NAME: Josephine Winnick
MODULE: Introduction to Drama
TITLE: ‘FAUSTUS: Now, Faustus, must thou needs be damned / And canst
thou not be saved’. Consider either the relationship between fate and free will or
ideas about death and the afterlife with reference to one or more of the plays
you have studied on this module.
WORD COUNT: 1989
This essay will explore the presentation of ideas about death and the afterlife, primarily
concerning William Shakespeare’s Hamlet1.
Arguably the most illustrious line in the history of English literature, ‘To be or not to be:
that is the question’ (III.i.58), epitomises the centrality of themes surrounding death and the
afterlife in Shakespeare’s Hamlet – themes this essay will attempt to explore in reference to
the aforementioned play. The significance of these tropes can largely be perceived as a
reflection of the rife religious uncertainty present in the late sixteenth, and early seventeenthcentury England as a result of the Protestant reformation. This is a trope reflected within
other reformation dramas. For example, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, is largely appraised as
mirroring this focus on death and the afterlife, as conveyed in the titular quotation,
referencing the religious ‘sav[ing]’ Faustus is ultimately unable to achieve2. This marks the
overarching difference between the two plays: ‘Unlike Faustus’ Hamlet’s death is pictured by
the survivors as a departure from the world of sin and an entry into the kingdom of rest’3.
Faustus’ dramatic descent into the underworld provides a direct contrast to the sense of
closure gained from reading the final lines of Hamlet, where the added foreshortened line of
the final couplet, spoken by Fortinbras (‘Go, bid the soldiers shoot’) (V.ii.396), exudes a tone
of resolution regarding the concept of death, and subsequent afterlife. It is for this reason, that
this essay will focus on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the themes of death and the afterlife.
Hamlet’s uncertainty surrounding death and the afterlife, as well as his many other
internal conflicts, provide a basis for the play, and serves to allow crucial plot development.
1
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. By Cedric Watts (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 1992). All
quotations will refer to this edition.
2
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, ed. by David Scott Kastan (London: W.W Norton & Company, 2005).
Any future quotations will refer to the A-text of this edition.
3
Daniel E. Van Tassel, ‘Clarence, Claudio, and Hamlet: “The Dread of Something after Death.”’, Renaissance
and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, vol.7 no.1 (1983), 48-62 (60).
Aside from equivocation regarding the afterlife, something largely conveyed through the
characterisation of the Ghost, an idea this essay will later attempt to develop, Hamlet suffers
antagonising inner conflict over the basic concepts of life and death. The death of Hamlet’s
father sets the play in motion and could be perceived, at least partially, as the source of his
internal conflict. Hamlet’s fixation on death presents him as at odds with his surroundings,
his philosophical and humanistic approach to death would have been an atypical perspective
in Elizabethan England. This contrast is typified through Gertrude’s remark to Hamlet
following his father’s death that, ‘Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, / Passing
through nature to eternity’ (I.ii.71-72). This blasé statement essentially undermines Hamlet’s
grief and is clearly juxtaposed by the metaphor of Hamlet dressed in his ‘inky cloak’ (I.ii.77).
Hamlet’s overt grief following his father’s death suggests a catholic response to death,
despite his otherwise Protestant sensibilities, for example, his attendance at Wittenberg
University4. This serves to exemplify the rife religious tensions and uncertainties in
Elizabethan England, and the subsequent effects upon the literature of the time. Not only does
this reaction to his father’s death align Hamlet’s views with that of Catholicism, but this is
also demonstrated through the presentation of the ghost, something explored later in this
essay.
Aside from the inevitable ‘To be or not to be: that is the question’ quotation which offers
itself as support for Hamlet’s equivocal musings upon death, other lines, such as ‘O, that this
too too solid flesh would melt’ (I.ii.129) mirror this sentiment5. Hamlet’s aversion to
referring to death in such plain terms, or perhaps, suicide, in such plain terms, serves to
4
Martin Luther taught here, and it is widely perceived to have been one of the institutions that sparked the
Protestant Reformation. Note: This is also the university attended by Faustus in Marlow’s Dr Faustus.
5
In some alternate editions of Hamlet, the word ‘solid’ is replaced with the word ‘sullied’, the latter of which
potentially has stronger connotations of decay and disease.
reflect the religious aversion and damnation associated with suicide – it was regarded equally
as a mortal sin regardless in both Protestantism, and Catholicism.
