Danielle Sullivan
Drew Dolan
Matt Krisch
Michael Bunick
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The literary practice of deconstruction is to
identify all of the contradictions about an
isolated topic in a work and show how those
contradictions establish meaning in the work.
In Hamlet, Hamlet shows conflicting viewpoints
to the audience about his thoughts and
philosophy.
Shakespeare’s strategy in this is to create a
unresolved guessing game for the audience, and
to examine the paradoxical nature of a
humanist.
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Period in the late Middle Ages from
around 1400 to 1650 .
Described as the study of things that promote
and exalt human culture
A Renaissance humanist was defined as being
classical, worldly, dignified, civilized, and striving
for perfection
Hamlet is said to be the ultimate Renaissance
man, both by scholars and his fellow characters
(Ophelia and Horatio both mention him as a
“noble mind”) but is he a perfect Renaissance
humanist?
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The multiple references to Alexander and
Caesar show how he is “returning to the
classics” (Greek and Roman culture)
He is obviously educated in the way of the arts
as he has an advanced knowledge of theater and
acting.
Makes references to Greek and Roman gods and
myths (Pyrrus and Hecuba; Hyperion and Jove)
Has an interest in music as he displays his
knowledge of Pan’s flute when criticizing
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
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Renaissance humanism is anthropocentric,
saying that reality has meaning only by human
values and experiences.
Hamlet desired to dignify his pursuits to avenge
his father, to create meaning in them.
However, Hamlet does fit the bill of “civilized” in
that his achievements seem to fall short of his
potential.
He loses sight of his Renaissance education as he
fails to acknowledge the importance of human
life as he is so enthralled with the exaltation of
his own purpose and meaning.
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Humans were said to be the crowning jewel of all
Creation.
Hamlet, through his meditations on death and
philosophical analysis of the human condition,
doubts these perfections in humans and their
ability to make the world perfect.
The internal conflict that Hamlet has brings
about the unanswerable question of man
achieving worldly perfection or, ultimately,
amounting to no more than dust.
In his anguish Hamlet discovers a unique subjectivity as he
attempts to reject the wisdom of tradition, and understand
for himself the power of man.
 The entire play Hamlet struggles to define understand the
power of humans.
 His point of view ranges from belief in the power to humans,
to a pessimistic doubt of the capabilities of man kind.
 All of Hamlet's soliloquies in Hamlet are placed in an
important order to show the dramatic progression of
Hamlet's character (from depression, to confusion, to
madness, etc.)
 The progression of Hamlet's character also applies to his
humanist aspects, from being helpless and powerless, to
wishing for the most bloodiest revenge.
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Hamlet is an intellectual; wondering "Should I act?“ before he
actually carries out his plan.
In act 1, scene 2, we see Hamlet isolated by his black clothes,
refusing to accept the consolation of Gertrude and Claudius.
Hamlet makes his feelings on their recent marriage clearly known,
yet is hesitant to take action.
His counter-humanism perspective on life does not enable him to
carry out his plans as he doubts his own power.
He hears "all that lives must die," and agrees "Ay, madam, it is
common," yet will not accept this universally held "truth" as at all
meaningful for his personal experience. "Why seems it so
particular with thee?" (1.2).
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For Hamlet man is the "quintessence of dust" (2.2), and the slain body of Polonius
is "compounded... with dust whereto 'tis kin" (4.2).
Gertrude criticizes Hamlet for "with... vailed lids" his "noble father in the dust"
(1.2.70-71).
This last image is important since it suggests the reversal of a commonplace of
Renaissance humanism, that of homo erectus.
Renaissance celebrations of man took up the Patristic echo of this biblical theme
of man's uniqueness in creation, for he was the only one of God's creatures to be
created erect in order to worship the heavens, the source of his origin and end.
Thomas Wilson in his The Rule of Reason (1551) included this as an example of
the predicable proprium or property of man, "To go upright is proper to a man,
and only to a man, and to none other living creature" (sig. C').
Hamlet's eyes and mind are fixed on earth, death, and bodily corruption.
Earlier, Hamlet's sardonically chosen diction had anticipated this: "What should
such fellow s as I do crawling between earth and heaven?" (3.1).
