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Hamlet seems particularly interested with this idea of holding a mirror to the reality of situations to betray their alliances with death. He uses the same metaphor when speaking to the players: "the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show Virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."
The play which Prince Hamlet stages is vitally important not only in that it is a mirror and reflection of sorts, but also because it is in itself art. A great deal of fuss is made in the text about the proper form of the art of playing, as if to highlight that it's artistic merit were important to the story. This may be because putting the death of the king into play form is meant, within the story, to represent the way that death is turned into art as part of the Memento Mori ideology. Indeed, the "death as art" aspect of this ideology is, quite literally, embodied in every part of the story because Hamlet itself, as a play, is ars moriendi. In fact, it appears that to some degree Hamlet is aware of himself as just a character in a grand piece of death art. In the final scene, he seems to speak directly about this role, as he is dying an looking out at both the on-stage and off-stage audience: "That are but mutes or audience to this act, / Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death, /
Is strict in his arrest) O, I could tell you- but let it be. Horatio, I am dead..."
Additionally, references to the genre of death art are made through-out the play. Even the scene with Yorick's skull is actually a reference to a tradition in Renaissance painting at the time: "The contemplation of a skull is a common motif in paintings of the period. Often a saint is depicted with a skull, suggesting his awareness of the vanity of human endeavor... Cavarozzi's painting of St. Jerome, for instance, [has] in the foreground a skull facing outward..." (Triggs) it was common in this era for young, even foppish, romantics to be painted with skulls over which they brooded or considered their time on earth, while mystics tended to be consumed more with their spirituality, as Jerome who "pursues his characteristic work, which involves primarily the contemplation of divinity." (Triggs) it is important to recognize that painterly theme coming to the foreground in this scene, as in a couple others, because it highlights the connections between this as death art and that which exists in the external/non-literary world.
The final theme vital to the ideology of Memento Mori was that of the death dance. According to Jacobs, the point of the death dance was to illustrate that, through the universality of death, no man was above any other. The king or pope only led the rest of the world down into death, and he was not exempt from it himself. This is actually one of the most important themes in Hamlet, as the boy tries to reconcile himself...
Dead (Dia de Muertos) is a Mexican holiday that is also celebrated around the world in other countries where Hispanics are located, such as North America, Brazil, Spain, etc. Its roots are located both in the Roman Catholic observance of All Saints and All Souls Days in November and in the pagan customs of the Aztecs who celebrated worship of the Mictecacihuatl, the Queen of the Underworld. In recent
Grotesque If one goes back to Plato and examines what the Greek philosopher had to say about beauty and truth, one discovers the foundation of the transcendental spirit in the West. The Greek philosophers -- Socrates, Plato, Aristotle -- more or less constructed the philosophical lens for how to portray ideals such as unum, bonum, verum -- the one, the good and the true. Beauty was viewed from within this
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