet doesn’t take oath to actually take revenge, but only takes oath to remember the ghost → cognitive act that warrants no outside verification
• Consistent motifs: drama and playacting
• dramatic motif → presents opportunities of false performatives (to pretend to do)
• playacting motif → contains that of locutionary force, intelligibility of utterance
• Emotional reality a valid step when considering utterances such as “I mourn”
• establishes connection between use of language and one’s emotional well being
• Misrepresented intentions through act of mimesis
• subtle playacting that demands attention
• Hamlet’s ploy in acting “mad” in order to hide his attempts of revenge
• cover his investigation and clear him of his sins
• Pretending = not actually doing that thing you’re trying to pretend to do
• BUT in a performative utterance: in play-acting, one must distinguish pretend-saying and actual-saying → they’re identical