“Venom to thy Venom”: Hamlet’s Revenge and the Late-Elizabethan Passion for Symmetry

Abstract

ABSTRACT Late-Elizabethan culture is considered by scholars to be particularly desirous of symmetry. Structural manifestations of this desire appear frequently in plays written in Shakespeare’s day, and most frequently in Hamlet. This article focuses on the symmetry-based rhetorical devices employed by the protagonist, which reflect a craving for symmetry. The article examines the relations between these rhetorical devices and the play’s dramatisation of revenge. This investigation shows that Hamlet achieves revenge for two out of the three injuries that Claudius inflicts upon him: the symmetry-craving protagonist thus fails to fully attain the three symmetries he is prompted to produce. The incomplete symmetry of Hamlet’s revenge experience, which can be viewed as an incomplete fulfilment of poetic justice, is one of the nuances that endow the play’s ending with its singular sophistication. The article is an attempt to show that the study of rhetorical schemes in Shakespeare’s drama is not yet obsolete.