"Crawling," that is, like one of the brute creation on all fours. This conscious
rejection of Renaissance humanism had been systematically worked through
earlier before Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: the passage needs to be quoted in
full:
Microcosm vs. Macrocosm
The complementary parallelism of macrocosm and
microcosm is to highlight the polarity of optimism and pessimism,
humanism and counter-humanism.
 The fact of the speech itself is the first evidence that man is
something more than a mere "quintessence of dust," yet Hamlet is
removed from the irony since the speech is a kind of mockphilosophical exercise worked up by the intellectual student from
Wittenberg, seemingly to entertain Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
who are, in fact, amused.
 This “more than dust” out look is one of a humanist perception.
 Yet the similarity of this language to that on other occasions
implies that Hamlet means every word. Hamlet knows that the
philosophical impersonation will amuse his audience while at the
same time this guise actually reveals what he thinks to the
audience of the play.
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The dust is earth, and Hamlet makes a direct correlation
between the soil of the earth, and every human being who
had ever, or who will ever walk the grounds of the earth.
The beginning and ending of human life from the dust of
the earth, has been a literary motif since the beginning of
literature.
Hamlet’s is analyzing how all men, seen in his eyes as
equal or unequal, come from and end in dust.
Hamlet's cast of mind here gives expression to an
individually felt pessimism.
He begins to exemplify counter-humanism thoughts. As
he, doubts the power of man, and considers the inevitable
demise of us all in which man is powerless to oppose.
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HAMLET Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this
fashion i' th‘ earth?
HORATIOE'en so.
HAMLETAnd smelt so? Pah! (puts down the skull)
HORATIOE'en so, my lord.
HAMLETTo what base uses we may return,
Horatio. Why may notimagination trace the noble
dust of Alexander till he find it
stopping a bunghole?
HORATIO'Twere to consider too curiously, to
consider so.
HAMLETNo, faith, not a jot. But to follow him
thither with modestly enough, and likelihood to
lead it, as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was
buried, Alexander returneth to dust, the dust is
earth, of earth we make loam—and why of that
loam,whereto he was converted, might they not
stop a beer barrel?Imperious Caesar, dead and
turned to clay,Might stop a hole to keep the wind
away.Oh, that that earth, which kept the world in
awe,Should patch a wall t' expel the winter’s flaw!
But soft, but soft a while.
Hamlet is giving up on his humanism.
Horatio exspects Hamlet to give a
detailed explanation of life after death,
and the equal fate of all men, but
Hamlet says we all simply become
dust.
 Association Hamlet's mind moves to
Alexander, the type of imperial
greatness
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Hamlet considers every human’s eventual
decay.
 The skull is one of the few, if not the only,
symbol in Hamlet.
 The skull represents death, it’s inevitability, and
the modest demise of us all.
 Polonius will end as worm food, Hamlet Sr. will
end as worm food, and Alexander the Great will
end as worm food.
 No one can escape death, the fate of all
humans.
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Gertrude:” Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Hamlet: "What is a man,If his chief good and market of his
Do not forever with thy vailed lids
time, Be but to sleep and feed?" (4.4)
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Does he as a human, have the power to revenge his father, or is he
Thou know'st 'tis common: all that lives must die,
simply an animal ?
Passing through nature to eternity.”
(1.2)
Is Hamlet so weak, that he is unable to overcome personal sadness,
from a father’s death? Humans must learn to control their grief with
reason.
Hamlet: “Your worm is your only emperor for diet" (4.3)
Hamlet: “There's a divinity that shapes our ends, I Roughhew them how we will” (5.2)
Why bother with a complicated life if everything is predestined?
Hamlet’s preoccupation with corruption and death with links to both
the micro-macrocosm and "Alexander... dust" speeches.
“To thine own self be true”(1.3)
Is Polonious saying be true to reason, or for Laertes to follow his heart,
and feelings?
Hamlet: What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and
moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a god: the beauty of
the world, the paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me, no,
nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to
say so (2,2)
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Act 1 Scene2: O
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month-Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!-A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she-O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.
Act 1, Scene 2: this conveys an anti-humanist
message. Hamlet is seen here as grief-stricken
and hopeless over his father's recent death
and his mother's quick marriage.
It shows how weak men are in their inability to
achieve despite emotion heartache.
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HAMLET
Your loves, as mine to you: farewell.
Exeunt [all but HAMLET].
