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Bradley Smith
Dr. Strickland
Shakespeare on Stage
Final Paper
August 4, 2004
A Modern Man in a Premodern Play:
The Clash of Ideological Systems in Hamlet
In his introduction to Hamlet appearing in the Riverside Shakespeare, Frank
Kermode states that “although it is formally related to a popular set of dramatic
conventions (which we know from many other surviving examples), Hamlet clearly
works on a different level from any other play of its kind, and indeed from any preceding
Shakespeare play” (1183). As readers, we must ask ourselves what this difference
consists of and its reason for being. Why isn’t Hamlet like other revengers? And how
does that difference affect the way Hamlet unfolds? An answer may lie in the ideological
changes occurring all across Europe, especially in England, while Shakespeare was
writing and re-writing his version of Hamlet. When viewed through this lens, Hamlet
emerges as an autonomous figure of the modern age against the backdrop of a premodern
plot line and a premodern genre.
Lawrence Stone in Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800, discusses
the paradigmatic shift between the premodern and the modern eras that was occurring
during this time. According to Stone, during the premodern era, peasants were
interpellated into a network of ideologies that posed their lord had a divine right to rule
passed down from God. Moreover, God was thought of as a part of everyday life.
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Things like death and birth in the family were certainly mourned and celebrated, but
these events had a less exaggerated impact on families when compared to later centuries.
This lessened sentiment caused feelings that all people of an equal station were
interchangeable. “One wife, one child could substitute for another, like soldiers in an
army,” Stone writes (257). The emphasis in this society was not on the individual, but to
“assure the continuity of the family, the clan, the village or the state” (Stone 258). As the
economy shifted to capitalism, these things became less important. Stone writes, God
went from being a daily part of people’s lives to a distant watchmaker who presided over
the maintenance of a mechanical universe (246).
This shift was seemingly invisible for many years. The idea that all humans are
individuals with equal rights was seemingly second nature to mainstream twentieth
century scholars as they looked back on history—so much so, that they assumed every
society throughout history valued individuality in the same way they did. The reason for
this is explained by Michel Foucault in his book The Archaeology of Knowledge.
Foucault discusses a theory of knowledge that talks about the history of ideas as one of a
history of ruptures in discourse. According to Foucault, history is formed by looking
back in time for a narrative strain from the present. He writes:
Recurrent redistributions reveal several pasts, several forms of
connexion, several hierarchies of importance, several networks of
determination, several teleologies, for one and the same science, as
its present undergoes change: thus historical descriptions are
necessarily ordered by the present state of knowledge, they
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increase with every transformation and never cease, in turn to
break with themselves. (5)
Thus, knowledge is socially narrated in that certain strands are chosen and followed
backwards into history—a practice, which has the effect of essentially erasing other
narrative strands and discourses. History, therefore, is utterly dependent on the current
construction of knowledge. In place of a history of knowledge, Foucault wants to place
an archaeology of knowledge: a system that tries to define the discourses as “practices
obeying certain rules” rather than concentrating on the thoughts, images and themes that
a history values (138). Such a practice allows us to see knowledge as the product of a
society. Knowledge becomes the product of a discursive agreement, where speaking
practices rule how knowledge is produced, rather than chunks of information, nuggets of
gold that can stand acontextually. The project, therefore, requires us to acknowledge our
situatedness inside discourse, which in turn requires us to acknowledge that we are
looking for a specific narrative strain when we look back through history.
At the times of these discursive breaks, such as the break between the premodern
and modern eras, ideologies begin to change. As a part of those linguistic systems,
ideologies have a strong connection to language. Often, it is through language that
interpellation occurs, for instance in Althusser’s example of the subject and the police
office. Thus, as ideological systems struggle for control in a society, that struggle
manifests itself as a discursive struggle for control. Often the outmoded discourse, along
with its ideologies, is historically erased or subsumed into the other, simply because we
stop looking for its presence when constructing histories.
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It is in this way that we can find traces of a modernist narrative strand by looking
back through history. In as such, the development of the human being as an individual is
in fact the product of the modern historical time period and our society. We have created
that narrative strand and projected its development back in time. Our problem arises
when we assume that society always privileged the individual over the group or the
family—a practice, which shows that we were blinded by our own values.
