“Tragedy or comedy, actually it’s just one thing. I do think the characters in Hamlet have the possibility to forgive,” said Dr Louis Lo, Assistant Professor in the Department of English at National Taipei University of Technology, in the lecture on “Revenge and Forgiveness in Hamlet and other Shakespeare’s Revenge Plays” to a UIC audience on 18 October.
Dr Lo began the topic by sharing Hamlet’s complex inner monologue before he decides to kill his uncle.
“‘To be or not to be, that is the question’. Actually, he doesn’t want to kill his uncle at first. He doesn’t entirely trust what the ghost has told him, and he thinks that even if he revenges successfully, his soul can’t be released anymore,” he said.
Dr Lo thinks some other characters play a “booster” role in pushing Hamlet to head to the conclusion that “blood will have blood”.
“The deaths of Polonius and his daughter Ophelia accidentally caused by Hamlet evoke Polonius’s son Laertes’s anguish to kill him. Though Laertes eventually realises that he has misunderstood Hamlet and been fooled by King Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, the tragedy has happened.”
“But I think there is the possibility for forgiveness,” Dr Lo says. “Forgiveness only forgives the unforgivable.”
Speaking about the lecture, Mr Alexander Kocsis, Lecturer with the Division of Business and Management of UIC, said: “Although this lecture doesn’t give me so much critical thinking, it raises me many fresh ideas for me which are very interesting. Now, I’m beginning to think, who is the real Hamlet? This lecture gives me many new directions.”
The lecture was organised by the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences and is a part of its Lecture Series.
Reporter: Zhai Jianbo
Photographer: Hou Liangyu
Editor: Deen He
(from MPRO, with special thanks to the ELC)
