The Marxist HamletIn his article "'Funeral Bak'd Meats:' Carnival and the Carnivalesque in Hamlet", Michael D. Bristol combines Marxism and Bakhtin's notion of double-speak textuality in a unique reading of Shakespeare's drama as a struggle between opposing economic classes. Bristol opens with a two-paragraph preface on Marxism, emphasizing Marx's own self-denial toward Marxism: "Marx is famous for the paradoxical assertion that he was not a Marxist" (Bristol 348). While acknowledging some of the inherent flaws in Marxist critique, Bristol uses the introductory paragraphs to assert the "enormous importance" of "the theory of class consciousness and class struggle" that Marxist theory includes ( 349). After preparing readers for a discourse whose foundation rests on “the most fundamental idea of ​​Marxism,” Bristol presents Hamlet as a class struggle. A strange, multifaceted mixture permeates Bristol's argument and, according to his thesis, the drama of Hamlet as well. . According to Bristol, two contrasting texts, two opposing social worlds, follow one another in the drama, forming a strange suspension “of sorrow and festive laughter” (350). This strange juxtaposition of opposites becomes the basis of Bristol's introduction of the carnivalesque. The echoes of Carnival within Hamlet, according to Bristol, evolve continually throughout the play until reaching their most perfect representation in the gravedigger scene of the fifth act. Bristol attributes to Carnival a function that enormously reinforces his thesis: “Carnival opens up alternative possibilities for action and helps facilitate creativity in the social sphere” (351). Bristol's discussion of Carnival expands to include theories......middle of article......istol concludes his article by explaining the ultimate end of the Carnivalesque, "dissolution, and finally l 'extinction of identity, the annihilation of the individual in the historical continuum' (365). The bodies of the festival organizers, Hamlet's court, lie on the stage like 'slaughtered 'meat'' (365). 364). Bristol concludes that the second culture, or second language, of Carnival in the drama of Hamlet, provides an alternative reading of the drama by "discouraging the shifting logics used to explain political intrigue", transforming the play into one. struggle between social classes as expressed in the carnivalesque (365) The duality of Hamlet, the mixture of tragedy and comedy, sheds new light on the drama as an ambivalent and grotesque carnival which contrasts diametrically with the power and the convenience generally associated with the piece..