"Who's There?" Hearing Character in Hamlet

Abstract

Abstract:Repetitive sound has an important role in early modern dramatic character construction, which modern accounts of sonic contagion and earworms can clarify. Hamlet repeatedly shows sonic snippets passing between characters, and transforming from unvoiced potentiality into audible noise and back. Shared sounds bring typified and psychological modes of character into contact. Rather than canceling out, these intensify and enrich one another. Similar sonic patterns affirm the Ghost's alien nature while validating Hamlet's interiority. Ophelia's ballads mark her at once as empty and full, and raise the possibility of a character who cannot be defined as psychological or typical.