Situated in this discourse, we can look back through history to see the
development of the modernist narrative strain. Such projections can have benefits. It
clearly shows the break that Stone discusses and allows us to apply a reason for that
break. Though he does not contribute the changes occurring during this time solely to the
new economic advancements, Stone finds a great deal of change occurring around the
status of the individual in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. He cites a
number of changes in iconography as diverse as tombs to diaries showing the emphasis
has switched from the family to the individual. For example, tombs in the sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries bore the family name and coat of arms with little recognition
of the individual. Stone writes, “It was a display of family pomp and position, not a
memorial to the individuality of the dead” (225). But as the seventeenth century ended
and the eighteenth century began, tombs began to become personalized, bearing a bust of
the deceased based on personal sittings or a death mask—though, as Stone notes, the
family’s coat of arms was still quite prominent. This is a trend that can be seen when
viewing Shakespeare’s own grave, which has its own bust perched nearby. Stone writes,
“What needs explaining is not a change of structure, or of economics, or of social
organization, but of sentiment. [...] There was a shift in a whole cultural system, defined
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as the growth of Affective Individualism” (658). He cites the cause of this rise in
autonomy to the Renaissance ideal of the individual hero and the Calvinist ideal of guilt
and anxiety about salvation. Yet he never discusses what might have been the cause of
these phenomena and why they developed during this time period. The answer that Stone
tries so hard to overlook is the shift from a feudal system to a capitalist system.
This shift in family dynamics slowly displaced the emphasis from what was best
for the family onto what was best for an autonomous individual, though the old
ideologies still maintained a partial hold. Stone writes the feudal relationship between
father and child was characterized by a great deal of deference to the father. Children
would kneel, or stand if they were sitting, or doff their cap to their parents as signs of
respect. These forms of respect begin to fade, however, by the middle of the seventeenth
century, and they were replaced by a mutual affection and a less physical show of
respect. Under the feudal arrangement, the head of the family or clan would make
marital decisions based on what was best for the family, but as the feudal period ended
and agrarian capitalism began, children were given more and more power to choose their
spouse or overrule the judgment of their father.
Most importantly, though, as society began to shift, discourse began to shift along
with it. Looking at the moment when these discourses begin to clash, allows us to
recognize those fights and begin to parse out their ideologies. According to Mikhail
Bakhtin texts become time-spaces where the author can allow a number of competing
discursive elements, manifestations of different ideological worldviews, to mingle,
interact, and form a dialogue. Through this interaction, the writer forms a dialogic space
through which one of the discourses, and the ideologies of that language system can be
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viewed objectively. Hamlet represents the textual outcome of the discursive competition
between premodern society and modern society, and thus it becomes an opportunity for
us to be able to recognize the ideologies of the different discourses of those systems.
In the world where these two ideological structures were changing and their
ideologies were starting to clash, Shakespeare began to write and produce Hamlet,
pulling his plot from other versions of the same play. In fact the plot of Hamlet itself had
been in existence for many years before Shakespeare adapted it to his own liking.
According to Stephen Greenblatt in an introduction to Hamlet, the tale of Hamlet had
been around since the twelfth century, reported by Saxo the Grammrian. Furthermore, it
was adapted in French by Francois de Belleforest in 1570. And texts in England refer to
an Ur-Hamlet produced around 1589 (1661). Thus, the story of Hamlet’s revenge was,
by the time Shakespeare began to write, centuries old. As Margreta de Grazia writes in
“Hamlet before Its Time,” “To begin with, it [Hamlet] was a recycling of an earlier play.
Even the supposed original the Ur-Hamlet, was remembered not for its novelty but for its
tired formulas and stock devices” (356). The age of the plot, therefore, places it squarely
under the control of ideologies produced as part of the premodern era. This is confirmed
by the criticism of Anthony Low, Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, and Stephen
Greenblatt, who, according to de Grazia, “work to recover the material and textual traces
of ghosts in Shakespeare’s time and earlier,” seeing the ghost as belonging to a
premodern ideological system (374-75).
