Hamlet
Plan of lectures
1.
2.
3.
4.
Revenge and the ghost
Just how crazy is Hamlet?
The theme of mortality
Meta-theatricality
Preliminaries: first, the strange text
of Hamlet
• Our edition (Pelican), edited from the second quarto (Q2), is
approximately 3,674 lines long.
• Far too long to play (four hours if played). (Elizabethan plays took two to
two and a half hours to play.)
• Probably Q2 is Shakespeare’s early draft of the play.
• The Folio version (F) is 3,535 lines long, still far to long to play.
• Probably F is a revised version of the play; it lacks much of IV.4,
including H’s soliloquy there.
• Some scholars think F is a clearer version of the play, suggesting
revision.
• The first quarto (Q1) is much shorter, 2,154, and looks like a playing
version of the play.
• Some scenes are in a different (maybe better) order.
• But Q1 gives us a weird version of the text, certainly not Shakespeare’s
actual language.
• Q1 derives from an actor’s version of the play from memory – only
Marcellus’ lines are accurate.
The puzzling text (continued)
• So a modern production needs to decide which text, Q2
or F, to use, then how to cut about a third of the text.
• Earlier editions gave us a Hamlet that was conflated
from Q2 and F – an even longer play.
• Branagh’s film of the “uncut Hamlet” is interesting, but
something that was almost certainly never played in
Shakespeare’s time.
• But what was played?
• What we’re reading in the Pelican text is probably
Shakespeare’s early complete draft.
• Which he had to cut for playing.
• Look for extra F passages on pp. li-lv of Pelican if you’re
missing some familiar passages.
Second, five “open questions” in
Hamlet
• Is Hamlet mad or not? He says he will play mad (put on
an “antic disposition,” 1.5.171-72), but then later tells
Laertes that it was his “madness” that killed Polonius, not
Hamlet (5.2.231-240).
• Does Gertrude know about the murder of Hamlet’s
father? Hamlet thinks she does, but she seems shocked
at his accusation (3.4.29-31).
• Did Ophelia really commit suicide? Gertrude’s account
indicates it was an accident (4.7.166-184). The coroner
rules it “Christian burial.” But the gravediggers have their
doubts (5.1.1-30), and the priest says the death was
“doubtful,” and the funeral rites are truncated (5.1.228236).
• Why did she go mad? The death of her father? Or
Hamlet’s rejection of her?
• Does the “play-within-the-play” evoke Claudius’ guilt? Or
is it Hamlet’s commentary (3.2.267-70).
Third, R.I. P. “tragic flaw”
• Aristotle invented the tragic flaw: hamartia.
• But was it part of current discourse in 1590s?
• Here’s what Olivier did with tragic flaw in his
1948 film (clip).
• Admittedly Shakespeare seems to bring up the
issue at I, 4, 23ff.
• But how much does “tragic flaw” ever tell us?
Othello is jealous, Macbeth is ambitious, Lear is
old and losing his mind, Romeo loves too
rashly?
• And Hamlet does make up his mind at III, 3, 73ff
– maybe that’s the problem.
Now, the lecture: that damned
ghost – or is he?
• Hamlet a revenge play, a popular dramatic
genre.
• Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (1592),
Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (1600),
Middleton’s Revenger’s Tragedy (p. 1607),
Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois (1604),
Shakespeare’s own earlyTitus Andronicus (p.
1594).
• Elements of revenge plays: ghost demanding
vengeance, real or feigned madness, playswithin-plays, scenes of carnage and mutilation,
ingenious ways to accomplish vengeance.
Hamlet as revenge play
• Horatio’s conclusion: V, 2, 380-87: “So shall you
hear of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts . . .”
• But atypical in its psychological complexity – and
length.
• Ghost kept off stage for four scenes – a half
hour of playing time?
• Issue of revenge kept in suspense.
• The strange character of this ghost: where from?
What to make of him?
Film clip of ghost’s appearance
The ghost of Hamlet Sr.
• The ghost is real: on stage this must be a very
solid, opaque ghost, no see-though or imaginary
figure.
• Is the ghost from Purgatory?
• Purgatory a hot-button issue in Elizabethan
England.
• Ghost asserts Purgatory as its origin: I.5, 3-4, 913.
• This puts it among the saved, “a spirit of health,”
as H. says (I, 4, 40).
