Comparative — Contrasting Perspectives and Values (HSC SSCE English Advanced): Revision Notes

Comparative — Contrasting perspectives and values

When comparing Shakespeare's Hamlet (1600) and Emily Dickinson's eight prescribed poems (1850s-1860s), you'll discover fundamental differences in how these texts approach similar existential questions. The key contrasts centre on three major areas: where corruption and conflict are located, how ideas are expressed, and how each text resolves its central tensions.

Understanding these contrasts is essential for effective comparative analysis in your exam responses, as it allows you to explore how different historical contexts, literary forms, and philosophical worldviews shape each text's treatment of universal human concerns.

Contrasting perspectives

External corruption versus internal sanctuary

In Hamlet, corruption manifests as a political and moral disease infecting the entire Danish state. The famous line "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" (1.5.90) exemplifies the Renaissance concept of microcosm-macrocosm collapse, where individual sin spreads to corrupt the entire body politic. The court becomes a space of dissimulation where Hamlet observes that "One may smile, and smile, and be a villain"—courtly appearances mask moral rot, demanding violent purgation through Fortinbras's militaristic restoration at the play's conclusion.

Dickinson, writing from her Amherst seclusion two and a half centuries later, fundamentally rejects this external model of corruption. In Poem 96, she declares that "One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted – / The Brain has Corridors – surpassing / Material Place." Here, the gothic threat comes not from external sources but from within consciousness itself. However, this internalisation paradoxically becomes a form of freedom. In Poem 58, she celebrates this autonomy: "No Rack can torture me – / My Soul – at Liberty." By locating both threat and sanctuary within the mind, Dickinson asserts metaphysical inviolability—external forces, including communal judgment and physical torture, cannot penetrate the sovereign space of consciousness.

Public rhetoric versus private ellipsis

Hamlet's seven soliloquies showcase rhetorical virtuosity designed for public performance and universal comprehension. The most famous example, "To be, or not to be... the dread of something after death" (3.1.56-90), employs antithetical dialectic—a formal Renaissance technique of weighing opposing arguments—to externalise existential crisis for audiences including Horatio, the Players, and ultimately theatre spectators. Renaissance humanism valued such public intellectual performance, with Hamlet's soliloquies demonstrating his capacity for philosophical reasoning even whilst questioning that very capacity.

The elliptical quality—what's left unsaid—becomes as important as what's articulated. This stylistic contrast mirrors a philosophical one: Hamlet performs his interiority publicly, making private anguish a spectacle for others to witness and judge. Dickinson protects her interiority through ellipsis, offering fragments that resist full comprehension and maintain the mind's essential privacy.

Tragic resolution versus metaphysical suspension

Hamlet achieves providential closure through the famous assertion that "There's special providence in the fall of a sparrow" (5.2.230). This Biblical allusion signals Hamlet's acceptance of divine will, positioning the play's catastrophic ending—where nearly every major character dies—as cosmic machinery restoring proper hierarchy. Fortinbras's militaristic triumph over a corrupted Denmark represents sacrificial restoration: Denmark is purified through bloodshed, and divine order reasserts itself. This is characteristic of Elizabethan tragedy, which typically demands that cosmic disruption be violently resolved.

Dickinson sustains eternal conversationality instead of resolution. Poem 67's "'I died for Beauty... He questioned softly 'Why I failed?' / 'For Beauty', I replied" imagines death not as an ending but as a continuation of dialogue. Similarly, Poem 149's "The show is not the show... It is not you" embraces perceptual ambiguity, suggesting that surface appearances never reveal full truth. This reflects Keats's concept of negative capability—the capacity to exist in uncertainties and doubts without reaching after fact and reason—but applied without the Elizabethan need for cosmic machinery or providential resolution.