Likewise, the genre of revenge tragedy has numerous premodern roots. Revenge
plays have their history entwined deeply with Greek and Roman societies and their
dramatic traditions—a point which John Kerrigan discusses in Revenge Tragedies:
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Aeschylus to Armageddon. Oftentimes Elizabethan playwrites adopted whole plot lines
from Classic stories—such as Seneca’s Thyestes, which was rewritten by Jasper
Heywood in 1560—changing them in ways that would update the story in order to fit
with Elizabethan ideologies. Seneca, whose plays were studied in school during the
Elizabethan age, became one of the main Classic influences on Elizabethan theater. The
plot lines of these premodern stories, however, carry with them premodern plot devices,
simply because they were composed using premodern language systems.
For instance, the whole arrangement of a revenge tragedy revolves around
familial obligation. Kerrigan writes, the displacement of revenge from one character to
another creates a structure of obligation which modifies the economy of vengeance” (7).
This structure of obligation is one that is dependent on the premodern structure of the
family laid out by Stone.
Under the premodern ideologies that shape the basis of the plot, Hamlet is
obligated to carry out the ghost of Old Hamlet’s command to revenge his death—that is,
if the ghost truly is his father’s spirit. However, this set of ideologies clashes with
another set that presents Hamlet as an autonomous individual. This second set begins to
emerge at the time that Shakespeare is writing, as Elizabethan England moves into the
modern era. This is a view that Andrew Mousley shares in his essay “Hamlet and the
Politics of Individualism.” Mousley writes, “Hamlet may be seen as dramatizing the
failure of ideologies fully to interpellate or precisely ‘speak through’ the individual” (68).
Viewing history in this way, Hamlet can be seen as a character who is placed in
the center of this ideological conflict. And the result is Hamlet must first weigh the
consequences of losing his autonomy through death with his filial obligation of revenge.
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Thus, Hamlet vows carefully not to revenge his father but to remember him, as Kerrigan
notes: “The contrast with Hieronomo [of The Spanish Tragedy] is striking: Hamlet never
promises to revenge, only to remember” (182). According to Kerrigan, this lack of a vow
to revenge turns on a word. Hamlet tells the ghost that he may revenge him rather than
he will: “Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift / As meditation, or the thoughts
of love, / May sweep to my revenge” (I.v, 29-31). Thus, Hamlet makes no vow other
than to remember his father. Alexander Welsh, in Hamlet in His Modern Guises, also
remarks this odd turn. He notes that, “This subordination of revenge to mourning
markedly differs from the medieval story” (34). The comparison between the two texts
allows us to see the effects that the new ideological linguistic system has on the play.
This difference can be directly attributed to this change in the ideological system
governing Hamlet’s actions. No longer is Hamlet obligated to revenge his father under
the premodern ideological system. Instead Hamlet vows to remember his father and his
love for his father—a vow that reflects the individuality of not only Hamlet’s character
but Hamlet’s sense of his father’s individuality. This love for his father gives Hamlet an
entirely different motive for seeking revenge than filial obligation. Instead Hamlet’s
reasons for revenge arise to assuage his own grief rather than to fulfill any filial
obligation in slaying his father’s murderer.
Along with creating this motivation for revenge, Hamlet’s reaction to his father’s
death at the beginning of the play shows the clash of ideologies between the premodern
and modern systems and sets up Hamlet’s character as an autonomous individual. Only
he continues to morn for Old Hamlet beyond a month, whereas, the rest of the court does
not. In this way, the whole court is set squarely under the governance of premodern
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ideologies. They believe what Claudius and Gertrude say—that it is useless to mourn for
so long. To the court, one king is just as good as another, just as Stone writes that one
son or mother was just as good as another to members of premodern society. To Hamlet,
one father is not as good as another. One king is not as good as another. In his first
soliloquy, Hamlet mourns the passing of his father, wonders at the inconstancy of the
court and his mother, and most definitively states that Claudius is not the equal of his
father. Thus to Hamlet, Old Hamlet is a hyperion, Claudius a satyr; and Claudius is no
more like his father than “I to Hercules” (I.ii, 140, 153). In this way, Hamlet shows his
privilege of the individual over the premodern ideologies that favor the good of the
group.
For these reasons, no one grieves for the loss of Old Hamlet as Hamlet does. The
result is that when Gertrude asks Hamlet why his father’s death seems so particular to
him, Hamlet answers:
Seems, madam? nay, it is, I know no not “seems.”
