Hamlet: Word Analysis
Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet outstands from other medieval works and even
from his own plays. Its modernity primarily stems from the tragic hero’s, Hamlet’s
modern thinking. Hamlet is not in conformity with his times and his modern character
defies the whole world around him. He views at the world with irony. He is an individual
who is spiritually above all the people around him who are all just present in Hamlet’s
world as puppets. As a modern individual he cannot find his place in this world therefore
his only option is to set things right. Hamlet views at his world as “[ ] an unweeded
garden/That grows to seed.”(I.ii.139-140)”. As an unfit, Hamlet is considered to be
“crazy”. In Hamlet’s “craziness”, the world reflects itself: the immoral and bloody world
with disintegrated values. “ I do not set my life at a pin’s fee “(I.iiii.73) says Hamlet, and
although he is doomed, he is struggling to live, to keep alive. Considering the relationship
between Hamlet and the surrounding world, it is both important and interesting to analyze
the verb “to be” in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. During the play, the conventional verb “to be”
has a double-layers of meaning in the author’s and thereby his hero, Hamlet’s semantics.
There are several places in the play where the verb “to be” is used in its basic lexical
meaning, that is, when it means “to exist” primarily in the physical and biological sense
of the word.
When the King says a farewell to Laertes, he says:
“Take thy fair hour, Laertes. Time be thine,
And thy best graces spend it at thy will.” (I.ii.64-65)
With these words the King encourages Leartes to enjoy his youth, and the physical
pleasures of life. The word “to be” in this context plainly refers to life’s physical
attributes.
Another example for the similar usage of the verb “to be” is when Polonius gives advice
to his son Laertes:
“And these few precepts in my memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be though familiar, but by no means vulgar.” (I.iii.64-67)
Polonius’s fatherly advises his son to be friendly, amiable, and gracious with others
without being indiscriminate. Here the verb “to be” is used in context with Laertes’s
possible social relationships in France with other people, and in that sense it refers to
mental/social interactions between human beings. In that regard the verb “to be” does not
carry connotations other than the conventional meaning .
However, the verb “to be” is emphatically present in the play when it points far beyond
its basic lexical/grammatical or physical/biological meaning. Another layer of meaning of
the verb expresses the spiritual existence in Hamlet’s world of thought and scale of
values. In this sense of the word, the verb “to be” means to live/to exist primarily in a
spiritual way.
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?” (III.i.64-68)
In his famous soliloquy, Hamlet analyses his relationship to the real world. His question
“to be or not to be” refers not only to his physical existence, a possible suicide, to a
situation where the question is reduced to a mere “life or death” problem. He realizes that
the world in Elsinore is not acceptable for him; he cannot identify himself with it. In this
world, earthly and mundane values dominate while for him the “nobleness in the mind”
means a spiritual, individual existence. Hamlet is not a medieval individual, he points far
beyond his age as a humane, modern thinker. He is a rebel trying to set the moral of
world right who is bitterly amusing himself on people’s intellectual petty-mindedness.
In the tragedy, the verb “to be” is present in two levels. The first level is the conventional
grammar, which is analogue with the mundane world in Elsinore. In that meaning, the
use of the verb “to be” is considered conventional and used to describe ideas, notions in
association with life, without which there is no human communication. The other layer of
meaning of the verb “to be” is the philosophical level, which involves only Hamlet and
perhaps the humane Fortinbras appearing at the end of the play. In Hamlet’s character the
human spirit outgrows sacramentalism: Hamlet dares to speak with the Ghost, he is more
desirous of getting to know reality than secrets and the fear of facts of life, and he
represents a modern humane thinker striving for cognition of life in its entirety well
beyond the symbolism of medieval life manifesting itself in earthly formalities. So the
verb “to be” presents itself in the tragedy at verge of two worlds, two ways of thinking.
The role of the verb “to be” in that case is beyond its grammatical limits and connects the
grammatical and philosophical layers of meaning.