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HAMLET A man may fish with the worm that hath.
Eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
KING What dost thou mean by this?.
([IV.iii.16-31] Bloom 62);.
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Hamlet verbally plays with the King and the King unable to match or understand the obviously superior wit and mind of Hamlet, presents Hamlet with a weak antagonist. The King however is not alone, in the play no character matches Hamlet's intellectual and existential vision; Hamlet sees beyond the characters about him and his language at times, moves into meta-speech rising above the play in ironic commentary about his motivations, other characters motivations, and the events about him. When Horatio praises Hamlet's father for example, Hamlet, contrary to what one might expect given the events in the play, quickly puts his father in perspective:.
HORATIO I saw him once; a was a goodly king.
HAMLET A was a man, take him for all in all:.
I Shall not look upon his like again. .
[I.ii.186-188].
Though the murder of Hamlet's father motivates Hamlet's actions through the play, Hamlet still stands above this passion and no other characters in the play gain this objective vantage point. Hamlet, like modern characters in literature, is conscious of himself and his contradictions; he is not a pawn in a tragic irony, as Bloom points out:.
Unlike Oedipus or Lear, Hamlet never seems victimized by dramatic irony. What perspectives can we turn upon Hamlet other than those he himself has revealed to us? Hamlet's power of mind exceeds ours: we haven't the authority to regard him ironically. ( Bloom 144) .
Without a worthy contrary to challenge Hamlet's intellectual and rhetorical mastery, Shakespeare uses the characters in other ways. If Claudius does not stand on one side of a titanic conflict, his betrayal of Hamlet's father and Marriage to Hamlet's mother, do ignite one: Hamlet's conflict with himself. Their actions trigger introspection on the part of Hamlet that extend Hamlet's problem beyond vengeance for his Father and into existential questions of meaning and purpose.