The theme of suicide itself within the play Hamlet is one that cannot be reasonably
dismissed within the wider themes of death and the afterlife. Likely such a prominent theme
of the play given the heaving religious contexts, and aforementioned religious views towards
suicide, this is a theme not only exemplified through Hamlet’s musings, but also through the
characterisation of Ophelia, and her fateful death. Shakespeare largely presents ‘the fair
Ophelia’ (III.ii.88) as a woman lacking agency and controlled by the men in her life – passive
almost to the point of non-existence as an independent consciousness, a presentation arguably
epitomised through the portrayed of her death, or more accurately, the subsequent retelling of
her death by other characters. In act 4 scene 7, the description of Ophelia's death is highly
romanticised, specifically by Gertrude in her depiction of Ophelia's death. Gertrude tells
Ophelia's brother, ‘your sister's drown'd, Laertes’ (IV.vii.163), with the direct address adding
a personal tone, and one of sincerity. There is no suggestion that Ophelia committed suicide
here, demonstrating just how much Ophelia lacks agency throughout the play – she has no
control even over her own death and how it is reported. Gertrude further goes on to control
the story of Ophelia's death by romanticising it and removing the horror from it. Gertrude
describes the location of Ophelia's death when she states, ‘There is a willow grows aslant a
brook, / That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream’ (IV.vii.65-66). The inclusion of a
willow tree is particularly appropriate for Ophelia's death given their connotations of both
beauty, and sorrow. Furthermore, the idea of ‘the glassy stream’, might perhaps be a
metaphor for a mirror reflecting the truths and horrors of life, something Ophelia perhaps
couldn't face, leading to her death. Throughout Hamlet, Ophelia is repeatedly presented as a
victim, often doing nothing to combat this, and this idea is continued into her death, where
Gertrude describes how her clothes became heavy and pulled her down into the river, further
dispelling the idea of suicide. She tells Laertes, ‘that her garments, heavy with their drink, /
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay / To muddy death’ (IV.vii.180-83) This
diffuses any fault away from Ophelia through the use of passive language describing
Ophelia's final moments – she is just a ‘poor wretch’. The act of drowning itself can be
viewed as was associated with the feminine – female fluidity rather than masculine aridity –
Gaston Bachelard traced the connections between women, water and death, suggesting
drowning is the truly ‘feminine death’ in literature, something he refers to as the ‘Ophelia
Complex’6. Females immersed in water suggest a return to the organic symbol of liquid
woman; her body consists of blood, amniotic fluid and milk. This presents Ophelia as a pure
and perfect feminine figure, something which now more than ever, she has no power to
change. This depiction of death, specifically the ‘feminine’ death of Ophelia, presents a
further facet to the presentation of death in Hamlet.
Whilst the general theme of death in Hamlet undeniably underpins the play, C.S Lewis
deconstructs this, examining the motif in a more nuanced way. Lewis states that Hamlet’s
fear of, and preoccupation with, death is ‘not [about] a physical fear of dying, but a fear of
being dead’.7 Lewis’ observation epitomises the equivocality surrounding the afterlife, as
opposed to just the concept of death itself, which is present with Hamlet. This uncertainty is
demonstrated through the character of Hamlet and acts as a reflection of the majority of the
wider Elizabethan population. Ideas surrounding the afterlife were one of the most marked
differences, and sources of conflict, between Protestantism, and Catholicism. Prereformation, the widely accepted Catholic view of the afterlife involved purgatory: after
6
Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams: an essay on the imagination of matter (Dallas, Pegasus Foundation,
1983).
7
C.S Lewis, Hamlet: the Prince or the Poem?, (London: Humphry Milford, 1942), p.73.
death, not only could souls go to Heaven or Hell, but they could also, perhaps most
frequently, be sent to Purgatory. This intermediatory state also encompassed the limbo of
unbaptised infants, and the limbo of fathers. In Purgatory, souls could atone for their past
sins, and sometimes in the process of this, would revisit Earth. The Catholic interpretation,
therefore, of the ‘Ghost’ would be one viewing it as a noon-malicious spirit, the true spirit of
Hamlet’s father, who has merely returned to earth in order to atone for his sins. Reading the
play through a Catholic lens is an interpretation frequently adopted by critics, perhaps owing
to the frequent suggestion that Shakespeare himself was likely of Catholic faith, despite
writing his play in post-reformation Protestant England, noting the strong Catholic links
within his family. Furthermore, providing a direct nexus to the presentation of the afterlife in
Hamlet, Butler suggests that ‘Shakespeare knows his Catholic doctrine too well to be a
Protestant’, something exemplified through his presentation of the Ghost8. The lines, ‘My
hour is almost come, / When I to sulph’rous and tormenting flames / Must render up myself’
(I.v.4-6) are clearly a reference to the Catholic concept of Purgatory, with the moribund
metaphors dramatizing this image, and perhaps playing upon the audience’s fears regarding
the afterlife, likely stemming from a place of uncertainty.
