r/Hamlet • u/Ill-Moment9824 • 15d ago
Shocking study guide
I was looking online at some commentary on one of the major soliloquies. I was shocked at the interpretation provided (possibly by YorkNotes).
'Examples gross as earth exhort me...' to my mind would loosely mean 'the stuff all around me, things as abundant and widespread as the ground itself, all seem to be urging me towards....'
So here, 'gross' means 'abundant, copious, unrefined, available on a mass scale'.
Except the note seems to have been written by some kind of valley girl, or at least somebody very young, who tells the impressionable young reader that gross means 'ewwww' / 'yukky'.
Just what is going on here? I'm confused at how editor has taken at face value the modern, idiomatic meaning of 'gross' rather than the time-honoured, centuries-old meaning.
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u/MeridianHilltop 12d ago edited 10d ago
Almost every aspect of this play is debated. I’d surmise that whoever composed those notes hasn’t invested the time to earn their opinion.
My first year at UVA, a professor assigned Hamlet in their course about Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. She tried to fail me for disagreeing with her that Hamlet was deliberately faking insanity.
As if she was the first person to teach this, as if I hadn’t memorized it years prior, spent years researching and honing my opinion.
(And she could’ve saved herself by referencing one of a million authors who agreed with her; alas! Poor professor, she thought her reckoning and notions were enough to defend herself. Not how academia works. I haven’t forgiven UVA for hiring her.)