Divergent values

Action versus contemplation

Hamlet presents a fascinating paradox regarding action and contemplation. Hamlet's tragic flaw (hamartia) manifests as Renaissance overthinking, captured in his self-reproach: "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all" (3.1.83). The word "conscience" here means consciousness or thought—Hamlet pathologises his own tendency toward contemplation, seeing it as paralysing cowardice. The play's structure reinforces this critique by presenting Fortinbras and Laertes as foils who valorise militaristic agency. Fortinbras acts decisively in his military campaigns, whilst Laertes immediately seeks revenge for his father's death without Hamlet's hesitation. The play's ending, with Fortinbras assuming Denmark's throne, arguably validates action over contemplation.

This contrast reveals deeply different cultural contexts: Renaissance humanism's valorisation of the active life versus nineteenth-century Romantic and Transcendentalist celebration of individual perception and thought.

Communal restoration versus individual infinity

Elizabethan tragedy operates within a framework demanding hierarchical reordering of society. Claudius's usurpation—killing his brother and marrying his widow to seize Denmark's throne—represents a fundamental violation of divine and social order. The tragedy's resolution requires sacrificial triumph: Claudius must be destroyed, even if that destruction claims innocent lives (including Hamlet's own). Fortinbras's ascension restores legitimate rule, returning Denmark to proper cosmic alignment. The individual serves the community's need for order.

Dickinson celebrates solipsistic eternity—the eternal nature of individual consciousness divorced from communal concerns. Poem 103's famous opening, "Because I could not stop for Death – / He kindly stopped for me," presents death as a personal journey with a courteous companion rather than a cosmic event. Poem 58's "Behind this mortal life / More Life – eternal life" asserts that individual consciousness transcends both death and communal judgment. The collective becomes irrelevant; what matters is the infinity of personal awareness.

Performative virtue versus authentic extremity

Throughout Hamlet, the prince navigates courtly dissimulation through his antic disposition—feigned madness that allows him to speak dangerous truths whilst protecting himself. His claim "I am but mad north-north-west" (2.2.389) acknowledges this performance's strategic nature: he controls when and how his "madness" appears. This creates layers of performance masking authentic grief. Even Hamlet's soliloquies, whilst revealing interiority, constitute rhetorical performances following classical argumentative structures. Public performance becomes the medium through which truth emerges.

Dickinson's poetry rejects rhetorical ornamentation for raw psychological documentation. "I felt a Funeral, in my brain" (Poem 40) presents unadorned immediacy—psychological extremity documented without mediation or performance. Her Amherst spinsterhood enabled what we might call unperformative candour: freed from expectations of public performance (marriage, social participation), she could document consciousness with brutal honesty. The dash-fragmentation style itself resists the polished performance of traditional poetic rhetoric.

Comparative analysis table

Aspect	Hamlet	Dickinson poems	Fundamental contrast
Corruption site	External Denmark; the state itself is diseased	Internal consciousness; the brain has threatening corridors	Public versus private location of moral crisis
Rhetorical mode	Public soliloquy using antithetical dialectic and formal argument	Private lyric with dash fragmentation and compression	Performance versus reticence in expression
Resolution type	Providential carnage culminating in Fortinbras's triumph	Metaphysical suspension maintaining eternal conversation	Closure versus ambiguity in narrative structure
Agency valorised	Militaristic action embodied by Fortinbras and Laertes	Perceptual defiance described as "divinest Sense"	External versus cognitive models of virtue
Truth location	Cosmic restoration achieved through violence and sacrifice	Individual consciousness autonomy independent of external validation	Communal versus solipsistic sources of meaning

Key contrasting quotations with analysis

Corruption scope

Rhetorical contrast

Resolution divergence

Authority source

Exam strategies and techniques

Constructing effective thesis statements

Your thesis should immediately establish the fundamental philosophical divergence between the texts rather than superficial similarities. Consider this model:

Building contrast chains

Effective comparative analysis moves systematically between texts to build argument. Follow this structure:

Recommended essay structure

Integrating the eight prescribed poems

Organise Dickinson's poems thematically when comparing to Hamlet:

• Interiority: Poems 40 and 96 for contrasts about consciousness and psychology
• Perception: Poems 64 and 149 for contrasts about truth and authority
• Eternity: Poems 67, 103, 58, and 21 for contrasts about death and resolution

Critical exam tip

Remember!