Hamlet is William Shakespeare’s most famous play and probably the most
famous play in the world. Even tough it is a very famous play, Hamlet is
regularly criticised to be too long. Critics accuse Shakespeare of having
included unnecessary scenes and of needing too much time to get to the
point,
meaning
to
get
to
the
end
of
the
play.
The
whole
play
is
an
“artistic failure” as T.S. Eliot puts it in his famous essay. Hamlet is the
biggest problem of Hamlet. Hamlet as a character does everything in order
to not fit into the play. He almost seems not to belong into the play with
his very name. Hamlet does not want to fulfil his role in the play. The
character strives against the plot.
When in act I, scene III Horatio tells him about the appearance of the
ghost Hamlet is very eager to learn more about the incident. He is sorry
that he has not been there to see the ghost with his own eyes. He decides
to wait for the appearance the following night and tells the others not to
speak to the ghost. At the end of the scene when he is alone he begins to
suspect that his father did not die of a natural cause, he “doubt(s) some
foul play” (Act I, Scene III, 256). The most obvious reason for old Hamlet
to come back is that he cannot rest peacefully. It is a common belief that
people whose body has not been found, or such who did not get a proper
burial with sacrifices, burial objects, lament, and grief or, if they have
been murdered, vendetta, come back as a revenant of any kind. (Bunson, 297)
Common forms of revenants are vampires, werewolves or ghosts. As they seem
to have buried the king according to the rites the two possible reasons for
the appearance of a ghost are firstly missing grief, which Hamlet has
already accused his mother of in his first scene, and secondly murder. But
Hamlet should have his doubts about the whole incident; he has studied in
Wittenberg and is therefore likely to be a protestant. We do not know
whether Hamlet is a protestant or a catholic. If Hamlet is a catholic he
believes in purgatory as a middle stage between heaven and hell, where the
souls stay until they have paid for their sins and can rest peacefully. But
if Hamlet is a protestant, his belief is or, at least should be, that all
ghosts come straight out of hell and are therefore evil. In this case, if
the guards and Horatio really have seen a ghost it cannot have been the
ghost of his father. Hamlet’s speech in this and the following scene is
ambiguous concerning his religion. We cannot determine whether he is a
protestant or a catholic. Hamlet speaks of heaven and hell when he first
talks to the ghost but he does not mention purgatory as a third alternative
for the ghost’s origin.
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou com’st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee. (Act I, Scene IV, 40-44)
This implies a protestant view of the next world, but after having talked
to the ghost he seems to be a catholic: “Rest, rest, perturbed spirit” (Act
I, Scene V, 190).
confrontation
with
Or, he might have been a protestant but after the
his
father’s
ghost
who
really
seems
to
be
the
incarnation of his father and not just an evil spirit trying to complicate
or jeopardize Hamlet’s life, Hamlet may not be so sure what to believe
after all: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are
dreamt of in your philosophy” (Act I, Scene V, 174). (Greenblatt, 233). We
cannot
define
Hamlet’s
religion.
In
the
same
way
we
cannot
really
understand Hamlet’s actions within the play. He strives against the plot.
At the end of Scene I, Act IV, Hamlet still follows his function in
the plot. He is very eager to meet the
ghost, even
when Horatio and
Marcellus try to convince him not to follow the ghost: “I’ll make a ghost
of him that lets me” (Act I, Scene V, 85). He acts in the way the plot
wants him to act in order to get to the point as soon as possible. In brief
terms: Hamlet goes to the ghost, talks to it, does whatever the ghost wants
him to do, so that the ghost can rest in peace and the play is over; the
classical motive of the grateful dead. At this moment Hamlet seems to be a
normal revenge play. When I say that Hamlet strives against the plot, then
I see ‘plot’ as the plot of the classical revenge play one would expect
after having read as far as the beginning of Act I, Scene V; in the
following scenes Hamlet still seems to be a revenge play if we look at M.H.