Contrastingly, post-reformation Protestant religious beliefs disregarded the concept of
these intermediatory states; apparitions could, therefore, only be a demon in disguise, sent
from Hell. This is an idea explored by Thomas Nashe, writing topically within a similar
timeframe to Shakespeare, who stated, ‘the Diuell when with any other sicknes or malladie
the faculties of our reason are enfeebled and distemperd, will be most busie to disturbe vs and
torment vs’9. This concept of ghosts as a source of malice from hell explored by Nashe, not
8
9
L. F. Butler, ‘Was Shakespeare a Catholic?’, The Irish Monthly, vol. 62 no. 729 (1934), 173-180 (178).
Thomas Nashe, The Terrors of the Night, Or, A Discourse of Apparitions, (London, 1594), p. unknown.
only highlights a potential Protestant reading of the play, but also aligns itself with
Elizabethan views of madness. ‘For the Elizabethans, Hamlet was the prototype of
melancholy male madness, something associated with intellectual and imaginative genius’10.
Thomas Bright’s Treatise of Melancholy (1586), the most extensive and prominent work on
melancholy in Shakespeare’s time, suggests that sufferers from melancholy can witness
‘phantaftical apparitions’11. This idea would suggest that, within a post-reformation
Protestant England, the Ghost is a source of evil from hell, and Hamlet, through his Madness,
is made more susceptible to seeing such apparitions12. Similarly to the way in which certain
critics have provided excerpts from the play to support a Catholic understanding of the play,
potentially implying Shakespeare himself was a covert Catholic within Protestant England,
the play does also proffer contradictory sources of evidence which could suggest that play,
and Shakespeare’s subsequent portrayal of death and the afterlife through the ghost is based
upon a foundation of Protestantism. For example, Hamlet’s desperate plea to be defended
from this supernatural force: ‘angels and ministers of grace defend us!’ (I.iv.390), suggests
that Hamlet as a character has a Protestant understanding of the ghost, hence why he is
absorbed in this moment of fear and conflict such as the aforementioned line. There is
evidently no distinctive correct answer regarding the frequently critically pondered question
surrounding the religious basis of the play. This is something largely mirroring the fact that
‘in matters of religious belief, families in early sixteenth-century England were
characteristically fractured, and many individuals were similarly fractured’, an idea explored
by Greenblatt13. Instead, Shakespeare presents death and the afterlife as topics shrouded in
equivocality, something reflected through the titular character’s musings, as well as the
Elaine Showalter, ‘Ophelia, Gender and Madness’ (2016), [online] The British Library
https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/ophelia-gender-and-madness [accessed 15th November 2021].
11
Thomas Bright, A Treatise of Melancholie, (London: Thomas Vaotrollier, 1586), p103.
12
Bright’s work if often stated to have been of significant influence on Shakespeare while he was writing
Hamlet.
13
Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton: Princetown University Press, 2001).
10
presentation of the ghost. The ambiguity surrounding death prompted through the ghost relies
on the turbulent religious tensions within Elizabethan England.
To conclude, the line from Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, ‘Now, Faustus, must thou needs be
damned / And canst thou not be saved’, can be explored in context of the relationship
between death and the afterlife in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Death is largely portrayed as
inevitable, yet also a concept shrouded with ambiguity, something largely explored through
the musings of Hamlet. Elizabethan views of the afterlife were divided as a result of the postreformation rife religious tensions present within everyday life, something conveyed through
the Ghost, and the subtle, yet often contradictory, pieces of evidence regarding the religion of
the Ghost/ Hamlet’s religious interpretation of the Ghost. Ideas surrounding the afterlife were
dependent on religion, the main distinction between Catholics and Protestants being that the
former incorporated intermediatory purgatory states into the process of the afterlife, and this
is something reflected during drama of this period, both Hamlet, as well as other plays, such
as the titular Doctor Faustus.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Bachelard, Gaston, Water and Dreams: an essay on the imagination of matter (Dallas,
Pegasus Foundation, 1983)
Bright, Thomas, A Treatise of Melancholie, (London: Thomas Vaotrollier, 1586), p103.
Butler, L. F, ‘Was Shakespeare a Catholic?’, The Irish Monthly, vol. 62 no. 729 (1934)
Greenblatt, Stephen, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton: Princetown University Press,
2001)
Lewis, C.S, Hamlet: the Prince or the Poem?, (London: Humphry Milford, 1942)
Marlowe, Christopher, Doctor Faustus, ed. by David Scott Kastan (London: W.W
Norton & Company, 2005)
Nashe, Thomas, The Terrors of the Night, Or, A Discourse of Apparitions, (London,
1594)
Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, ed. By Cedric Watts (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth
Classics, 1992)
Showalter, Elaine, ‘Ophelia, Gender and Madness’ (2016), [online] The British Library
<https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/ophelia-gender-and-madness>
[accessed 15th November 2021]
Van Tassel, Daniel E., ‘Clarence, Claudio, and Hamlet: “The Dread of Something after
Death.”’, Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, vol.7 no.1
(1983)