My father's spirit in arms! all is not
well;
I doubt some foul play: would the
night were come!
Till then, sit still, my soul. Foul deeds
will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm
them, to men's eyes.
Act 1, Scene 2: Shakespeare's
humanist message within this
soliloquy is somewhat
ambiguous. Hamlet's fear of
the devil playing a trick on him
highlights a flaw in man's
bravery (anti-humanist). Or,
the soliloquy is suggestive of
man's struggle to create
rationality in any situation
(humanist).
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Act 1, Scene 5: The end of this soliloquy marks
HAMLET
O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?
And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart; Hamlet's descent into feigned madness, or
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
maybe his descent into actual madness. The
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!
humanist message here is again ambiguous;
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
does man carelessly leech himself onto the
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
first goal he sees to justify his existence? Or is
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
Hamlet's feign of madness am ingenious plot
And thy commandment all alone shall live
for revenge?
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven!
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:
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'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
Act 2 Scene 2:
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
I should have fatted all the region kites
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
O, vengeance!
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
For Hecuba!
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
A scullion!
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
Been struck so to the soul that presently
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat, Play something like the murder of my father
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
Ha!
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this: the play 's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
Act 2, Scene 2: the confused
Hamlet does not feel enough
emotion towards his semiplanned revenge. The
beginning of this soliloquy
presents a powerless Hamlet,
but the end of his speech
presents an initiative.
Hamlet's desire for full
verification of Claudius' illdeed proves his desire to
urge on.
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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? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make 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 pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
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Act 3, Scene 1: this soliloquy is very detached from the
play; Hamlet contemplates suicide in contradiction to
his Christian ideals (his fear of the devil, his
acknowledgment of God's will against suicide in his first
soliloquy).
The soliloquy is pro-humanist as it explores Hamlet's
possible decision of killing himself without fear of going
to hell.
The context of this scene is also very undramatic,
Hamlet is only contemplating over what comes after
death and only acknowledges his own dilemma when
he questions whether he should "take arms against a
sea of troubles," in order to cut off the stress of his
existence.
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HAMLET
"By and by" is easily said. Leave me, friends.
[Exeunt all but Hamlet.]
'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself
breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink
hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my
mother.
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:
Let me be cruel, not unnatural:
I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites;
How in my words soever she be shent,
To give them seals never, my soul, consent!
Exit.
Act 3, Scene 2: An anti-humanist is conveyed
by this soliloquy. Hamlet's desire to "speak
daggers" to his mother is not only useless as it
does not bring him anywhere closer to his
revenge, but also marks the onset of the
protagonist falling deeper into actual madness
(killing Polonius, seeing the Ghost without his
mother seeing it).
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Act 3, Scene 3, Hamlet: O, my offence is rank it smells to
heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon't,
A brother's murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy But to
confront the visage of offence?
And what's in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon'd being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'? That
cannot be; since I am still possess'd Of those effects for
which I did the murder, My crown, mine own ambition
and my queen
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but 'tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well.
This soliloquy takes a very counter-humanism point of view. Here Hamlet is examining
Claudius’s weakness, and corruption. He considers how the guilt has worn Claudius
down and now he is unable to act because he is too guilty. Hamlet is also angered at his
own weakness in his inability to take revenge on Claudius.
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Hamlet: Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd:
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread;
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
'Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season'd for his passage?
No!
Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in't;
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn'd and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
Act 3, Scene 3: The frequency changes to
humanist when Hamlet comes upon Claudius
in 'prayer'. The position of this soliloquy is
essential as it leads up to Hamlet's final
soliloquy where he vows upon the bloodiest
revenge.
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How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
Act 4, Scene 4: in Hamlet's final
soliloquy, he vows for the bloodiest
revenge after observing Fortinbras'
army fleet and speaking to an officer for
the reasons of war. The soliloquy
epitomizes the idea of humanism as
Hamlet ponders upon the question
"What is a man." The conclusion to his
soliloquy, "My thoughts be bloody, or be
nothing worth!" explains that unless he
focuses all his power into his revenge,
his existence is useless.
This what follows this soliloquy is not
Hamlet's planning of revenge, but rather
sporadic events that lead up to it.
However, Hamlet's execution of his goal
upon the time of his death characterizes
him as the model humanist who
completes his goal no matter what the
consequences.
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