Abrams’s definition, even if its protagonist does not always act as if he
is starring in one:
Its subject is a murder and the quest for vengeance, and it includes a ghost,
insanity, suicide, a play-within-a-play, sensational incidents, and a gruesomely
bloody ending. (Abrams, 323)
The scene in which Hamlet starts to struggle against the plot starts with
Hamlet first asking the ghost and second giving him commands: “Whither wilt
thou lead me? Speak, I’ll go no further” (Act I, Scene V, 1). Once again,
Hamlet shows that he wants to follow his own will. He does not want to go
any further, he does not want to follow the ghost anywhere, but the ghost
has to follow him, or in this situation, his will, even if Hamlet has only
minutes before this scene told the ghost twice: “Go on, I’ll follow thee”
(Act I, Scene IV, 79; 86). While Hamlet talks with the ghost of his father,
he is shocked and does not say much. He mostly utters sentence fragments:
“What?” (Act I, Scene V, 8); “O God!” (Act I, Scene V, 24); “Murder!” (Act
I, Scene V, 26). He then is able to gather his spirits and acts in the way,
the plot would want him to. He asks his father for details about his
revenge:
Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love
May sweep to my revenge. (Act I, Scene V, 29)
The choice of his words indicates that he does not really understand what
the ghost wants him to do. He compares his revenge with gentle things like
love and meditation, not with the brutality of the homicide he has to
commit in order to fulfil the ghost’s order. In another edition of the play
(Rowohlt,
1957)
Line
80
is
said
by
Hamlet
instead
of
the
Ghost:
“O
horrible! O horrible! Most horrible!” (Act I, Scene V, 80). In conjunction
with his speech right after the disappearance of the ghost, Hamlet seems to
bewail himself: “O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else? And shall I
couple hell? O fie!” (Act I, Scene V, 92). He almost seems to wish not
having talked to the ghost; if he had listened to Horatio and Marcellus and
had not talked to the ghost, he would not have the unpleasant duty of
killing his uncle. He is no longer as eager and energetic as he was before
he talked to the ghost of his father. He does not run off and kill Claudius
right away, but he sits down and writes: “My tables. Meet it is I set it
down” (Act I, Scene V, 107). Hamlet is an intellectual, not a muscleman.
Violence is against his character. Even if States argues that “one of
Hamlet’s more dramatic attributes (…) can be summed up in the term cruel
(States,
36)”,
I
argue
that
his
cruelty
is,
at
least
until
he
kills
Polonius, found only in his speeches. He knows what he has to do, in order
to fulfil the ghost’s wish and in order to follow the plot of the play, but
he does not really want to fulfil his duty as soon as possible, first of
all he thinks about the situation and prays.
For every man hath business and desire,
Such as it is- and for my own poor part,
I will go pray (Act I, Scene V, 136)
At the very end of act I, scene V, Hamlet shows us, how inconvenient this
whole situation is for him and that he rather wanted not to have talked to
the ghost in order to not know about his bloody duty: “O cursed spite, that
ever I was born to set it right” (Act I, Scene V, 196). The duty the ghost
has laid on Hamlet is an enormous burden for our protagonist. In the
following scenes Hamlet will try to avoid his destiny.
Killing someone deliberately, in this case Hamlet’s uncle Claudius,
is murder. Murder is a class one felony, even if the victim has committed a
felony as well and the killing is the revenge for this first felony.
If
Hamlet is caught and found guilty, he will be taken to prison and will find
his certain death. He is not after just anyone’s blood, but his uncle’s,
his stepfather’s and more importantly the king of Denmark’s. Killing the
king would turn Hamlet into an enemy of the state, the very state that he
is prince of and therefore king designate. By killing king Claudius Hamlet
risks his entire future. It is not a big surprise, that Hamlet is not very
eager to fulfil his bloody duty. He starts to think a lot, as Polonius
points out:
You know, sometimes he walks four hours together
Here in the lobby. (Act II, Scene II, 160)
Hamlet seems to try to win as much time as possible. The later he starts
his revenge, the later he will die if his plan does not succeed. The longer
he thinks about it, the better his plan will be and the better his plan is,
the better his chances are to survive. Hamlet’s chance to survive increases
with every second he waits until he fulfils his duty. He should take
action; he should kill Claudius as soon as possible in order to fulfil the
ghost’s will, and of course the plot’s will as well. Hamlet’s task is to
kill his father’s murderer. But Hamlet first tries to make sure someone
else will fulfil his duty. By the mean of the play “The murder of Gonzago”
/ “The mousetrap” Hamlet tries to bring Claudius to reveal his secret in
public:
Is it not monstrous, that this player here,
But in a fiction, a dream if passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann’d,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing! (Act II, Scene II, 545)
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I’ll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks;
I’ll tent him to the quick. (Act II, Scene II, 589)
Hamlet does not have to risk his life in order to revenge his father, when
Claudius reveals his guilt in public, which he tells us while he speaks
about the play: “All for nothing!” (Act II, Scene II, 551) This is exactly
what he is trying to achieve by adding his lines to the play: “Make mad the
guilty and appal the free” (Act II, Scene II, 558). If Claudius behaves
suspiciously during or after the play, Hamlet can reveal what he knows
about the murder of old king Hamlet; the audience is shocked and Claudius
will most certainly be taken to prison and executed later on. Hamlet would
have fulfilled his duty without risking his life, he can delegate his
bloody duty to the state; his hands stay clean, he won’t be taken to prison
because of a felony and he will be the king of Denmark.
When after the play, he talks to Horatio and learns that Horatio as
well has seen, how Claudius reacted to the poisoning scene, Hamlet is
happy:
Ah ha! Come, some music; come, the recorders.
For if the King like not the comedy,
Why then, belike he likes it not perdie.
Come, some music. (Act III, Scene II, 285)