’Tis not alone my inky cloak, [good] mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black
Nor windy suspiration of forc’d breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, [shapes] of grief,
That can [denote] me truly. These indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play,
But I have that within which passes show,
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These but the trappings and suits of woe. (I.ii, 76-86).
In these lines, Hamlet insists that his grief for his father’s death is real. That is, Hamlet is
not merely fulfilling an obligation to mourn his father, he is actually mourning him. To
these lines, Claudius responds,
’Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet
To give these mourning duties to your father.
But you must know that your father lost a father,
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow. (I.ii, 88-92).
This dialogue shows the clashing ideologies of the two characters. Hamlet possesses a
much more individual outlook on death that represents, as Stone has suggested when
discussing the change in grave markings, a new series of ideologies that privileges the
individual. Claudius, however, sees Hamlet’s mourning only in terms of his “filial duty.”
Thus, he privileges the premodern ideologies that obligate sons to mourn for their fathers,
though that mourning acknowledges and privileges God’s will over the individuality of
the person who has died.
As the play progresses, it becomes obvious that Hamlet is willing to avenge his
father’s death, assuming that the ghost is not lying to him. But there arises the age-old
question of why he delays. That too lies in Hamlet’s autonomy. Hamlet is familiar with
revenge plays: he mentions to the players a speech about Pyrrhus and the slaughter of
Priam, and he knows a play that will suit his needs for the mousetrap play—“The
Murther of Gonzago.” Such familiarity with the theater suggests that Hamlet is also
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familiar with the final outcomes of such plays—where the revenger too dies, after the act
of revenge has been completed. Hamlet is worried foremost about losing his own life—
sentiments which he conveys in his “To be or not to be” soliloquy:
Thus conscience makes cowards [of us all],
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. (III.i, 82-7)
Yet, if Hamlet is more concerned about losing his autonomy through death, then why
does he eventually decide to carry out his revenge? As Kerrigan has presented it, revenge
is an obligation owed to a wronged family member. Yet Mousley presents an alternative
motive for revenge that allows for Hamlet’s autonomy despite his final actions of
revenge. Mousley writes,
Looked at from the point of view of the competing versions of subjectivity
and agency represented in the play, revenge is additionally problematic.
For if on the one hand, the incitement to revenge promises to put an end to
any form of individualism by (re)turning the subject to a questionably
higher structure of command, then, on the other, revenge, as an extreme
act of self-assertion, serves to pluralize the meanings of individualism still
further. (71-2)
Thus, our question is answered: Hamlet does not avenge his father out of any sense of
duty. If he were to do so, the play would have been over much sooner—if not after he
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learns from the ghost his uncle has murdered his father, then after the mousetrap play,
when he is sure of his uncle’s guilt. If Hamlet were to revenge his father’s death out of
filial duty, his best opportunity occurs when Claudius is praying in the chapel. However,
Hamlet decides against such a course of action, because his filial duty would be “[hire
and salary], not revenge” (III.iv, 79). It isn’t enough for Hamlet to kill Claudius and
fulfill his duty, he must damn Claudius’s soul. Instead, Hamlet eventually revenges his
father’s death for his own reasons, not in obeyance of his father’s ghost. Hamlet acts to
assuage his own grief over the death of his father and only after he too has been poisoned,
and his death is eminent. In this way, revenge becomes, as Mousley states, “an act of
self-assertion” that “pluralizes the meanings of individualism.”
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Works Cited
Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language.
Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon, 1972.
Grazia, Margreta de. “Hamlet before Its Time” MLQ 62.4 (2001) 355-75.
Greenblatt, Stephen. “Hamlet.” Norton Shakespeare. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, et al. New
York: Norton, 1997. 1659-67.
Kermode, Frank. “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.” Riverside Shakespeare. Eds. Herschel
Baker, et al. 2nd ed. Boston: Houton Mifflin, 1997. 1183-88.
Kerrigan, John. Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon. Oxford: Clarendon P,
1996.
Mousley, Andrew. “Hamlet and the Politics of Individualism.” New Essays on Hamlet.
Eds. Mark Thornton Burnett and John Manning. New York: AMS P, 1995. 67-82.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Riverside
Shakespeare. Eds. Herschel Baker, et al. 2nd ed. Boston: Houton Mifflin, 1997.
1189-1245.
Welsh, Alexander. Hamlet in His Modern Guises Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.