• But can it then ask for vengeance?
If the ghost simply wants justice. . .
• . . . how should it ask for vengeance?
• Can Hamlet be simply an instrument of God’s
justice?
• If he can, how should the crime and the
punishment be presented?
• At the end of the speech: “But howsomever
thou pursues this act,/ Taint not thy mind, nor let
thy soul contrive/ Against thy mother aught.
Leave her to heaven/ And to those thorns that in
her bosom lodge/ To prick and sting her.” (I, 5,
84-88).
• Hamlet must become like the executioner, who
is disengaged from the act of taking life.
But the rhetoric of the ghost’s
speech cuts against this:
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•
•
•
•
The horror of his “prison house”: I, 5, 12ff.
Rhetoric of bitterness: I, 5, 42ff.
Rhetoric of betrayal.
Highly physiological description of crime.
Everything in the speech seems designed to
elicit an extreme emotional reaction from
Hamlet.
• Line 80: “O, horrible, O horrible, most horrible!”
• Then the strange coda: don’t taint your mind or
harm your mother.
Can one take a life without tainting
his mind?
•
•
•
•
•
The public executioner.
Anonymous, hooded.
Asked forgiveness of his “client.”
Acted simply on behalf of the state.
Maintained his own disinvolvement with
the act of taking life.
• Can Hamlet attain this state of moral
neutrality?
The nature of the ghost’s charge to
Hamlet
• Kill your uncle, your father’s cold-blooded killer . . .
• . . . who led your mother to adulterous betrayal of
your father . . .
• . . . who killed me in a particularly horrible way . . .
• . . . and left your father no time for a proper death
(confession, communion) . . .
• BUT don’t taint your mind, or harm your mother
(while killing her current husband).
• Can any of this be done?
The effect on Hamlet?
• His invocation of heaven and earth
(I.5.92ff) – and what else, hell? “Oh fie!”
seems to reject hell.
• He’ll forget everything except the ghost’s
command.
• Is Hamlet a bit mad when he rejoins his
companions?
• Horatio: “These are but wild and whirling
words, my lord.”
• Hamlet driven to extremity by the ghost?
Hamlet tests the ghost
• II.2.537ff. Admits the ghost may be a devil sent
to trick him to damnation.
• So “the play’s the thing/ Wherein I’ll catch the
conscience of the king!”
• The “Mousetrap” indeed appears to catch the
king’s conscience.
• Horatio seems to agree that Claudius’s guilt is
apparent.
• Having tested the ghost, Hamlet now morally
bound to act?
• But see the divided rhetoric of III, 2, 381ff. “I will
speak daggers, but use none.”
The scene that indicates Hamlet’s
seeming readiness to act
• The time and place of III, 3, 36ff: Claudius
appears to be praying.
• The perfect moment for execution?
• “Enter Hamlet” ready to act the executioner.
• But he decides not to execute Claudius. Why?
• How does he now conceive of his revenge?
• Does he taint his mind in this redefining of
vengeance?
• Given this motivation, is not acting worse than
acting at this point?
The “closet scene” with Gertrude
• The decisive moment when Hamlet,
previously agent of vengeance, turns
murderer himself.
• Line 21 indicates Hamlet seems to
threaten violence to Gertrude.
• Accuses her of murder of Hamlet Sr.
• Insists on the comparison of her two
husbands, ll. 53ff.
• His insistence on her corruption, 91ff, 96ff.
Return of the ghost: “To whet thy
almost blunted purpose”
• Hamlet seems to admit his having failed to
act at the right moment: ll. 106ff.
• “Amazement on thy mother sits./ O step
between her and her fighting soul!”
• The second part of the ghost’s command:
“nor let thy soul contrive against thy
mother aught.”
• Has he offended against this too?
• His seeming obsession with his mother’s
corruption: ll. 181ff.
The impossibility of Hamlet’s
position
• The ghost whips him to an emotional fury
against both Claudius and Gertrude.
• Then tells him not to taint his mind or harm his
mother.
• He’s to kill his uncle, who has killed his father in
cold blood, but not “taint” his mind with passion
or anger.
• He’s to murder his mother’s husband, but not
“contrive” against her.
• These two scenes the turning point of the play?
• Now the Polonius family have precisely the
same motive of vengeance against Hamlet as he
has against Claudius.