Action!: The End
Two Film Versions of the
Ending to Hamlet:
• Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (at last
Thursday’s showing)
• Olivier's Hamlet (film clip) -19 mins.
Opposite possible reactions to ending of the play:
1. Hamlet has "won" (Olivier):
– transcendence.
– God's Providence; kingdom purged.
– Hamlet acts with heroism of a soldier and achieves
"glory.“
2. Hamlet has "lost" (Branagh):
– descent into cold grave; King Hamlet’s statue/memory
torn down.
– Hamlet succumbs to a diseased court attacked from
within
– uncaring force of soldier/revenge rules (Fortinbras)
However, to choose one or other reading would be a reduction
of the play and of Hamlet's character.
What finally allows Hamlet to take
action and kill Claudius?
• It is very hard to know what allows Hamlet
to act in the end, since Hamlet tells us less
in the second half of the play.
I propose 5 interlocking keys that help
open the door to deliberate action for
Hamlet.
1) Hamlet experiences killing and death close-up
in the 2nd half of the play, and develops a new
recognition of death's commonality.
• kills Polonius.
• signs death warrant of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern.
• meets gravedigger (and holds death's skull).
In these scenes, Hamlet revisits the question of the
commonality of death: 4.3.16-31 and, holding a
skull, 5.1.204-19.
• Hamlet now accepts death as the great leveler.
• forces Claudius to face the physical fact of death
(Polonius's body)
2) Those Hamlet cares most about die:
Ophelia and Gertrude.
3) Hamlet's action is ratified by a now
accelerated (and thus recognizable)
pattern of "maimed" ritual—a pervasive
state of “rottenness” in Denmark.
Which of the following is NOT a maimed
ritual?
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
The conventional advice of mother to son
The conventional advice of brother to sister
Polonius’s funeral
Ophelia’s funeral
The duel
The "rottenness" in Denmark, remarked
upon by Marcellus in the opening act,
has penetrated to the very core of
society’s language:
• see the distorted, affected language of
the courtier, Osiric (pp. 132-136;
5.2.81-196).
Notice what’s also happening to the scenes
in the latter half of the play.
There are 2 scenes in Act 2; how many
scenes are there in Act 4?
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
3
4
5
6
7
The multiplication of short scenes in the 4th Act
creates a sense of meaningless fragmentation.
It is in the midst specifically of the
broken ritual of the duel that Hamlet
finally completes the revenge act.
4) Hamlet has gained perspective on
himself in the latter half of the play.
He can now calmly see “being” and “not being” fold in upon
themselves, and even laugh about it.
• Joking with the gravedigger leads to the implication that
Hamlet's death was sealed from the moment of his birth.
– gravedigger's career began the year Hamlet was born.
– Wither's A Collection of Emblemes (1635): "As soone, as
wee to bee, begunne; We did beginne, to be Undone."
• But Hamlet also experiences something of a rebirth:
– He returns to England "naked," like a babe (4.7.44 and
again 52); he is reborn into the acceptance of death.
• death is a joke on all of us because it levels our aspirations
and pretensions; it mains the ritual of life.
• recognizing the jest of it all allows one to see and accept the
pun of "both" (life/death) rather than be forced to choose
"either or" ("to be or not to be").
So far we have found 4 keys that help
open the door to action:
1) Hamlet experiences killing and death
close-up in the second half of the play,
and develops a new recognition of
death's commonality.
2) Those Hamlet cares most about die:
Ophelia and Gertrude.
3) Hamlet's action is ratified by a now
accelerated (and thus recognizable)
pattern of "maimed" rituals.
4) Hamlet has gained perspective on
himself in the latter half of the play.
5) "The readiness is all."
This is the most important key to action, 5.2.220-225:
Horatio: If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will
forestall their repair hither and say you are not fit.
Hamlet: Not a whit, we defy augury. There is a
special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be
now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The
readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves
knows, what is't to leave betimes? Let be.
Do you think Hamlet's newfound
"readiness is all" is a kind of cop-out?
A) Yes

E) No
Fumerton’s Vote:
NO!
The idea of "the readiness is all" is born
of two realizations:
1. the realization that this life, not the afterlife, is
undiscovered.
2. the belief that God works through our actions
and purposes, which we ourselves don't
understand.
• see Player King: "Our thoughts are ours, their
ends none of our own" (3.2.219).
• see the idea of Providence prefigured in the
sea voyage: 5.2.1-55.
• What is expressed in “the readiness is all”
is a new idea of responsible action in the
form of a state of active passivity.
• this a hard-earned position, earned
through an arduous battle with all the
complex possibilities and "sea of troubles"
of life.
Professor
Fumerton's
Gravedigger
Scene:
-?
"The rest is silence."
But for The Simpson’s . . .