Now you see him

‘Where be his quiddities now’? Law and Language in Hamlet

“…4.4. [49][50][51]. Finally, in the graveyard scene, the 'politician', 'courtier', or 'lawyer' possess no longer a mouth, but only a skull and jawbone, bereft of speech, therefore of power ( Ham.…”

“…Warwick's contrast of law with such masculine aff airs as armed, athletic, or sexual conquest casts law as that which uses language not as a superior alternative to violence, but merely as the wily, manipulative, 'women's' weapon of words (e.g., TS 2.1.137). And nothing plagues Hamlet more than either impotence (his immobility being perhaps the play's most famous theme 47 (e.g., Ham. 3.4.106-7; 4.4.38-45)) or femininity (his misogyny is notorious 48 (e.g., Ham.…”

“…Th e simultaneously covert and loquacious quality of the surveillance state takes the form of a feminization of the outward display of power, as Hamlet's impotence within the power structure witnesses his emerging misogyny. If Hamlet is paralysed, it is because killing Claudius, far from achieving some idealized notion of justice in the manner of the old-style revenge tragedy, 49 is, in a brave new modern world, futile and beside the point. Claudius sits atop the machine that runs by itself, and which is not destroyed simply by toppling its public face.…”