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William Wu
AC English
Mrs. Yankow
3/29/03
Duty and Love
Duty, a constant reoccurring theme in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is what the
character’s actions are bound to. For example, Hamlet’s duty is to redeem his father’s honor by
exposing the villainous Claudius to the world. While Horatio’s duty is to always tell the truth and
to validate Hamlet’s sanity when everyone else thinks Hamlet is insane. Claudius, who tries to
“let the good times roll again”, shows that not all duties are good. Usually duty is affiliated with
loyalty, but in Polonius’s case his duty is to be an obsequios yes-man to the king, whoever it is,
by spying on everyone else. And Queen Gertrude and Ophelia’s duties’ are to fear and obey the
men in their lives. The word duty first appears when Horatio tells Marcellus that it is “As needful
in our loves; fitting our duty” (I.i.172) to tell Hamlet about what they have just seen. Horatio
recognizes that reporting to Hamlet is not only their duty but also a necessity because of their
loyalty and love for Hamlet. Throughout the play, the character’s duty reveals insight to their
true desires and ambitions.
All Hamlet wants to do is to return to Wittenburg to resume his studies. If he returns to
school, then his duty would have been to be king. He would have been a just and noble king who
stood on level with the people. But Claudius killed the true king, Hamlet’s father, by turning him
into a prison when the king should be freely moving. So Hamlet’s father did not just suddenly
die as everyone thinks, he is murdered by his own brother. Claudius has commited fratricide and
regicide. So, now Hamlet is bound to his duty, his “ananke” – yoke of necessity. Remembering
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his father and his duty, leting the whole ear of Denmark know the truth, becomes his first
priority. “Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records....And thy
commandment all alone shall live”(I.v.98-102). He is willing to sacrifice everything just to fulfill
his duty, which is motivated by his memory.
Horatio is a necessary character to the play. He is the determining factor in Hamlet’s
sanity. Claudius has become the pseudo-center and everyone in the court revolves around that. If
the center is off balance then so is everything else. Therefore, when Hamlet is not in the “center”
then he appears to be the one off balance. But Horatio is the link between Hamlet and the
audience. Horatio is needed to show that Hamlet’s actions are justified and that he hasn’t gone
mad. He is the standard that the audience can juxtapose with Hamlet’s reasoning because
Horatio’s duty is to always tell the truth. He passes all of Hamlet’s tests when he describes the
ghost for the first time. He says the ghost stayed “while one with moderate haste might tell a
hundred” (I.ii.240) and its beard was a “sable silvered”(I.ii.244). Horatio doesn’t try to
exaggerate the truth like Barnardo and Marcellus; he tells it like it is. Horatio says, “As I do live,
my honoured lord, ‘tis true; And we did think it writ down in our duty To let you know of
it”(I.ii.319-321) because the truth is so important to him that it is worth his life. The truth is at
the real center. Horatio desires to remain loyal to the true king.
Claudius wants everyone to be carefree and party all day. But if everyone is out partying,
then no one will take care of important matters. Claudius just wants to have fun without work.
He is constantly drinking and dancing and having a good old time as Hamlet points out: “The
King is celebrating tonight: drinking deep, making keeps wassail, and the swagg’ring upstrings
reel” (I.iv.9-10). But Claudius did not become king through vote. He uses deceitful deception to
take the back route to glory. Lazy all his life, suddenly when an opportunity arises, Claudius
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murders his brother and takes the throne. And now that he is king the whole court is adulterated.
Everyone is too busy enjoying themselves to suspect Claudius except for Hamlet who says, “For
my uncle is King of Denmark, and those that would make mouths at him while my father lived
give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little.” (II.ii.363-366) Hamlet
notices the unnatural transition from making fun of Claudius to paying a hundred ducats for a
small little picture of him in such a short time. But since everyone is on Claudius’s side, only
Horatio, who stands on truth’s side, stands with Hamlet.
Polonius is a corruption of duty. Since Polonius is always snooping around, he must have
discovered something fishy about King Hamlet’s death, yet he doesn’t investigate because he
would rather follow a false king than to be in a possible state of dishonor. Since the core is
rotten, Polonius is rotten because he follows the center. Ironically he says, “Where truth is hid,
though it were hid indeed Within the centre.” (II.ii.60-61) First of all Polonius is no where near
the truth, secondly his center is Claudius, so he would not want to snoop around Claudius
because he might find out the real truth. In a sense, Polonius is Horatio’s counterpart, but unlike
Horatio, who is loyal to the true center, Polonius is loyal to the center with the most attention
because he is a “great baby” (II.ii.382). His duty shows he fancies attention. He says it best
himself “I hold my duty as I hold my soul, Both to my God and to my gracious King” (II.ii.44).
His duty is to spy on everyone else for the king, which isn’t hard for him considering he even
sends someone to spy on his son. And he does hold his duty as he holds his soul, for he died
doing his “duty”.
The women Ophelia and Gertrude are similar in their duties. They follow the whims of
the men like a good renaissance woman should. Polonius says, “I have a daughter... who in her
duty and obedience, mark, hath given me this” (II.ii.108). Ophelia’s duty is to obey her father, no
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matter how corrupt he is because as she says “I do not know, my lord, what I should think”
(I.iii.104). She is a woman and women are incapable of using their own reason in the play. The
queen is also the same, who marries her dead husband’s brother only two months after his death.
She just moronically follows Claudius around to the point where she thinks her own son is truly
mad because of his father’s death. So the women do not have an ambition. Their only purpose is
to obey. Of course, Gertrude does uphold her new found independance in the end of the play, but
too little too late, seeing how that is the cause of her death.
Laertes and Fortinbras along with Hamlet are different characters with the same duty.
They were all trying to bring honor back to their fathers’ names. The difference between Laertes
and Hamlet is that Hamlet thinks before he acts while Laertes without thinking. Laertes lets his
emotions take over and gives in to Claudius’s trap. Fortinbras would appear more noble than
Hamlet, because he didn’t dilly-dally so long on contemplation, rather he reacted with swift
judgement. However, Fortinbras was taking a risk and therefore he could have lost to the
Pollacks in different circumstances as Hamlet explains, “Exposing what is mortal and unsure To
all that fortune, death, and danger dare, Even for an eggshell”(IV.iv.51-53). Hamlet may have
lacked motivation at first, but he was so sure that his plan would work that he was willing to risk
his life for it.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, every character has a duty, and that duty determines how noble
one’s actions are. Hamlet was more than willing to end his life, in fact he viewed death as a
“felicity”(V.ii.347), but his duty made him cling on to life until he finished his duty, just as
Horatio’s duty will need him to cling on to life until the truth is revealed. Hamlet’s actions are
honorable because his ultimate duty is to restore the prison back to the kingdom of Denmark. As
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Fortinbras points out: “For he was likely, had he been put on, To have proved most royal”
(V.ii,397-398), because it takes a true king to recognize one. Hamlet is true nobility.
* Work Cited http://www.webcom.com/pweller/hamlet/H11.html