William Shakespeare and his plays

[DJB28]

Hmmm... I don't necessarily buy SLE for Laertes/Polonius. Maybe for Laertes, but Polonius seems way too terrible at constructing a logical sentence for him to be SLE. I guess he could just be a really dumb SLE, but I think of him as an ethical type.

I really like Claudius = LIE, although his noted fondness for drink (and sexual obsession with Gertrude) could be viewed as an Si thing (but of course, alcohol has a variety of effects that have nothing to do with Si; but if it's motivated by taste/sensation, maybe Si). He certainly seems Te leading, with all that "your father died, but so did his father and his fathers' father, so get over it and move on" crap. The idea that wallowing in grief shows an "unschooled" understanding (rather than an hypersensitive emotional capacity) also seems very Te, and from a certain perspective, he has a point. He just looks stupid in this play because it's Hamlet's play.

Hamlet himself doesn't have a type. Or rather, his behavior and mode of cognition does not seem to be accurately accounted for by the series of metaphors we call type/information elements. It's especially hard to distinguish between his Ni and his Fe. At times, the Fe is the product (interactions with Ophelia and the madness especially), and at times it's not. At times he seems to be introverted and philosophical at his core, and at times he seems to have no core thought, or philosophy, or speculative nature, and so his dynamic immaterial (emotional) expressions seem to be as close to his core as we're going to get. Merely because Hamlet exhibits a salient characteristic of the EIE (his essential changingness, almost paradoxical if you're a platonist), we type the EIE as Hamlet-like. This does not mean that we need to type Hamlet as EIE.

EII for Ophelia makes a lot of sense, as does SEE for Gertrude, although her "willow grows askant a brook speech" feels Si (but I could see that as a temporary use of generally unvalued Si).

ILI is interesting for Horatio. What makes you think ILI over a more traditionally staid, unchanging type, such as ESI or SLI? I suppose "give me that man who is not passion's slave" is a decent ILI description, but do you think the Fe polr accounts for Horatio's sudden desire for self-slaughter at the end of the play?

Excellent analysis! SEE is a possibility for Polonius- I just didn't think an ethical type would have forbidden his daughter from being with the person she loved.
Horatio.. I practically forgot about that ending. He seemed to be very low-energy and lacking in enthusiasm which was one of my reasons for picking ILI but of course.. this just means he's an Introvert of some sort.

[silverchris9]

Excellent analysis! SEE is a possibility for Polonius- I just didn't think an ethical type would have forbidden his daughter from being with the person she loved.
Horatio.. I practically forgot about that ending. He seemed to be very low-energy and lacking in enthusiasm which was one of my reasons for picking ILI but of course.. this just means he's an Introvert of some sort.

Thanks. That's a good point about forbidding Ophelia to marry Hamlet. But SEEs can be overprotective (I think), and Fi does tend to establish social expectations/value systems... maybe if someone transgressed the value system enough, they would no longer be good enough for his daughter? But really, the reason he forbids her is pretty much because being around Hamlet is dangerous, and protecting people can be associated with SLE. So I dunno.

Yeah, I'd definitely say that Horatio's an introvert. Beyond that, I don't really know.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

Wrong. Dead energy. None of you know what you're talking about. Sucks it up. I'm waiting for truth, waiting for somebody to really know.

[DJB28]

Wrong. Dead energy. None of you know what you're talking about. Sucks it up. I'm waiting for truth, waiting for somebody to really know.

What!?!?
Are you
a.) A troll
b.) Acting stupid
c.) Angry about something unrelated to this thread