Hamlet – To Learn or Not to Learn . . . “Are we Human or are we Dancer”
A. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
Hamlet underscores the weakness, the smallness of, of reason in the face of life’s lingering
mysteries philosophies/science can’t explain everything
B. Hamlet – Woe is me
Hamlet has some emotional issues
He is pictured as irresolute, as a man who thinks but cannot act
Hamlet paralyzed by neurotic obsession with evil and death or by his Oedipal fixation
He can’t translate his thoughts of remembrance into the mechanics of revenge
Realizes that revenge is difficult, and that useful revenge may be impossible
He might want to be King
He can’t openly kill the king lead to his seizure and execution (even Claudius did it in
secret)
Must find a way to get Claudius to reveal the truth
C. Hamlet’s poetic speech – ‘What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in
faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension
how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this
quintessence of dust?’
Core of his problem Any ideas?
What is it be human? Who am I?
Wants to believe in the order of the universe, its beauty, and the innate
goodness of man, but . .
. . . in light of what has happened to his dad, his mom, Denmark everything
seems false and life itself seems so pointless – he is indifferent or even negative
What about revenge? Is it still bothering him?
If life has no apparent purpose, why seek revenge?
Dual Nature of people – Persona, Shadow
Wonders are many yet of all/Things is Man the most wonderful./He can sail on the stormy
sea/Through the tempest rage, and the loud Waves roar around, as he makes his/ Path amid the
towering surge. . . /He can entrap the cheerful birds . . . /and all the wild/Beasts of the earth he has
learned to catch . . ./Such inventiveness is man./Through his inventions he becomes lord/ . . . And
Speech he has learned, and thought/So swift, and the temper of mind/To dwell within cities, and not
to lie bare/Amid the keen, biting frosts/Or cower beneath pelting rain;/Full of resource against all
that comes to him/Is Man.? Against Death alone/He is left with no defence,/But painful sickness he
can cure/ . . . Surpassing belief, the device and/Cunning that Man has attained/Abd it bringeth him
now to evil, now to good/If he observe Law, and tread/The righteous path God ordained, Honoured
is he; dishonoured, the man whose/reckless heart/Shall make him join hands with sin [Sophocles –
Antigone 332 -372]
D. Hamlet and Claudius Ophelia, Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Laertes; Claudius less
savage in his acts than Macbeth but more contemptable (this has been debated)
E. Shakespeare explores the notion of wounded honour (Kleos), lust, ambition Laertes, Fortinbras,
Claudius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
F. Hamlet and Laertes Hamlet waits while Laertes acts
G. The Player-King
-
His speech ties in with Hamlet’s earlier speculations about the ambiguity inherent in willed
choice
o The Player-King, married for 30 years has come to one unquestionable certainty what
man and women determine they often do not do (“purpose is but the slave to
memory”)
Both memory and the will to do something persist at a high voltage. But, keep
in mind that a person’s will is born of passion, and passion has little staying
power, and the force of memory depends upon continued emotional intensity.
Only the fading of tormenting memories can release the present from the
burden of the past
Example: an unripe fruit clings to the branches of a mother tree until, upon
maturation, they drop to the ground, not because they will to do so, but
because nature has designed the reproductive process so that they can do
nothing else
H. To be or not to be:
What is the value of life?
What is the value of death?
Which of the two is preferable?
Or
Why am I here?
How should I live?
I. Hamlet – divergent interpretations of suffering and misfortune
Horatio nihilistic – the events are nothing but “carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts” brought on
by “accidental judgements, casual slaughters” (5.2 386-387).
Events unfold by divine intervention vs. events are driven by human errors, accidents and poor choices
“Hamlet alone perceives of the pettiness and blindness of human calculation and intent in a
world where destiny is molded by forces beyond man’s control or comprehension. And with
Hamlet we wonder if any struggle of man matters when placed against the vast stream of time
that flows endlessly towards oblivion” (Orenstein 508).
The Search for Meaning Continued
Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep.
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough- hew them how we will . . .
There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow [5.2. 4 – 200].
Remember, that throughout the play Hamlet has been searching for meaning (action and
resignation), but in Act 5 he proclaims that a providential force he calls divinity governs his
immediate world and shapes the ends of his and all men’s lives
Hamlet is resigned, composed and, perhaps peaceful: “There is a divinity that shapes our ends
/ Rough-hew them how we will” (5.2. 10-11). And “There is a special providence in the fall of
a sparrow” (5.2. 215).
How he comes to this conclusion:
o “All the circumstance . ..”
his experiences on the sea voyage to England:
Discovery of Claudius’ plot against his life
His revision of the letter (good thing for schooling)
His sealing of the new letter with his father’s signet ring (which by chance was
in his purse) “even in that was heaven ordinant”
In the final scene Hamlet finally speaks with affirmative vigor that indicates certainty gone
are the doubts and indecisiveness
For Hamlet the question has never been whether a divinity exists, but whether that divinity is
morally concerned with individual human destinies
At the end he recognizes that the divinity is a guiding force, not only
in his own life, but shapes “our ends”
o ‘End’ could mean death; purpose or aim; or both
o After constantly debating the meaning of life itself throughout the play, Hamlet has
come to the belief that God has a hand in every detail of life. Furthermore, Hamlet
claims that whatever is destined to happen will happen soon enough, and that for
those on Earth, “the readiness is all”.
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